Dr Thembisa Mjwacu embraces being a torchbearer of education in her family after being the first graduate and now conferred with a Doctor of Philosophy in Management Sciences, Specialising in Public Relations and Communications, at the Durban University of Technology’s (DUT) 2025 Spring Graduation Ceremony that was recently held at Olive Convention Centre in Durban.
Dr Mjwacu, who comes from a small rural town of Bizana in the Eastern Cape, is currently a Public Relations Lecturer in the Faculty of Management Sciences’ Department of Applied Management at DUT Midlands. She is overjoyed by this achievement and hopes her siblings follow suit and surpass her.
“I am struggling to find exact words to express my joy. I am overjoyed; it reminds me of my first graduation way back in the year 2000. I feel that my hard work, resilience, and commitment to finishing what I started have paid off. I feel a sense of accomplishment, though long overdue,” said Dr Mjwacu.
She mentioned that her journey was far from easy and that her main challenges were balancing work, parenting, and studying all on a full-time basis and at the same time. However, she is very grateful for the support she received from her family, colleagues, and DUT.
“First of all, I would like to commend DUT for giving its staff the opportunity to study without paying full fees. I don’t think I would have been able to do it without that subsidisation,” she said.
Dr Mjwacu said among the factors that pushed her through the challenges was having a support system in her colleagues in the Department of Applied Management, her friends Tabisa, Ntokozo, and Khanyi, her two boys Lakhanya and Qhayiya, praying to God and trusting him and a strong desire to obtain the qualification, no matter how hard it was.
Speaking on her future, Dr Mjwacu said that as an academic, she hopes to supervise more postgraduate students, publish more research articles, attend conferences, and collaborate internationally to enable herself to move from lecturer to senior lectureship, associate, and full professorship.
She added that her research interests are mainly in media studies, gender and media, media and women empowerment, and representation of women in the media, which are areas she is passionate about. However, she recently developed a research interest in technology and education, even though she has yet to write on it.
Pictured: Dr Thembisa Mjwacu.
Photographer S’bonelo Dlamini
Thulasizwe Nkomo
