He said as a young person he had no choice but to enrol and empower himself educationally.
ANCYL deputy president Desmond Moela is getting a diploma in March 2019, he told this paper.
Moela said he’d been with the Tshwane University of Technology since 2015, studying public management.
The graduation ceremony will be held March this year, he said.
“I am going to graduate this year. Now in March. And I have also been accepted for a BTech degree and I’m studying again this year,” he said when he spoke to the 013NEWS reporter at the eMalahleni banquet hall the past weekend.
Moela had attended safety and security MEC Pat Ngomane’s foundation gala dinner that aims help fund the poor to access tertiary education.
Both Moela and businessman Gabriel Ngomane addressed the event of about 50 people before Pat delivered the main address.
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While on stage, Moela said he had now “defeated the people who have been saying that I am a drop-out because this year I’m graduating”.
He told 013NEWS that he will study his BTech degree as a full-time student.
“At the end I want to become a doctor. I want to be called ‘Dr. Moela’,” he said on Saturday night.
“I’m not going to rest until I’m called ‘Dr. Moela’,” he added.
In his address, Pat Ngomane said he took the advice of his late spokesperson Joseph Mabuza who said they should instead register a foundation where businesspeople would pump money towards the tertiary education of those who cannot afford.
He said for some time now they would identify pupils from poor families and help send them to universities.
He said they did it “the old way” but the foundation “I think is coming to assist a lot”, saying many young people found themselves frustrated by the processes of the National Financial Student Aid Scheme (NFSAS).
Ngomane said the door of learning “should be opened even wider”.
“When I urge all of us to keep the door of learning wider open I mean that all of us are responsible or can contribute,” he said.
He added it was important that even those ones who are not able to reach university are assisted.
“We must not abandon [them] and say ‘because they fail we don’t need them’.
“Last year I paid for another kid and he failed everything. But we took a decision and we said, ‘No, because he failed let him re-register all the subjects and pay from his own pocket and if he passes the subjects this year we will pay for him next year but then soon afterwards I remembered that myself I had somebody paying for my tuition fee and I failed all the subjects the first year.
“The person who was paying for me came and said, ‘No, I will pay for you again. Get a second chance’ and I was able to improve and passed the following year,” he said.
Former Nkangala ANCYL chairman Mduduzi ‘Mswati’ Nkosi who also runs a foundation introduced Ngomane on stage.
Mayor Linah Malatjie, SASCO’s Jacob Tau and Faith Msibi as well as youth league treasurer Sam Masango formed part of those who came to Ngomane’s foundation launch.
(edited by MLM)
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