Local college student earns place at Oxford
The efforts of the dedicated academic, who was funded by a Mandela Rhodes Scholarship, was not in vain.
Local boy makes good does not begin to describe the academic accomplishment of the Oxford doctorate student, Mr Sizwe Mkwanazi.
All the way from Platrand, enrolling at the Gert Sibande College for a National Certificate in 2010 to working as administrative clerk at Skoonuitsig Primary School in Platrand in 2011, before completing a National Diploma in Entrepreneurship at the University of Johannesburg in 2013.
He had no qualms about rolling up his sleeves to do gardening on weekends when still a college student.
“I thought it was a good way of building relationships with the locals and earning some cask,” he said.
Mr Mkwanazi stayed at the Hector Pieterson Hostel in Soweto during this time after changing residences.
He was appointed as senior tutor at UJ and embarked on a post-graduate B.Tech in Management Service and was promoted as a lecturer in 2015.
The research for his masters degree then began in earnest which was quite a trying time, but the support of his mother who joined him in Johannesburg paved the way.
“Time management was difficult,” he said.
“If I had to cook and do the laundry, it would have been much harder.”
The efforts of the dedicated academic, who was funded by a Mandela Rhodes Scholarship, was not in vain.
He also completed a post-graduate diploma in management at the Northwest University involving weekend and evening classes to hand in assignments on time.
Another opportunity then beckoned on the horizon.
Through three of his friends in the medical profession in East London, the possibility of a Rhodes Scholarship for Oxford University in the United Kingdom seemed viable.
“I thought it was not for me, but they persuaded me.”
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