An ambitious plan to allow former Rhodes University students who boycotted graduations at the height of apartheid to finally seal the deal has been given the thumbs-up - even by those who still will not attend.

As many as 45 former students are believed to have accepted the offer by vice-chancellor Dr Saleem Badat and will finally graduate in April.

Although Algoa FM news editor Shadley Nash said yesterday he again would not attend the graduation ceremony, he praised the Grahamstown university for finally making such a "decent gesture".

"It happened such a long time ago, I am not really going to worry about it," the former Black Student Movement member explained.

Nash said he had decided to boycott his 1985 graduation - during apartheid president PW Botha's second state of emergency - for political reasons.

"I did not really discuss it with anyone. I only told my mom."

Unlike many others who do not have a graduation picture because of their anti-apartheid stance decades ago, Nash visited Grahamstown with his mother, Farieda, a few years into the new South Africa and made things official.

"We hired a gown, cap and sash and I put on a shirt and tie and we took a few pictures just to make it a bit more formal," he chuckled.

Fellow journalism student Fiona Adams - who graduated with honours in 1988 - said yesterday she was just one of many activists who had taken the decision to stay away from their graduation ceremonies because of the apartheid education system.

"It was the right thing to do at the time," she said. "It was a very small thing, a symbolic protest against unequal access to education that we [white students] all benefited from."