Learning will continue

Congratulations. This, dear graduates, is the most important day in the university calendar. We are very proud of you having achieved your degree, at last. To the young women, you look absolutely beautiful; and to the young men, even for a straight guy, you look handsome, man.

Ladies, I do have an existential question for you, though: how on Earth do you manage to balance and stay upright on those enormous heels?

I do not know how this happened, but when I got up as usual at 4am earlier this week, I thought of what to say to you on this special day.

Out of nowhere, the name of a chap called Micah came across my mind. This minor prophet from the Christian scriptures once issued three timeless wisdoms: Do justice; Love mercy; Walk humbly. I could not think of a more powerful message to share with you today.

DO JUSTICE: You live in a country where the people are angry.

On one of our most important commemorative holidays, March 21, there were at least 15 places in the country burning with protest, from Grabouw in the south to Ratanga in the north.

What the people were angry about was one simple thing: they do not feel a sense of justice so many years after the end of apartheid.

You live in a country where people still faint and even die in long queues waiting for grant and pension payouts. This must be one of the few places in the world where nurses strike, leaving premature babies on ventilators. Whatever you do with your degree, do justice.

LOVE MERCY: You studied in a university that showed the country and the world that restoration is better than revenge; that reconciliation achieves more than retaliation; and that embrace rather than tolerance brings out the best in humanity.

The international television station CNN is here today to capture the story of what you have achieved at this great institution. We are still a divided people, thin-skinned and easily provoked into racial and ethnic rage. Your degree from the UFS will place you in leadership positions where you can demonstrate another model for how to be human in an angry country. Wherever your degree takes you, love mercy.

WALK HUMBLY: You did not get here on your own.

I know for a fact there are grandmothers in this audience who used their meagre pension monies so some of you could graduate. I know there are parents in deep debt today because they were forced to take loans to enable you to study without worrying all the time about how you would pay your tuition. You must have felt like dropping out, and there were aunts and uncles who lifted you up. No matter how high your degree takes you, walk humbly.

One of the most difficult things in my life as an undergraduate student was having to walk into my mother's bedroom early in the morning. She would be desperately tired, having come off night duty as a staff nurse at the Princess Alice Orthopaedic Hospital.

I did not have to say anything, for this was a familiar ritual. She reached for her brown purse. When it was empty, she said nothing and I would simply see the tears well in her eyes. I knew I would have to miss university that day, or take a long, long hike from the southern suburbs of the Cape Flats all the way to the northern suburbs to the university designated for my classification.

I would miss the morning classes and return late that night after the last bus had left since the science students had laboratory sessions in the second half of the day. The ritual would repeat itself the next morning. I, too, am grateful to the relatives and friends who made it possible for me to get my first degree, the first in my family.

How many of you here today are the first in your families to get a university degree?

Wow, that is amazing to see so many hands, of all colours. Congratulations to you. I do not know many things except one: the only way to break the cycle of inter-generational poverty is to get one child in the family to get a degree. You are that one child, and you will make that difference. Well done.

Wherever you go, and whatever you believe, do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

• Edited address delivered to UFS Graduates at the eight Autumn 2012 Graduation Ceremonies