The young man in the wheelchair looked as if he'd been run over by a truck. Dishevelled and distraught, he rolled into my office determined to avoid eye contact. His mother had sent him, pleading that, despite his poor academic marks, he be given a last chance to get his degree. I closed my office door and gave him "the talk", and the less you know about the content of that speech the better. Other colleagues assisted.On Tuesday a smiling JP van der Walt walked slowly across the graduation stage assisted by his complex walking aid and got the longest ovation. His late mother would be smiling.Nozimanga is the young woman I wrote about in this column, who was brutally assaulted as a child and who saw her mother beaten to death by her father at home.This talented learner from a township school caught the attention of the then principal of Grey College and was transferred to the best girls' school in the country for her matriculation years. Despite a life of incredible hardship, she became one of the top academic students at Eunice Girls and qualified for a science degree at university.On Wednesday Nozi walked across the graduation stage, bright and beaming, with a BSc in human molecular genetics and already enrolled for an honours degree in the subject.Thank you Naomi Harrison, whoever and wherever you are, for that monthly debit order that makes this beautiful young woman's dreams come true. You and others are amazing citizens who give hope in a troubled land.Graduation season is a time of the year when your faith in humanity is restored. Yes, we are headed for junk-bond status as the economy tanks; yes, our school system remains stuck in an unacknowledged crisis that continues to destroy the life chances of 80% of our children; and yes, parliament has become a televised display of impunity and incivility. And then we wonder why young people mimic such disgraceful behaviour.But there is nothing like a university graduation to remind you that there is another South Africa in which thousands of graduates, who overcame seemingly insurmountable odds, obtain a first degree in, and for, the family.There are graduates who survived on the university's "No Student Hungry" bursary.There are blind and deaf students who collected degrees.There are students who dropped out to work and then came back when they had some money to carry them through.There are graduates who would not have made it without the meagre amounts left from a grandmother's monthly pension.Posing with students for "selfies" (onsies, I'm told, is the Afrikaans translation) outside the graduation hall, they whisper these stories of survival.Then there is Tanya Calitz, who comes from a humble Afrikaans home in the south of Johannesburg but whose entire young life has been dedicated to living for, and with, those who struggle.She is one of the very few South Africans that I can truly say is "non-racial" to the depths of her being. She loves and cares without boundaries, and unconsciously so.There are few photographs in which Tanya is not living and serving among people who do not look like her or pray like her or speak her language.This young white South African spends her time in townships and in other parts of Africa to live and to learn from others. This week she obtained her degree summa cum laude and became the first law graduate from these parts to clerk for the deputy chief justice in the Constitutional Court.Zandile Twala could not make it for dinner with my family on Tuesday evening. She was busy doing her hair for graduation. Zandile, remember, was the student from Menzi High School who got a full set of distinctions in Grade 12 but was stranded without funding.I called her and asked her to rush to the airport where a ticket was waiting to get her to Bloemfontein for her studies. I visited her mother in a shack in Umlazi. A translator relayed the dreams and gratitude of Zandile's mother.Well, on Wednesday, Zandile received her BAcc degree and is preparing to qualify as a chartered accountant, which will change the lives of mother and daughter forever.Sometimes I think getting a degree in tough conditions makes you a better person, a more determined worker, a more grateful human being.Maybe struggling is not such a bad thing after all...