The University of South Africa (Unisa) has announced that graduation ceremonies will restart from tomorrow after being postponed.
This has nothing to do with COVID-19 as Unisa, as well as many other higher education institutions, have been holding in-person ceremonies for quite some time after pausing them during the height of the pandemic.
The reason for this recent shutdown of the events was protest action with an incident on 15th March caused an in progress Autumn Graduation Ceremony to be interrupted.
On 23rd March Professor Puleng LenkaBula, Principal and Vice-Chancellor, issued a statement – as a PDF here – announcing the resolution of the protests which were held over salary adjustment disputes. LenkaBula even announced research and a “benchmark study” into salaries in the education sector to further address the situation.
With that fire seemingly put out, Unisa students who are due to graduate can now continue with their ceremonies.
“Unisa is happy to announce that the operations of the university have returned to normality. Thus, the graduation ceremonies will resume on Tuesday, 29 March 2022 as per the planned graduation schedule. The university is already in direct contact with all the graduate designates to advise them of their respective graduation dates and times,” an announcement reads.
“The university apologises once more for the inconvenience caused by the postponement of the graduations. Plans are already in progress for alternative graduation opportunities for the affected graduate designates.”
While this seems like good news there seems to be some confusion around new dates for these events as some students have commented upon on Twitter. Hopefully these can be addressed and those who have worked hard to finish their studies can be rewarded with a proper ceremony.
