– by Noluthando Makhaza
That warm gratuitous feeling during a graduation ceremony, does not only excite the graduands, but the entire graduation venue gets filled with admiration and inspiration, as everyone congratulates those who have made it, while aspiring to do and be better. That was the ambiance at our recent Graduation Ceremony for the Certificate in Public Administration (CPA).
This six-month programme was customised specifically for the Councillors of uMhlathuze Municipality in order to enhance their administrative skills within their respective roles. Having embarked on this interesting journey, delegates’ testament to the hardship and stressfulness of this worthy experience, as they had to balance work, school, personal and family life. “It was worth it! All the sleepless nights, the travelling, having to attend lectures and submit assignments. It was all worth it. We would like to thank such a great facilitation team from the University, our Municipality as well as the Extended Learning team for putting together such an impactful programme” ~ said Mr. Sabelo Gumede.
The programme was directed by the bubbly Ms. Thuthukile Jili (Key Account Manager at UEL), with Mr. Manesh Naidoo (Finance Manager at UEL) providing the CPA course overview, while Ms. Faith Ndlovu (Procurement Officer at UEL) gracefully led the national anthem. Our guest speaker was the judicious Professor Paulus Zulu – Director of the Maurice Webb Race Relations Unit in the School of Social Sciences at UKZN.
Prof Zulu took the audience through an interesting historical journey of how government came about. Prof Zulu stated that the historians of government presume that the first forms of government came from the land of Mesopotamia (the land between the Euphrates and Trigris River), and the origins of government coincided with the origins of agriculture and irrigation. He carried on to explain that along these big rivers irrigation started and people had to find a way of regulating river water so that inhabitants in the upper part of the river did not deprive the inhabitants on the lower part of the river of the same resource. “They had to regulate the sharing of the river water and in order to do that, they had to start what we call village and town councils. That is the very first form of government, before that, there was no government” ~ said Prof. Zulu.
He continued to say that representatives were elected among the equals to carry out the wishes of those that elected them. Hence the Latins started a phrase “Delegata potestas non potest delegari” which means the power of the delegate is not bigger than the power of those who delegated him. The delegate becomes a servant of those that sent him to go and perform a particular duty.
The ceremony turned into a great historical lesson filled with so much wisdom from our very own Professor. The graduates, who are also city Councillors were inspired to go back and serve their communities while making a positive impact in the lives of those who delegated them.
If you would like to enroll on the next CPA programme scheduled to commence on 17th February 2020, or you would like us to customise this programme for your organisation, please contact:
Percy Sishi
T: +27 31 260 1853
