• Image Credits : Nelson Mandela University

Young professionals, graduates and academics have taken to Pretoria intersections to raise tuition funds for the underprivileged. The group, under the banner of Thusa Ngwana Geno Foundation, plans to raise at least R2 million before the 2025 academic year kicks off.

The foundation also helps students with NSFAS applications, learner’s licenses and operates a community computer lab in Soshanguve.

Over the years, more than 700 students have been assisted to register or settle historic academic debt. These beneficiaries, now volunteers, say asking motorists to spare some of their change is a way of paying it forward.

“The frustration of passing matric and starting to apply and then after they accept you, you start to register, and you don’t have that money,” says one of the fundraisers.

“The organization has helped me. So, I just wanted to come and to give back to others. They helped me with registration fee for two years,” says another.

Meanwhile, President Cyril Ramaphosa says education was at the centre of the past apartheid regime’s deliberate strategy to destroy the country’s black majority. He, however, says much has been done in the last 30 years of South Africa’s democracy to undo the damage that apartheid and colonialism have caused.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with SABC News, Ramaphosa also said government was doing its best to improve the country’s quality of education.

“We now have almost 90% of our schools being no fees paying schools. We feed 9 million children every day at school and we are now moving to two meals a day and that in itself is important because it improves the learning ability of children. When we started we gave 40,000 of our young people assistance to be at higher level of learning tertiary. We now give that assistance to 1,2 and we have built more universities,” says Ramaphosa. By Phumzile Mlangeni, SABC