Pretoria - Success and excellence are possible for all, says Kundani Makakavhule, who was celebrated yesterday for graduating with a PhD in Town and Regional Planning.

The 29-year-old graduated from the University of Pretoria, and during a surprise celebration hosted at Magnolia Dell’s Huckleberry restaurant in Pretoria yesterday, she said it did not have to end with her success.

“I don’t want to be the first and it ends there. We want to produce a basket of other people who look like me so that they can also open doors for others and prove to them that it’s possible,” she said.

In her thesis, “(An) other space is possible: An exploration of the conflicts and contestations in the realisation of ‘democratising’ Public Spaces in the City of Tshwane,” she explored societal and municipal perceptions, meanings and engagements with urban public spaces of different typologies.

The thesis found that the spaces under study were made and remade by society’s contentious processes of the physical and psychological appropriation of space on the one hand, and municipal efforts of sanitisation and domination on the other, embedded in notions of belonging, resistance, citizenship, planning aspiration and societal need.

Prof Chrisna du Plessis: Chairperson of School, Prof Mark Oranje: HoD, Dr Kundani Makakavhule and Prof Karina Landman. Picture: Thobile Mathonsi/African News Agency (ANA).

The event was hosted by the institution’s Department of Town and Regional Planning to honour the “star doctoral student”, after what were said to be numerous cancellations due to Covid-19.

The department held the special graduation ceremony, and they said the formal graduation procession, complete with music and lecturers dressed in their formal academic robes, was one in which they wanted to show off excellence.

They had invited Makakavhule with her being under the impression that she and her family were going to the venue for lunch.

“Of particular relevance is the fact that the thesis deals with public parks,” said head of the department, Mark Oranje, who added that Makakavhule’s achievement meant a great deal to them, and they were grateful to have someone of her calibre in the department.

“She is a very intelligent and hard-working young woman who also tutors students and is always ready to assist. Our students still need her and I just hope we don’t lose her to another university abroad,” Oranje said.

Her mother, Gladys Makakavhule, commended her last-born daughter’s work ethic and said she had always loved education.

“It’s not really surprising that she has studied up to PhD level,” the proud mother said.

Her father, Moses Makakavhule said she had always been smart, from when she was in primary school, and they had watched as she continued to excel through her academic life, right through university.

Pretoria News