Members of parliament Dr Malusi Gigaba and Dr Mmusi Maimane are the newest additions to the UJ family  following their graduation on 21 July 2025.

The pair who graduated with hundreds of other students during the College of Business and Economics graduation ceremony completed their doctoral studies in Public Management and Governance.

They are among the 2,163 graduates who will walk across the stage as they receive their academic qualifications. The graduation ceremonies, taking place from 16 to 31 July at the Auckland Park Kingsway (APK) campus, mark more than just the end of an academic chapter for the students who have completed their qualifications. It also signals the beginning of a future shaped by knowledge, integrity, and purpose.

Among the graduating cohort are 431 diploma and certificate holders, 425 undergraduate degree recipients, 115 Honours graduates, 924 Masters graduates and 194 doctoral candidates. Their graduation highlights the transformative power of lifelong learning, even for those already in the public spotlight.

Speaking during an interview on UJTV, Dr Maimane who is the chairperson of the Standing Committee on Appropriations, a parliamentary committee that deals with spending and revenue shared that the journey to his PhD was filled with hard work and sacrifices.

“I don’t come from a family of academics in that sense. I started my academic journey here at Raucall (now the UJ Academy) and then to complete the journey here at UJ, is an incredible achievement. For me, that sense of accomplishment, not only for my own family, is huge. My parents sacrificed a lot. You don’t get a PhD because you became [famous]. You get one, because someone invested in you. Someone invested in my early childhood development, someone invested in my high school. My parents sacrificed a lot to get me the right foundation. Otherwise, there’d be no way I’d be sitting here today with a PhD,” he said.

He added that he is looking forward to utilizing his experience and knowledge gained from his studies: “In our local politics we are now at a stage where we’ve moved from freedom (liberation politics) now we must talk about governance. How do we govern in such a way that we are steeped in our thinking? Where we are able to contribute meaningfully? I’d be a member of parliament with or without a PhD. But having a PhD just helps you think better. It helps you interrogate issues better, contribute better,” he said.

Dr Maimane’s PhD was an autoethnographic study, looking at his own experiences as a leader in Local Government. The study focused on local governance challenges between 2014 and 2019 and offers an evaluation of the successes and failures of urban governance in four metropolitan municipalities in South Africa (Cape Town, Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane and Johannesburg).

For Dr Gigaba, who serves as parliament’s co-chairperson of the Joint Standing Committee on Defense and was previously Home Affairs and Finance Minister in South Africa, said in his UJTV interview that the journey to PhD has been exciting.

“I am in awe of the journey undertaken, and happy that it has come to an end,” he said light heartedly.

“It’s an incredible discipline, something I would recommend to everybody. I discovered myself in moments when I learned to be comfortable in the discomfort of uncertainty. This is a journey that I started for my parents but concluded it for my children. The people who instilled the idea in me, of education, were my parents.”

Dr Gigaba said it made sense to him to purse his doctoral studies in Public Management and Governance because it’s an area he was already working in: “Having been involved in public service, public management and governance, it became important to me to develop deeper insights into what it was all about. Particularly during the time, I was Minister of [the Department] of Public Enterprises. I got very interested in several challenges I was seeing, and how we could resolve them. It was clear that from what I knew, and the existing knowledge and practices, it would be difficult to solve those problems. That’s when I developed an interest in learning more about governance. I read more on the topic, and developed a research interest in the area,” Dr Gigaba said.

He shared that after becoming less active in the public service in 2022, it presented the perfect opportunity for him to begin his PhD. He felt that at this point, he was ready to begin the journey towards contributing meaningfully towards developing new practices, information and knowledge in Public management and governance.

Dr Gigaba’s thesis looked at the role of South Africa’s State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), particularly Eskom and Transnet, in achieving commercial and developmental objectives. It evaluated the influence of international experiences on SOE effectiveness, assessed the governing policy framework, and identified factors hindering progress.

Said Professor Letlhokwa Mpedi, UJ Vice-Chancellor and Principal: “As each graduate crosses the stage, they carry with them the weight and worth of a qualification earned at one of Africa’s most forward-thinking institutions. Their future begins here, and it holds the promise of innovation, progress, and lasting change.”

Each qualification earned represents years of dedication, intellectual growth, and perseverance. For doctoral candidates, it reflects years of research that contribute to building knowledge economies, from the sciences and humanities to public governance and renewable energy. These are the minds that will shape Africa’s future.

Dr Gigaba and Dr Maimane’s academic achievements highlight UJ’s role in offering programmes geared towards cultivating strategic leadership. Their presence on stage this Winter will serve as a reminder that the journey of education never ends.

Watch highlights of their graduation ceremony here: