Campus academic presents Sol Plaatje memorial lecture

Campus academic, Dr Kagiso Seleka, presented a memorial lecture on 30 November 2015 at the Sol Plaatje Secondary School in honour and to celebrate the legacy of Sol Plaatje. This lecture was organised by the North West Department of Culture, Arts and Traditional Affairs in partnership with Sol Plaatje Secondary school and was hosted alongside the Literacy Festival.

In his tribute, Seleka had this to say about Plaatje: "By the time of his death at 55, Plaatje had lived a life that will be celebrated for a life time - celebrated not because its bearer was extraordinary, but because he made choices and sacrifices common to those who cannot sacrifice their quest to continuously remain the kind that is called human or the relentless pursuit to be one (human being).

"He rejected the lure to abdicate the responsibility to circumstances that coveted and envied his destiny. His was a life that was lived at the junction where the will meets the word. A man emancipated by the desire to know and let others know what he knows; a mind cultivated by its bearer as it communes with other minds distant in time and place. That is the power of reading, a Solplaatjian remedy our nation has yet to turn into its culture".

Seleka attained a Doctorate of Philosophy in English Literature at the North-West University Mafikeng Campus. Among his achievements were a distinction in African Literal debates in his first master's and 11 distinctions out of 12 courses he took with the University of Pennsylvania. He also received an award as the second-best speaker at the SAALA/SALT joint conference of 2010 in a presentation he titled "South African wedding songs, a stranglehold on women's freedom".