For Dr Luleka Mkuzo, a graduation ceremony in Durban when she was 13 became the moment that changed how she imagined her future. Growing up in a rural community in the Eastern Cape, Mkuzo was exposed to few possibilities beyond what she could see around her.
At the ceremony, she saw a PhD graduate in a red gown being celebrated. The sight made her curious about education and the opportunities it could open. Although obtaining a PhD seemed far removed from her rural, poor upbringing, the experience planted a seed that would shape her journey.
After relocating to the city, Mkuzo saw the inequality between rural and urban communities more clearly. Her experience of moving between these worlds eventually led her to resign from 11 years of full-time employment in Johannesburg and return to rural communities.
The decision was also personal. Mkuzo knew what it meant to be an insecure rural girl in a classroom or working environment someone with ideas who was too afraid to speak because she feared she might not sound right. In such spaces, she says, sounding right can become more important than the idea. Her return to rural communities was driven by a desire to ignite an initiative that could develop into sustainable, long-term change.
Community engagements became the starting point for what would become the mobile rural technology park, which provides technology training on a mobile basis to rural schools, teachers and community members.
As director of Urglobal, Mkuzo has continued to build the initiative around her belief in the Ubuntu philosophy. In 2026, the initiative marks its 10th year.
Over that period, she has come to understand that people do not come only for digital skills.
They also come for healing.
In the classrooms created through the initiative, Ubuntu has become a way of restoring dignity.
For Mkuzo, education should not be a space of humiliation or degradation.
It should be a place of healing, restoration, reaffirmation and liberation - an idea rooted in the experience that first inspired her at 13 and continues to shape her work in rural communities.