Khadija Rhoda was a star learner in her Grade 12 class at Marlboro Gardens Combined School in Johannesburg. Her special love was science and she dreamed of pursuing her passion at university. ‘I wanted to be in on any research that had to do with the human body,” she said.
But there was just one problem: no money. Two weeks before university registration began in 2007, Rhoda was at home when the phone rang. It was the University of Witwatersrand informing her she had been accepted into Bale — an initiative targeting women science students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
‘I couldn’t believe it. I was over the moon — it was amazing!” recalls Rhoda. Now she is completing her honours in pharmacology: one of 20 Bale students currently at Wits. Her tuition and residence fees are covered; she also gets a book allowance and monthly stipend.
Bale — a Southern Sotho word meaning ‘transition into womanhood” — aims to boost the number of women in South Africa’s science and engineering sectors. Funded by the United States-based Carnegie Corporation, it is one of three related projects aimed at undergraduate university students and initiated by Wits vice-chancellor Professor Loyiso Nongxa.
A second project — Targeting Talent — started in 2007 and focuses on top-performing grade 10 learners (both boys and girls) in Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga. Over a three-year period, the students spend two weeks at Wits during their winter break, where they experience residential tuition and immersion into varsity life.
Of the 270 original participants, 102 are now studying at Wits. Initial funders were Telkom and the US-based Goldman Sachs Foundation. This year’s cycle is sponsored by BP South Africa and the South African National Roads Agency.
The newest project, Going to University to Succeed, was launched at the beginning of May and focuses on high schools in Orange Farm. Grade 11 learners are teamed up with older ‘buddies”: students who are already studying at Wits.
The aim is to inspire and mentor. ‘We are holding a candle of hope,” says Zena Richards, director of the Wits Student Equity and Talent Management Unit. ‘Lack of resources shouldn’t stop you from living your dreams.
It’s about transforming society in a way that will benefit South Africa in the long run.” Billynda Mokoena, a third-year biochemistry student with the Bale project, used to think university was about freedom and ‘being your own person”.
She says the programme taught her something deeper: ‘The golden rules of university life are prioritising and time management.” For Tshepo Lefenya, a first-year BSc student, majoring in chemistry and geography, being selected for Targeting Talent made him realise that ‘it doesn’t matter what background you come from.
You can be academically successful as long as you apply yourself.” Lefenya is already ‘giving back”. He has tutored mathematics in high school and says he would love to do more.
Richards told the Mail & Guardian that selection processes don’t apply only to prospective students. It’s equally important to choose the right people to teach and run the programmes. ‘I look for people who believe in human capacity, to allow the kids to own their power.”
The second cycle of Targeting Talent begins in June and — for the first time — the new group of grade 10s will include five white students. Richards points out that the group’s visit to Wits will coincide with the excitement of the World Cup kick-off.
But she hopes that the impact of the programme will last long after the final whistle has blown. She is adamant that long-term success will not come from giving people handouts.
‘We must move away from thinking that by giving people things it solves problems. We must look at ways to sustain that, so that communities can grow.”