Years of immense pain and strife dissipated into insignificance, at least for a moment, as an orphaned WSU graduate, ravaged by abandonment issues, ascended the graduation stage recently to attain her diploma in journalism.
It was a day of inexplicable joy for now advanced diploma student, Sandla Chuleza, who was abandoned by her father at the age of 12, before being orphaned a year later in 2005, due to the unfortunate death of her mother. Even darker times had previously visited the family as Chuleza had lost two of her sisters in 1999 and 2001 respectively, before she would much later lose her brother in 2021, due to a car accident.
“To this day I feel great animosity towards my father, even beyond the grave, because of what he did to my family – leaving my mother and sisters while going off to fend for himself and leaving us to struggle in poverty.
“My mother used to tout for passengers to board buses from Mount Ayliff to Durban, just so we could put food on the table,” she said.
Following the death of their mother, Chuleza moved in with her aunt and uncle who raised her for almost nine years, as her brother went on to acquire work as a policeman in 2011.
After passing her matric in 2011, Chuleza suffered through a five-year hiatus from education, due to lack of funding and, as a result, dabbled in ventures of very little consequence – doing odd jobs as a bartender in Durban in 2014 to a six-month basic computer course in mid-2015.
“My life was stuck, and I felt like I was going nowhere, and I just really wanted to give up. It was only when I moved back to the family home in late 2015 with my brother that things would start to look up.”
“Looking at my family history, I knew I wanted to be different. I trusted that education could be my ticket to a better life. I was born poor, but I told myself that I’d not die poor,” she said.
It was in 2016 when a ray of sunshine penetrated the darkness that had befallen Chuleza’s existence, as she was accepted into WSU’s versatile broadcasting programme – a springboard from which she would catapult herself to enrolling for her preferred programme, journalism.
She heaped praise upon WSU for being a source through which she could open and access the doors of learning.
Speaking moments after being capped by the vice-chancellor at the Buffalo City Campus graduation ceremony, she described the moment as “one of release”.
“Graduating felt like I was breaking a generational curse of bad luck and misfortune, a curse that almost saw me fade into obscurity and nothingness. It exhibited a willingness to fight against all the odds and a determination to not let my past define my future,” said Chuleza.
