CURRENT

5. CERTIFICATES AND DEGREES CAN KILL INITIATIVES:

Degrees and certificates can close up your minds to ideas while initiatives open it up.
If you are not careful, your degrees and certificates can close up your mind.
The purpose of education is to keep your mind perpetually opened towards limitless possibilities! Fred Smith saw an opportunity for overnight delivery of anything anywhere in the USA, and ultra- fast delivery anywhere in the world, FedEx was born.
It will be interesting to know that Fred Smith got a grade “C” in a Yale economics class for an idea that the professor belittled as unworkable.
This company became the first American business to make over ten billion dollars annual profit.
Beginning with just 186 packages delivered the first night, FedEx now delivers in over two hundred countries using over 6,030 aircraft, 46,000 vehicles and 141,000 employees.

My candid advice to graduates and students in institutions is to think wide, deep and outside the box.
Take volunteer jobs, and don’t be afraid to navigate fields that are different from your field of learning.
Your future career will require you to pull information from many different fields to come up with creative solutions to future problems.
Start by reading as much as you can about anything and everything that interests you. Once you get to college, consider double majoring or minoring in completely different fields. Trust me, it’ll pay off in the long run.
Don’t limit yourself to the classroom.
Do something practical.
Take a leadership position.
Start a business and fail; that’s a better entrepreneurship.
Contest an election and lose.
It will teach you something political science will not teach you.
Attend a seminar. Read books outside the scope of your course.
Think less of becoming an excellent student but think more of becoming an excellent person. Don’t make the classroom your world, but make the world your classroom.
Step forward and try something extra. Invest in something you believe!

17 August 2022

When I Grow up – Darius Tabane (Author) -Book Launch

12 July 2021

Discovering your gift and unleashing to impact humanity in the world – Joel Sekoala

8 July 2023

What your Looking for is Also looking for You – Joel Sekoala

16 June 2023

Discovering your purpose – Joel Sekoala

16 June 2023

We are not ashamed of being African – Joel Sekoala

https://www.facebook.com/mpho.makhado.777/videos/3902663086421683/?mibextid=Nif5oz

9 March 2022

ETV Interview – Joel Sekoala

https://fb.watch/lFn_mIaoB4/?mibextid=Nif5oz

16 June 2023

Leadership is not about power but empowerment – Joel Sekoala

  1 MARCH 2022

Robbie Malinga Jnr launch The Boy Child Initiative in honour of his late father

The life of purpose
Keynote address delivered by Joel Sekoala to Ekurhuleni West College, at the Graduation Ceremony held at Transnet Hall, Esselen Park, Kempton Park, 20th May 2016, 10h00

This is your day. You must be very proud of yourselves. This special day is the result of your toil and selfless sacrifice, total dedication and investment to a better future not only for your family but South Africa.
Sons and daughters of Mother Africa!

I would like to thank the Chairperson of the Council and the Principal and CEO for recognising home-grown contribution towards the attainment of our academic excellence. The honour and recognition is a significant part of the system with a supreme purpose to inspire good citizens to great work, appreciate and honour one’s body of knowledge that has been accumulated over the years. I am truly humbled

.It is therefore a privilege and honour for me to stand here and address this prestigious and momentous occasion, the annual graduation and awards Ceremony. I sincerely hope that this piece of history that is made today may enable all students graduating today to join the legion of great minds affectionately known as intellectuals, rounded practitioners and professionals of high order and equal to taste.

I admire greatly the work of higher learning institutions in their mission to quench intellectual thirst.
Higher learning institutions have a mammoth task to teach relevant skills and produce graduates that are relevant and ready for the world of work. In the end it is an extended duty of the institutions of higher learning to make society work.
In the end it is an extended duty of the institutions of higher learning to make society work.

It is for a reason that these institutions are custodians of intellectual human capital development. As a consequence of this assertion allow me to share my thoughts on the role of education in development of our country, South Africa.

Programme Director, I want to move from the premise that begin to say education could serve as vital instrument to restore the dignity of South African Society after the decades of oppression and degradation of our poor people by those who had no moral authority to rule, the apartheid system.

The emancipation and democratisation of South Africa from the shuttles of oppression has necessitated a change in the education systems of our country, the three greatest threads of our country, high Unemployment, Excessive Inequalities and Sever Poverty continue to pose a huge obstacle and stress in the progress and overall development in our country. Great strides have been taken by our Department of Education and our government to redress the inequalities that existed within the education fraternity promote non-racial, non –sexism and inclusive education for all.

It is through acquiring relevant and appropriate Education that we can overcome short falls we are encountering as nation and emerge victorious in our life time.

I plead with the students to continue to do what is reasonably necessary to equip themselves beyond graduation through your greatest endeavours to advance a great cause in our nation building. There is a greatest need for our government to continue to create an environment in which all people from all walks of life to understand and appreciate that Education is a Right not a privilege as clearly defined in the bill of rights in our progressive constitution.

The Country that does not invest in its human capital is the country that its future will demise. This will be achieved by ensuring sufficient funding of tertiary students across all Universities and FET TVET Colleges particularly to the students who academically deserve and are financially constrained.

Our government has contributed greatly through tertiary funding since the dawn of our democratic dispensation in 1994 and I can bear testimony as I’m purely the beneficiary of NEFSAS (formerly known as TEFSA). As a child of single parent who is domestic worker, the dream of studying was realised at the institution of my alma mater, University of the Witwatersrand. In an age where parenthood and family ties are being challenged as perhaps never before, I feel blessed to know strong fathers and noble mothers who by day and night do their best to provide sustenance and nurturance for their children.

Today marks such a quest from loving parents and obedient children of all mothers and fathers, you are commended Knowledge
There are two kinds of knowledge; one is general and the other is specialized. General knowledge, no matter how great in quantity or variety it may be, is but of little use in the development of others and above all accumulation of money or resources.

The faculties of great universities possess, in aggregate, practically every form of general knowledge known to civilization. Most of the professors have but little or no money or resources. They specialize on teaching knowledge but they do not specialize on the organization or the use of knowledge.

I want you to know, I want you to understand that knowledge will not attract wealth, unless it is organized and intelligently directed through practical plans of action to definite end of accumulation of wealth.

Lack of understanding of this has been the source of confusion to millions of people who falsely believe that “KNOWLEDGE IS POWER”. There is nothing of the sort! Knowledge is only potential power. It is only power when it is organized to definite plans of action and directed to definite end.

This missing link in all systems of education known to civilization today may be found in the failure of educational institutions to teach their students how to organize and use knowledge after they acquire it. It will take me the whole year teaching you how to do exactly that.

My endeavour now is to make you aware that as graduates, with the theoretical knowledge that you have acquired and now possess from this tertiary institution, you only possess potential power. Go out there and apply what you have learned so far and make those who contributed to your studies, proud.

I want to emphasize though, that you have not finished schooling. This is but the first step in the accumulation of your knowledge. Remember that, the person who stops studying merely because he has finished school is forever doomed to mediocrity, no matter what may be his or her calling. The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.

How to start after acquiring KNOWLEDGE
I further more want you to know that this idea of starting at the bottom and working your way up may appear to be sound, but the major objection to it is that too many of those who start at the bottom, never manage to lift their heads high to be seen by the opportunity, so they remain at the bottom.

It should be remembered also that the outlook from the bottom is not so bright or encouraging. It has the tendency to kill off ambition. We call it “getting into a rut”, which means we accept our fate because we form the habit of daily routine; a habit that finally become so strong we cease to throw it off. And that is another reason it pays to start one or two steps above the bottom. By so doing, one forms the habit of looking around, of observing how others get ahead, of seeing the opportunity, and of embracing it without hesitation.

The choices we make
I am convinced that success is guided by the choices we make. It is the decisions we make in life that makes who we are. There are three choices that we make in our everyday life.

First, the choice to act; Will we be as driftwood that passively floats with the tides and currents of the day or will we instead take proactive responsibility for determining our actions and destinations. People say they have lofty dreams and goals but then they turn the responsibility for their skills development over to their employers.

Second, the choice of purpose, each one of us wants to be of value; wants to know that our lives matters. We do not want to just be busy; we want to be busy pursuing worthwhile purposes. As a graduate, I know that it is your aspiration to become a leader tomorrow at you respective work posts. I hope and trust that my being here at the podium and addressing you will arouse within you a greater passion of being a transition person.

A transition person is one who breaks the flow of bad; the negative traditions or harmful practices that get passed from generation to generation, or from situation to situation, whether in a family, a work place, a community or wherever it may be. Transition persons transcend their own needs and tap into the deepest, most noble impulses of human nature. In times of darkness, they are lights not judges; models not critics. In periods of discords, they are change catalysts, not victims; healers not carriers. Today’s world needs more transition persons. Trust yourself to become one of the best and watch your influence grow. You have already proven to be the best.

Students of Secondary School, is not the same students of EWC in 2016. Students of EWC are wholly wired graduates with much expected of them in the field of various disciple. They are expected to see opportunities which are invisible to others and audible to the deafs. They are expected to foster and manage change where necessary. They are expected to be a beacon of hope to the distraught; a visionary who create a vision, articulate that vision, passionately the visions and relentlessly driving the vision to completion.

We all wish that life was not so difficult, but sometime life’s struggles are necessary in order to make us stronger. When we see people having difficulty in life, especially our children, we often want to do things for them in order help, but sometimes we need to let them go through their own struggles, so the will learn something and become stronger.

More than anything God let us go through struggles to make us stronger, because he loves us. Count it all joy, ladies and gentlemen, when we trail of various kinds, for you know that the testing of faith produce steadfastness. And Steadfastness has its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

You must look at the struggles as a way to grow. You must also want to see them as a way that God is going to redeem them and bring glory to himselfThe wisest, most loving, well rounded people have known misery, know defeat, know the heartbreak of losing something or someone they loved, and found their way out of depth of their own despair.

These people have experienced many ups and down and have gained an appreciation, sensitivity, and understanding of life that fills with compulsion, understanding and develop slowly over the course of time.
We all have come across thousands of these incredible people in our lives, through various form of coaching. In many cases they come to use feeling stuck or lost.
Unaware of their own brilliance, blind to the fact that the struggle have strengthened them and gives and upper hand in this crazy world. Truth be told, when hard times hit and the challenges you face are great, you either let your situation defines you or strengthen you. The choice is yours to make.

As a graduate, you have absorbed knowledge from someone else at all your learning institutions but now are the time to find your own voice so that others can emulate you.
Fields that I know that leadership has declined

Your attention is called to a few of the fields in which there has been a decline of leadership and which the new type of leader may find an abundance of opportunity.

First, in the field of politics there is a most insistent demand for new leaders; a demand which indicates nothing less than an emergency. The majority of our politicians have seemingly become high-grade, legalized racketeers.

They have ignored the needs of the people on service delivery initiatives. Our roads are full of potholes, our health facility centers have no medicines, our schools lack textbooks, our police personnel have no relevant equipment to use, and so it goes.
In this context it is also vitally important that we fight and defeat the scourge of corruption. We cannot speak of African renewal and allow the situation to persist that some among us abuse their positions of authority and power to steal from the masses of our people. So long as we allow this to continue, so long will the victory over poverty and underdevelopment elude us.

As graduate preparing to be leaders, you have to inculcate a different ethos among the public servants informed by the principle expressed in our country as the People First. I know that this is easier said than done. But critically important in this regard is the fact that the political leadership itself must lead by example
It is perfectly clear that our country is not entirely bereft of the human and material resources we need to address the challenge of poverty and underdevelopment. Accordingly it cannot be true that there is nothing we can do to promote our own development.

Rather than wait for the helping hand of another, we have to draw on our capacities for self-reliance; self-reliance in the design of our development programs, self-reliance in their implementation, self-reliance in ensuring that they benefit the poor.
This by no means implies that we repudiate mutually beneficial partnerships with others. What it means is that we should not, even mentally, turn ourselves into slavish dependents of foreign aid.

Second, the banking industry is undergoing a reform. The leaders in this field have almost entirely lost the confidence of the public.
Already the bankers have sensed the need of reform, which is why the former governor of the reserve bank, has once seriously warned us volatility of macroeconomics variables. The topic revolved around the overcharging of the public in a manner that is not consistent with the landing rate (RIPO RATE) offered by the central or reserve bank to the banking institutions

Third, Business calls for new leaders, the old type of leaders thought and moved in terms of dividends instead of thinking and moving in terms of human resource.
The future leader in the industry, to endure, must regard himself or herself as a quasi – public official whose duty is to manage his or her trust in such a way that it will work no hardship on any individual or group of individuals for that matter.

Exploitation of workers is a thing of the past. If you aspire to leadership in the field of business, labor, and industry please remember this notion.
Industrial Development Corporation has substantially increased its lending target. We need business minded people to seize this opportunity and start to drive business in the right direction.

A direction that will generate jobs, reduce poverty and increase our overall GDP. We need leaders from you, who would have proved these rating agencies like Moody wrong when alleging that,” After a prolonged economic boom, South Africa faces a sharp cyclical downturn”.
We need visionaries who are informed not only by academic presentation of data but by the wisdom that life has to be lived from glory to glory not by “boom” on the one hand and “downturn” on the other.
Fourth, the religious leader of today is advised to give more attention to the temporal needs of his / her followers in the solution of their economic or personal problems of the present and less attention to the dead past and the yet unborn future.

He or she is duty-bound to address the here and now to give his or her followers hope for the future and inspire them to have the will to live.
Fifth, in the profession of Law, medicine and education a new brand of leadership have become a necessity. In these professions, ethics and integrity are the order of everyday living. My emphasis is in the field of education where new brand of leaders must find ways and means of teaching their students how to apply knowledge they receive in schools. They must deal more with practice and less with theory.

Sixth, journalism; newspapers of today, to be successful, must be divorced from special privilege. They must cease to be organs of propaganda for the interest which patronize their favorite personnel in politics, business, sport and civil formations.
Graduates, I hope that’s something you keep in mind as you walk across the stage today — that gratification that comes with helping someone find their path; for making yourself useful not just to yourself, but to others. For you haven’t just earned new opportunities with this degree and Diploma; you’ve also earned responsibilities along with it.

These people have experienced many ups and down and have gained an appreciation, sensitivity, and understanding of life that fills with compulsion, understanding and develop slowly over the course of time.
I want to conclude with an expression of both gratitude and respect for those who made this graduation ceremony possible, Parents of our graduates for their tenacity in their children through the education process in preparing them for the nation. I commend your effort and assure you that the hand of God is upon you.

To Students and those you have sort to be part of this ceremony from their respective study disciplines, for your making sure that you complete your studies and make us proud.
In an era when schools and youth are bombarded with negativism and sensitive social dilemmas, I feel blessed to be familiar with dedicated teachers and talented youths who are rich in character and committed to make a difference; each in their own unique way.

You have earned the chance to walk the road to freedom and to make of your lives what you will; to write that next great chapter in our South African story. And your path will not always be easy, and your way forward will not always be clear. But you have worked hard for this moment. And if you hold fast to that faith in yourself and in your country and in our God, then the greatest moments of your journey are the ones that still lie ahead
In deed I am blessed to receive anointing and to be amongst the best audience from all parts of South Africa who are genuinely good and who do so much to contribute to the world around you. You inspire me.
Congratulations to all those graduating today. I wish you well now and into the future. In 22 years we have told a good story. Together with you going forward if we choose challenging, constructive, credible and courageous options leading us to the high road, we would be able to tell not only a better story but the best story yet.

Despite the challenges that we face in our country of Unemployment, poverty and inequalities, I want remind all of us not to forget that South Africa in its entire history has never enjoyed such confluences of encouraging possibilities.
Let us continue to work together, with one collective heart beat, to ensure we built a strong resourced based South Africa.

Let us continue to do the things that will ensure that the mountains and the hills of our country break fourth into singing before its people, the tress of the field shall clap hands to applause the people season of Joy.
The teachings of Buddha, reminds us, that it is an everlasting and unchanging rule of this world that everything changes as a results of series of events and conditions and everything disappears by the same rule, ladies of gentlemen everything changes nothing ever remains the same.
Indeed successful people are no the most intellectual or even the smartest, rather the once who are most compatible to change. Embrace Change for Greater Growth.
Whoever you are, whenever you are, be a part of a rhythm of the nation.
KE A LEBOGA

Profile of Mr Joel Sekoala

Joel Sekoala was born and raised at Maroteng, a village outside of Mokopane in Limpopo. He was amongst the first in his village to gain entrance at Wits University in the 90’s.
He did his tertiary education at the University of the Witwatersrand, and graduated with Bachelor of Commerce in Finance and Economics. Also, he completed a programme in Leadership and Prodigee Assets Management with the University of Cape Town.

He was recruited straight from Wits University by directors at M-IT. He went on to manage majority percentage of this company.

He is a proponent of Black Economic Empowerment. He has been actively involved in promoting the empowerment of local professionals and companies. He design a model which include three ICT companies and also led a team that successful closed an ICT deal worth over R1.7 Billion with the South African Revenue Services in which over 50 SMME’s around the country benefited. He is an Entrepreneurial Management Strategist having worked with the market leaders in a variety of industries.

His experiences and skills cover Strategic General Management, Channel Management, Distribution, Marketing, Communications, , and Key Accounts Management, consulting, professional services and Sales / Business Development at both Senior Management and Executive levels.

He has had meaningful interactions with an array of clientele from individuals, governments to Blue Chip companies. He is unique in his blended experience. Serving companies from various perspectives in the communications industry, network, service providers, ISP, distributors, wholesalers, manufacturers, OEMs, and system integrator.

He also has unique experience in solution and retail selling, in addition distributing to the informal market as well as Corporate. He is the founder and Executive Director of Bavumile ICT Solutions and Mthombo IT Services. Also, he sits on several boards, He was voted top ICT Young Entrepreneur of the year in Africa in 2005 against other Entrepreneurs from 55 African Countries. He is currently doing business development in both corporate and government agencies in South Africa and the rest of the world.

Joel Sekoala currently he is a Leadership strategist (leading mentoring and incubation programs across) ,Leadership consultant, life coach, marriage counselor, world renowned motivational speaker, Talk show host, Program directing of various corporate and public events and Kingdom Ambassador advocating ‘Life of Purpose’ through discovering of human Gifts and Talents to all humanity across the surface of the earth while still alive.