Ivory Park resident is awarded a scholarship all the way in China
MIDRAND – A young man from Ivory Park beats the odds of poverty and receives a scholarship to study abroad.
When Sibusiso Bakana from Ivory Park went to school without a lunchbox or pocket money, he never imagined that he would one day be awarded a presidential scholarship to study at Jiangsu University in China.
Bakana (29) received a bursary from Johannesburg City Power in 2006 to study towards a national diploma in electrical engineering at the University of Johannesburg (UJ).
In 2013 he graduated with a B.Tech in electrical engineering. He did not stop his academical journey and further graduated for his Magister Technologiae (Information Technology) in electrical engineering in 2016.
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He is currently admitted at Jiangsu University in China to commence his PhD in pattern recognition and intelligent systems in September 2017.
“Today I have received a letter from overseas. Well, that is fulfilling on its own. From the background I am from and being the first in my area to receive such, it then indicates how far we can go as a community,” he said.
Bakana was raised by his single mother with his four other siblings after his father passed away when he was six years old. He remembered how he went to PS Tsosane Primary School and Jiyane Secondary School without a lunchbox. His empty stomach, however, made him develop a hunger to succeed in life and he became the top achiever at the high school for physical science, mathematics and geography, which earned him a bursary to further his studies at tertiary level.
“Most of us here are facing daily triple challenges which are poverty, unemployment and inequality. I was never immune to those challenges but I had to maintain the dream of taking my family out of that situation,” he added.
Bakana is not only academically wise, he also participated in student politics and became a representative council member at UJ from 2008 to 2010. He also served as an ANC branch executive committee member for Ward 78 and a former ANC Youth League chairperson for two terms.
He founded Green Lifestyle with his mates, a non profit organisation that focuses on sustainable development. “When I return from China, I want to develop the idea of a Greater Ivory Park Bank and then establish a few, if possible, mobile universities, so my community can also grow.”
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