“At VUT’s Spring Graduation 2025, business leader Ms Matsietsi Mekoa urged graduates to embrace life’s inflexion points with resilience, integrity, and vision.”
19 September 2025 | Story By: Nontobeko Moimane | Picture: Peter Masela
3 minutes read time.
The Vaal University of Technology (VUT) celebrated its Faculty of Management Sciences Spring Graduation Ceremony in the Desmond Tutu Great Hall on 15 September 2025, where graduates, families and faculty gathered in a spirited atmosphere of pride and achievement.
The highlight of the ceremony was a powerful keynote address by Ms Matsietsi Mekoa, Executive Chairperson of BRIMA Logistics, who challenged the graduates to embrace life’s defining moments, what she called “inflexion points”, with resilience, integrity and vision.
In her speech, Ms Mekoa drew inspiration from the story of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who once faced rejection from a priesthood college because of debt. Yet he went on to become one of South Africa’s most iconic leaders and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. “Life has powerful moments that can change your destiny for the best or the worst. Those moments are inflexion points,” she said.
She urged graduates not to be deterred by setbacks. Sharing her own journey, she recalled moments of failure, including not making the matric distinction list despite being a top student and being overlooked for senior positions in her career. “Failure does not make a man or woman,” she told the graduates. “It is better to fail with your integrity intact than to succeed with a troubled conscience.”
Ms Mekoa also reflected on her entrepreneurial journey with her husband, starting BRIMA Logistics two decades ago with only a single truck and a dream. Today, BRIMA is a nationwide logistics player contributing to the economy and inspiring others to build legacies rooted in ethics. “There is nothing mystical about us. We were once students just like you. What set us apart was combining the theory we learned in school with the truths we gained from life,” she said.
Her core message was clear: integrity must remain the guiding principle in every graduate’s journey. “Integrity is the ability to do good even when nobody is looking. Never compromise it. Bad things happen to good people, but continue doing good anyway,” she stressed, referencing her own testimony at the Zondo Commission where she stood firm against corruption.
Closing her address, Ms Mekoa called on graduates to see their ceremony as an inflexion point of triumph that carries both opportunity and responsibility. “This graduation is not a zero-value ceremony. As Desmond Tutu once said, ‘Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.’ South Africa seeks young leaders like you who will shape its next great inflexion point.”
With ululations, applause and tears of joy, the Faculty of Management Sciences Class of 2025 left the hall reminded that their degrees are not just certificates of achievement but platforms for impact, legacy and service to the nation.