In a province with SA’s highest unemployment rate, Nelson Mandela University is confronting an uncomfortable question: what should a university degree actually prepare a young person for?
That challenge was laid bare at the university’s first entrepreneurship lecture in Gqeberha last week, where businessman Sandile Zungu told graduates that a degree proved they had completed their studies — but did not entitle them to a career.
Zungu, founder and executive chair of Zungu Investments Company, owner of AmaZulu FC and a former president of the Black Business Council, delivered the lecture, titled “Beyond the Degree”, at the university’s north campus on Wednesday.
Presented by the NMU Africa Hub, the university hopes to make it an annual event as part of its drive to build an entrepreneurial culture across the institution.
The urgency lies in the numbers. Stats SA put official unemployment at 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026, rising to 47.4% among people aged 15 to 34, and even graduates faced a rate of 12.4%.
The Eastern Cape, which has four universities, recorded the highest provincial rate at 47.5%.
This means that for universities sending graduates into that market, the question of what a degree is for can no longer wait.
“Graduation certifies that you have completed a programme of study.
“It does not certify that society owes you a career,” Zungu said.
“If your future depends entirely upon someone creating a vacancy for you, then someone else holds extraordinary power over your future.”
Opening the lecture, deputy vice-chancellor for people and operations Luthando Jack said the university had “placed leadership right at the centre of driving this work”.
Its four deputy vice-chancellors co-ordinate entrepreneurship across the institution and report to council every quarter, working alongside the NMU Africa Hub, which supports student and community entrepreneurs.
Jack described a young country and continent living with unemployment, poverty and inequality as a “paradox”.
“We are a rich continent that is at the same time poor,” he said, adding that the university wanted to send into society a generation of graduates able to reverse that.
Zungu did not offer entrepreneurship as a cure-all, however, warning that telling millions of unemployed young people simply to start businesses could become “a sophisticated way of blaming them for structural economic failure”.
The more useful shift was from job seeker to problem solver, and it required holding two ideas at once.
“The system must change, and I must act.”
Speaking four days after the 49th anniversary of Steve Biko’s death, Zungu put universities on the spot too, asking whether entrepreneurship should “remain an elective module somewhere in a business school” or whether entrepreneurial thinking should “become part of the intellectual architecture of higher education”.
It was a question deputy vice-chancellor for learning and teaching Prof Muki Moeng took up during the question session later in the evening, saying Zungu was “speaking into our humanising pedagogy”, which recognises that structures must change but holds that individuals need the agency to change the status quo.
“Are we looking at an elective, Mr Jack, or are we looking at an entrepreneurial mindset?” she asked.
Respondent Dr Ongama Mtimka, a political analyst and senior lecturer at NMU, admitted he had come “prepared for a businessman that’s going to speak like a businessman” and had not expected “deep political economic philosophy”.
He argued that SA produced plenty of innovation but choked its route to market through highly concentrated supply chains, and pointed to the motor industry which he said still had no domestically owned vehicle manufacturer after more than 100 years.
“It’s an indictment on us. Why? Because now we are vulnerable to decisions made in Germany and elsewhere, precisely because we have not been good stewards,” Mtimka said.
Asked during the question session after his address whether he had ever failed, Zungu said his losses as an entrepreneur ran to hundreds of millions of rand.
“If you really are serious about this journey, you have to be prepared to embrace failure as much as you are prepared to celebrate success,” he said.
Zungu said owning AmaZulu FC kept that lesson in front of him, because “sometimes I throw myself into ventures, knowing there’s an outcome which is either a win or a lose”.
Closing the evening, director of research support and management Dr Palesa Mothapo turned the challenge back on universities.
“We watch you go across the stage, and we know that tomorrow you’re going to go home with your certificate, and nothing is going to happen, and that is the sad reality we face today,” she said.
Listing the province’s ocean, agriculture, ports and automotive industry, she asked: “How is it possible that there can be such high unemployment?
“We need to be challenged even more as universities to think differently about the opportunities we create for our graduates.”
Mothapo left students with a short instruction: “Think beyond your degree. Use that degree as a key.”
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