Applications have opened for Henley Business School Africa’s Sol Plaatje Scholarship.
It recognises two scholars each year, paying all the costs involved in the Post Graduate Diploma in Management Practice or Henley’s highly acclaimed international Master of Business Administration programme, depending on the level of their previous academic qualifications.
The inaugural winners of the scholarship were Daily Maverick investigative journalist Pauli van Wyk and the deputy editor of the Sowetan, Thabiso Thakali. Both are busy with their MBA degrees. Thakali is a double winner, having first completed his PG Dip before making history by winning the scholarship a second time to allow him to pursue his MBA.
Other Plaatje scholars include freelance digital media journalist Adam Oxford; Carte Blanche journalist Macfarlane Moleli; SABC head of digital content Nontobeko Magala and freelance journalist Andries Sibanyoni.
“When we established this scholarship, we did so with two aims in mind,” said Henley Africa dean and director, Professor Jon Foster-Pedley. “Firstly, we wanted to honour an icon of South African journalism, the trailblazing journalist, editor and all-round polymath Solomon Tshekiso Plaatje.
“Our second aim was to make the best contribution we could to the development and sustainability of the South African media, which had played a critical role in the uncovering of the state capture saga. The work of a handful of determined and courageous journalists, supported by their editors and publishers set in progress a chain of events that continues to reverberate today, bolstered by even more revelations of both the roots of this catastrophe and the ever-increasing extent of its toxic bloom.”
Media, said Foster-Pedley, was a vital ingredient for any healthy and progressive society.
“It was the great US playwright Arthur Miller who famously said a good newspaper is a nation talking to itself. This has become even more crucial in a world increasingly polarised by populism, muzzling a diversity of voices through a pandemic of propaganda, cancel culture and fake news.”
The best way to address this, he said, was to help develop a flourishing, diverse and economically viable media ecosystem able to withstand external pressures. The reality though was that the media space, in South Africa especially, was one of plummeting revenues, audience disengagement and massive disruption.
“Plaatje experienced exactly this in his lifetime. He was a pioneer, opening newspapers and then having to see them close because they were not financially viable in the markets in which he was trying to operate. He never gave up though and we are much the richer today for his efforts, more than 90 years after his death.
“The scholarships are an opportunity for media professionals and leaders to take some time out of their hectic lives and open their minds to the possibilities of what might be. They will meet with a wide range of other students most in fields that are totally foreign to journalists, but all these students will be there for one overarching reason: to learn the tools to become the builders of businesses that will build Africa, or in their case, media businesses,” said Foster-Pedley.
- If you are a leading contributor in the media’s voice for truth and would like to apply to be considered for the Henley Africa Sol Plaatje scholarship, please contact our admissions team on scholarships@Henleysa.ac.za before 28 February 2023.
Henley Business School Africa has campuses in Europe, Asia and Africa and is the only business school in Africa to hold quadruple international accreditation. It is part of the University of Reading UK, originally an extension college of Oxford University, renowned for its leadership in climate science, finance, property management and executive education, and one of the most international universities in Britain.
