Johannesburg – Dear Matriculants 2020. Unusual. That is a word often used when describing the journey of your matric year.
A year that is normally filled with colourful ceremonies, rituals, traditions and milestones that you have probably been looking forward to your entire school career.
And which no doubt turned out to be quite dierent from how you envisaged it.
President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged this when he wished you well last year just before the examination:
“The class of 2020 has had to endure conditions their predecessors never had to confront. They had to adapt in real time not just to finish the curriculum, but to catch up with the learning hours lost,” he said.
Add to this the stress that uncertainty brings, the trauma of dealing with loved ones getting sick or dying, the isolation from friends and often pressurised domestic circumstances, and you have a year that, instead of cherishing, you probably want to forget as soon as possible.
Most of you were born in 2002.
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It was a comparatively stable time on the national and international historical timelines, with no major wars or significant global turmoil recorded.
Thabo Mbeki was still president. In the United States, George W Bush had taken over the reins from Bill Clinton. Denzel Washington and Halle Berry had just become the first black actors to scoop the Oscar Awards.
On the global health front, HIV/Aids was probably the most pressing concern, with the South African government finally announced an anti-retroviral rollout plan in August 2002.
Fast forward from 2002 to 2020, and the reshuffling of twos and zeros has brought with it unprecedented and dramatic change.
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Most of you probably watched with your families as Ramaphosa gave that first televised address on March 23 2020.
You heard him usher (what was then) unusual words and phrases such as “lockdown”, “social distancing”, and “curfew”.
Words that quickly became part of the everyday lexicon for all of us, and that defined the matric year for all of you.
That year is now behind you.
But the challenges have probably just begun.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) released a special report on the road to economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.
As our future leaders on the political, business, health, educational, agricultural and environmental fronts, you certainly have your work cut out for you.
So, what is it that you will need for these daunting challenges?
Take a look at what the WEF forecasts to be the top 10 skills that will be needed in 2025 for the job market – which will be round about the time many of you will be entering the job market, hopefully with one or two tertiary qualifications under your belt:
(1) analytical thinking and innovation;
(2) active learning and learning strategies;
(3) complex problem-solving;
(4) critical thinking and analysis;
(5) resilience, stress tolerance and exibility;
(6) creativity, originality and initiative;
(7) leadership and social inuence;
(8) reasoning, problem-solving and ideation;
(9) emotional intelligence; and
(10) technology design and programming.
Quite a mouthful, but you could be closer to ticking them off than you may think.
If you think about it, much of what you have experienced during 2020 has actually worked actively towards achieving many of these skills.
You most certainly had to adopt new learning strategies. You were forced to do problem-solving – often all on your own, without teachers and tech-savvy parents to guide you.
And as you had to cope with the stress of a constantly changing environment, you certainly learned to be resilient and exible, learning new ways of dealing with prevailing academic challenges.
And by embracing technology and applying it in new, creative and innovative ways in the learning environment, you have prepared yourself for a future where this will become an almost daily requirement.
A Covid-19 consequence of particular importance for us here in South Africa is how hardship often breeds a sense of unity.
Your hardship has been real. And so are the bonds formed through this shared experience.
Your 2020 experience can in the end be extremely useful and valuable. Because in unusual times, the usual skills, experience and attitude are simply not going to be sufficient.
We need the unusual. And the extraordinary. We need you.
• Petersen is rector and vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State.
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