The pleasing news of Orlando Pirates legend Bernard “Shoes” Lushozi, who obtained his PhD from the University of Pretoria last year, is like the swirling mists from the icy Atlantic Ocean in summer, that snake across the Namib sand dunes, bringing welcome droplets of moisture to the sun-baked desert.

Rhythmic ripples of the African rivers – the Nile and the Congo – mimic the tale of your superlative achievement, albeit blind. Even the vast fields of sunflowers respectfully bow their heads before you.

Well done, the heroic son of our continent. Well done, the mercurial footballer and gifted academic. Your massive academic achievement has thrown us into a trance. Your great achievement has put smiles on our faces, allowing us to fall deep into thought.

You are an inspiration to the nation. You are an exemplar to humanity. You are like a fountain on a mountain. You are like a pinnacle of grey rock that flanks a barren beach in Zanzibar.

You have proven that your mind is like a giant knife of lightning that slices through the sky – blinding, electric and lethal. Your war against ignorance is like that of the vicious, merciless and unstoppable sea throwing its waves angrily against the beach sand.

Through your efforts, ignorance is melting away in red rivulets. As you teach our children, may your voice resemble the roar of the ocean waves reaching a crescendo. Your doctoral achievement is a shinning monument dispelling the myth that “soccer and academia do not mix”.

Yours is a determination against all odds. And not even blindness could discourage you. What an unbroken spirit! Please continue to march on, for our earth still stretches blankly ahead, saturated with magical academic opportunities.

It was the eminent intellectual, Thomas Carlyle, who advised that “no great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men”.

Abe Mokoena, Polokwane