Thabi Leoka saga: Why do so many high fliers in Africa lie about having PhD’s?

It is unfortunate that Thabi Leoka was asked by the South African Presidency to prove that she has a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics, after she served the Presidency as an advisor to President Cyril Ramaphosa.

This is what the South African Presidency should have done first before hiring her to advise President Cyril Ramaphosa.

A President has access to any information that he or she wants through his intelligence services.

So checking one’s qualifications is the easiest job for any intelligence service, it is a phone call away, or they could have simply send a junior embassy staffer at the South African embassy in London to go to LSE.

It is 26 minutes walking distance, or five minutes driving to go from the SA embassy in London to LSE.

What it means is that Thabi Leoka was not hired on the basis of her real qualifications, but on the basis of what she told them and her reputation without seeing the paperwork.

I have never understood why so many high flying folks in Southern Africa lie about their qualifications when they don’t need to that.

The fact that Thabi Leoka had a Masters degree from Wits and also another one from LSE means that she was capable of doing a PhD if she wanted to, so why lie?

She rose to be a board member of some of the biggest companies in South Africa on the basis of her deliverables, so why lie?

She is not alone in this business of lying about one’s qualifications by people who are actually bright minds, South African politician and anti-apartheid activist Pallo Jordan also lied having a PhD, yet he didn’t have one.

Zimbabwean politician Edison Zvobgo also misrepresented that he had a PhD from Harvard when he didn’t have one.

Then you have people who have legitimate PhDs, but don’t actually talk about them or use the titles when presenting themselves to the public.

Zimbabwean trade lawyer and writer Petina Gappah has had a PhD for more than 25 years and a Masters from Cambridge University, but I have never seen or heard her present herself as Dr Petina Gappah, she is self assured.

The PhD misrepresentation phenomenon is huge in Africa.

We have people who buy PhDs from bogus universities, then in Zimbabwe we have political elites who pay scholars to do the PhD work for them and then present it as theirs, at somewhat reputable universities.

Grace Mugabe did that at the University of Zimbabwe, and many degrees from that university given to political elites are bogus.

Then we have honorary doctorates, my lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa has two or three, but she refuses to be called Dr Beatrice Mtetwa because she says it is honorary and not something she worked for at the university.

Last week I was talking to the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, Mamokgethi Phakeng.

I asked her why she had taken off the “Prof” title from her social media platforms.

She said because she is no longer a professor at a university, so she reverts to her earned titles, these are self assured people who don’t need titles for validation.

Many people fight and ridicule each other over titles instead of looking at what human beings are delivering to society after getting those qualifications.

The most painful thing is that those like Thabi Leoka or Pallo Jordan or Edison Zvobgo who lied about their qualifications, they didn’t actually need to misrepresent their qualifications because they were actually intellectually gifted and sound.

Now when you are Thabi Leoka and you have lied about your qualifications and your work is based on your reputation, how much would you have damaged your future earnings.

How many more have lied about their academic qualifications but haven’t been caught yet by the media?

Misrepresenting academic qualifications has huge implications for credibility and reputation.

There is no need to fabricate qualifications especially when your capabilities and achievements can stand on their own merit and deliver in your chosen field.

It’s a psychological problem!