From laboratory cleaner to professor: Puseletso Mofokeng’s remarkable journey

Puseletso Mofokeng rises from cleaning laboratories to leading research centre

When she was 19-years-old, Puseletso Mofokeng arrived at the University of QwaQwa with a job that involved cleaning chemistry laboratories and washing the glassware used by postgraduate students and staff.

Today, she is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Change at the same institution.

Between those two points are years of hardship, uncertainty, hard work and opportunities that Mofokeng could never have predicted would eventually lead her into academia.

Before joining the university, Mofokeng had already learned what it meant to take whatever work was available.

She worked on a farm, cooked, cleaned and worked as a cashier at a general dealer. At one point, she could not afford the R750 needed to attend a computer college.

Then, in 1998, she experienced a violent robbery that would leave a lasting emotional scar.

Mofokeng was working at a store when armed robbers stormed in as the business was preparing to close.

They took money and expensive alcohol before returning to where she had been ordered to kneel.

Three guns were pointed at her head. She was shouted at and struck on the head with a firearm.

“I have never pleaded with another human being the way I did that evening,” she recalled.

More than two decades later, she can still remember the song that was playing on the radio that night: “Mohla ke Tsamayang” by Spokes H.

After the robbery, she decided to leave the job and began searching for another opportunity.

That opportunity came in March 1999, when she was employed as a research assistant at the then University of QwaQwa.