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

Prof Puseletso Mofokeng once cleaned laboratories at the University of QwaQwa. Today she is an associate professor and director of a research centre at the same institution.

Her remarkable rise from cleaner to professor is a story of resilience, hard work and refusing to let difficult beginnings determine her future.

Mofokeng joined the then-University of QwaQwa in the Free State in 1999, aged 19, as a research assistant. Her early days at the university are far removed from the academic position she holds today as the recently appointed director of the Centre for Global Change (CGC) at the University of the Free State Qwaqwa Campus, also know as UniQwa.

Back then, much of her work involved cleaning chemistry laboratories and washing glassware and apparatus used by postgraduate students and staff in the department of chemistry.

“However, within only a few months, something important happened. My responsibilities gradually evolved from cleaning alone to a combination of cleaning and assisting with experimental laboratory work,” she said.

That exposure to experiments would become an important step in her journey into science. While working at the university, Mofokeng enrolled as a student. In April 2011 she obtained a MSc degree in polymer science.

I am particularly passionate about ensuring knowledge generated within universities reaches beyond academic publications and contributes meaningfully to society and the communities around us, including those within the Free State

The university said her three-year appointment places Mofokeng at the centre of a research environment that brings together different disciplines to respond to challenges affecting the planet and communities around the university.

“The CGC works across areas including water, energy, climate change, environmental sustainability and social vulnerability, with a particular emphasis on connecting research with communities and other stakeholders,” said the university.

“I am particularly passionate about ensuring knowledge generated within universities reaches beyond academic publications and contributes meaningfully to society and the communities around us, including those within the Free State. I am also an academic and researcher, and I continue to lecture and supervise postgraduate students,” she said.

Her journey to the university came after years of taking whatever opportunities were available to her. Before joining the institution, Mofokeng had worked on a farm and at a general dealer where she cooked, cleaned and worked as a cashier.

I could never have imagined then that the same institution where I cleaned laboratories would one day entrust me with leadership responsibilities in the department of chemistry and, ultimately, the leadership of one of its research centres

A traumatic armed robbery at the dealership in November 1998, in which she had three guns pointed at the led, her to quit her job and she joined the university the next year.

“I have never pleaded with another human the way I did that night of the robbery,” she said.