Like Lions, We Rise to Meet the 2026 Academic Year

Rise like lions after slumber

In unfathomable numbers
Shake your chains to earth like dew
That in sleep have fallen on you
Ye are many, they are few.

With these celebrated lines, the formidable English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley rallied and urged his compatriots to rise above adversity, as lions do every morning. This was at a time of great political upheaval, economic difficulties, and a raging industrial revolution in his country - and this in a country without lions, except perhaps in the mythical legends of antiquity.

The 2026 academic year is upon us now, and we are not going to waste it. We are determined to make every hour, every day, every week, every month, and every semester of the 2026 academic year count.

Borrowing from Shelley’s powerful metaphor, we call upon all TUT staff and students to “rise like lions after slumber”. We are not only speaking of the numbing slumber of the recent festive season celebrations. We are also speaking of the slumber of procrastination and the retrogressive last-minute tendencies that lead many students to drop out and fail.

We invite all TUT-zens to emulate the lions whose hunt starts well before dawn. While TUT achieved impressive results during 2025, we remain hungry for even better results in 2026. This is the year in which we make the bold transition into our new Institutional Strategic Plan (ISP) 2026–2035, armed with the vision of becoming an entrepreneurial university of technology that is shaping the future.

Through this forward-looking plan, we invite you to help us build a thriving entrepreneurial community of graduates, alumni, and staff members. We are determined to forge and foster a pervasive culture of innovation and entrepreneurial thinking across every aspect of life at TUT.

During the 2026 academic year, we will rise like lions to nurture and achieve the five TUT graduate attributes:

• Entrepreneurial flair – which is the cutting edge of our new ISP
• Fluency in the language of AI
• Using scholarship to combat gender-based violence
• Fostering the highest ethical conduct
• Participation in climate action and promoting environmental sustainability.

TUT-zens have what it takes to rise like lions and to overcome all the challenges that lie ahead in 2026. Together we shall:

Rise like lions after slumber
In unfathomable numbers
Shake our chains to earth like dew
That in sleep had fallen on us
We are many, they are few.

Prof Tinyiko Maluleke  
Vice-Chancellor and Principal