Dignity in the Everyday | Qaqamba Mdaka on Residence Life, Belonging and Becoming at Stellenbosch University
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July was Mandela Month, with its call to reflect on dignity, community and what we owe one another. On SiyakhulaLive, that reflection turns to a question every parent dropping a child at university quietly carries, and every first-year silently asks: will I belong here? In this episode, recorded on 15 July 2026, the conversation moves beyond the lecture hall to the residence – the place where, as our guest puts it, young adults don't simply prepare for life, they practise it.
Qaqamba Mdaka, Senior Case Coordinator at the Equality Unit and Residence Head at Sonop Residence for Ladies, joins Dr Katlego Letlonkane on SiyakhulaLive to unpack the profound role university residences play in shaping the student experience. Far more than places of accommodation, residences are living and learning spaces where students discover who they are, learn to navigate difference, and develop the character no textbook can fully teach.
Mdaka brings a warm, deeply intentional perspective to a conversation that treats belonging not as a soft extra but as the foundation of student success. She argues that confidence follows belonging, that empathy grows through proximity, and that the everyday work of a residence – memorising a newcomer's name, sharing a meal, being greeted in your own language – is what turns a building into a home.
The conversation opens with what makes a residence such a powerful site of learning, works through how belonging is cultivated for students arriving from Hermanus to Limpopo, turns to diversity as residence life's greatest teacher, and closes on female residences, character formation, and what Mdaka hopes students carry with them long after they leave.
What we cover in this episode:
- The other curriculum: Mdaka explains why a residence is one of the few places where young adults practise life in real time – learning to live with others, to lead, to disagree respectfully, and to care for someone bigger than themselves.
- Belonging before confidence: newcomers arrive asking two connected questions, "will I belong here?" and "am I good enough to succeed here?", and she describes the intentional welcoming rituals – student leaders memorising every newcomer's name before they arrive – that answer the first so students can grow into the second.
- Empathy grows through proximity: she unpacks how shared, everyday living dismantles the stereotypes students arrive with, turning a stranger into a roommate, a sister, one day a matron of honour, and why the closer we come to another person's story, the harder it becomes to reduce them to assumptions.
- Puncturing your reality: drawing on the idea that arriving with only one way of knowing invites something to open you up, Mdaka reflects on why parents should not expect the same child back, and why that disruption is the growth, not the cost.
- A community of sisters: she makes the case for what female residences offer – a supportive, nurturing ecosystem where women grow – and what she hopes students remember years later: not the events organised, but who they became.
- Raising humans for the world: she closes on intentional parenting and shared responsibility, and the reminder that we raise people to participate beyond our own spheres of influence – a conversation, as the show puts it, that informs and transforms.
Stream MFM 92.6: www.mfm.co.za
Follow us on socials: @mfm926
Qaqamba Mdaka, Senior Case Coordinator at the Equality Unit and Residence Head at Sonop Residence for Ladies, joins Dr Katlego Letlonkane on SiyakhulaLive to unpack the profound role university residences play in shaping the student experience. Far more than places of accommodation, residences are living and learning spaces where students discover who they are, learn to navigate difference, and develop the character no textbook can fully teach.
Mdaka brings a warm, deeply intentional perspective to a conversation that treats belonging not as a soft extra but as the foundation of student success. She argues that confidence follows belonging, that empathy grows through proximity, and that the everyday work of a residence – memorising a newcomer's name, sharing a meal, being greeted in your own language – is what turns a building into a home.
The conversation opens with what makes a residence such a powerful site of learning, works through how belonging is cultivated for students arriving from Hermanus to Limpopo, turns to diversity as residence life's greatest teacher, and closes on female residences, character formation, and what Mdaka hopes students carry with them long after they leave.
What we cover in this episode:
- The other curriculum: Mdaka explains why a residence is one of the few places where young adults practise life in real time – learning to live with others, to lead, to disagree respectfully, and to care for someone bigger than themselves.
- Belonging before confidence: newcomers arrive asking two connected questions, "will I belong here?" and "am I good enough to succeed here?", and she describes the intentional welcoming rituals – student leaders memorising every newcomer's name before they arrive – that answer the first so students can grow into the second.
- Empathy grows through proximity: she unpacks how shared, everyday living dismantles the stereotypes students arrive with, turning a stranger into a roommate, a sister, one day a matron of honour, and why the closer we come to another person's story, the harder it becomes to reduce them to assumptions.
- Puncturing your reality: drawing on the idea that arriving with only one way of knowing invites something to open you up, Mdaka reflects on why parents should not expect the same child back, and why that disruption is the growth, not the cost.
- A community of sisters: she makes the case for what female residences offer – a supportive, nurturing ecosystem where women grow – and what she hopes students remember years later: not the events organised, but who they became.
- Raising humans for the world: she closes on intentional parenting and shared responsibility, and the reminder that we raise people to participate beyond our own spheres of influence – a conversation, as the show puts it, that informs and transforms.
Stream MFM 92.6: www.mfm.co.za
Follow us on socials: @mfm926
