The month of May is celebrated in South Africa as Africa Month, and this year the theme, ‘The Year of O.R. Tambo: Building a Better Africa and a Better World’, recognises the vision of the great anti-apartheid revolutionary, who would have turned 100 in October. While the name O.R. Tambo is now synonymous with jet setting travellers, it is really […] it soon became necessary, to avoid abuse of the royal privileges conferred on scholars, to identify and authenticate the persons to whom degrees had been granted. enrolment with a licensed master was the first step towards this; it was called matriculation because of the condition that the scholar’s name must be on the master’s matricula or roll, but later the university itself assumed this duty. it was also desirable to mark the stage in a scholar’s progress by a ceremony of admission (sokuthweswa iziqu) to the different grades, or degrees, of membership. these were conferred by the whole body of masters, with the chancellor exercising the power on their behalf, as his deputy, the vice--chancellor, came to do later. the grades of scholar became differentiated by a series of variations on the gown, hood and cap. reminders of these terms and practices survive today.