IPSA’s 2025 award recipients call on graduates to lead with humanity in technology

The 2025 graduation ceremony of the International Peace College South Africa (IPSA) was a celebration not only of academic success but of intellect, faith, and human purpose. Families, scholars, and leaders gathered under one roof to honour those who came to witness the beginning of a new generation’s journey into a world demanding wisdom, integrity, and innovation.

Professor Muhammad Haron, a respected scholar and long-standing academic mentor at IPSA, reminded graduates that education carries a sacred responsibility. He urged them to “let knowledge serve as light, not pride, and to anchor learning in humility and community.” His words echoed the central theme of the day: that intellectual achievement is most meaningful when joined with moral purpose.

The graduation ceremony’s commencement speech and keynote address was delivered by Dr Iqbal Survé, a medical doctor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and alumnus of the University of Cape Town, Harvard University, and a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, Dr Survé offered the graduates a compelling reflection on what it means to be human in an age increasingly shaped by machines.

He reminded the audience that artificial intelligence, while revolutionary, must remain guided by conscience.

“Technology can process data, but it cannot care,” he said, “while technology can detect illness, it cannot comfort the sick. It can diagnose, but it cannot care.”

Drawing on his own journey from medicine to entrepreneurship, he explained that true intelligence is not artificial. It is moral. It is driven by compassion, courage, and conscience.

Addressing the graduates, he placed particular emphasis on the humanities, calling them “the moral operating system of this intelligent age". 

When algorithms begin to mimic art, he said, society will depend on artists, writers, and philosophers to remind it what beauty, truth, and ethics mean. He challenged graduates to reclaim Africa’s voice in the global AI conversation, to infuse emerging technologies with Ubuntu, the African philosophy that recognises our shared humanity.

Dr Survé also issued a warning: the danger is not that machines will become too intelligent, but that humans may become too complacent.

“Artificial intelligence can give us knowledge,” he told the class, “but only you can turn that knowledge into wisdom.”

His closing message urged graduates to embrace lifelong learning and to lead the coming “Human Renaissance” with imagination, empathy, and courage.

The event also honoured Imam Gasan Moos, with his son Saawmiet Moos receiving the award and speaking movingly on his father’s behalf.

The graduation was not an ending, but a beginning — the first chapter in a lifelong journey of discovery, courage, and service.

As Dr Survé reminded them, knowledge alone is not enough; it is what one does with it that shapes the future. These graduates now step into a world of uncertainty and promise, armed not only with degrees, but with conscience and a sense of duty to use their learning for the greater good.

Their education is their compass, their power, and their responsibility.

And as they walk into this new chapter, they carry with them a truth that IPSA has long stood for: that education is not the pursuit of success, but the pursuit of humanity itself.