Former Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA) president, Rabelani Dagada, was last week awarded the Fellow of the Institute Award at the IITPSA President's Awards.
The awards were presented by the IITPSA, in association with ITWeb, the Gordon Institute of Business Science and Gartner Africa.
The IITPSA recognises members who have made an extraordinary contribution to the institute, and/or the ICT profession, through selfless service, by bestowing the honour of being a fellow of the institute.
This is not an elected grade of membership, but one only conferred after a favourable majority vote by both the committee of past presidents of the institute, as well as the current members of the executive council.
"I feel very humbled. I had always thought that one can only receive this award when they are in their late 60s. I perceive this recognition as a motivation for me to do more work to advance the ICT profession," says Dagada.
"One of the things that I wanted to do as the IITPSA president was to raise sufficient financial resources which will be used to run projects and procure offices for the IITPSA, but it was difficult to do this within two years."
Dagada is a trustee of the Institute of Information Technology Profession Foundation, which was established to take care of the IITPSA's commercial interests.
"It is very difficult to sustain a professional body without sufficient funds. With the rand being weak and the economy depressed, it is very difficult to solely rely on membership fees and donations. The whole industry will benefit immensely from a healthy and functional IITPSA."
He believes the award will give him some clout to engage with the public and private sectors in his endeavours to advance the ICT profession.
"There is much that I still intend to do in the ICT profession. In as much as I have stepped down from the IITPSA board of directors, I will work hard to get the IITPSA recognised as a statutory body by the national government."
Dagada joined the IITPSA as a student member more than 15 years ago and has since then moved through the ranks to become a professional member.
"I have worked as an ICT practitioner in the private sector and academia. I have also published extensively in the field of information systems. I was the winner of the 2008 ICT Visionary Award," he says.
Dagada also has ambitions to run for mayor of the City of Johannesburg. The Democratic Alliance (DA) has identified Johannesburg as one of the big five municipalities which will be governed by the party after next year's elections, he notes. The others are Cape Town, Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane, and Tlokwe, he adds.
"Now that the DA in Gauteng has announced the Tshwane and Midvaal mayoral candidates, the next step will be to open nominations for Johannesburg. If somebody nominates me, I will accept the nomination and contest to be the DA Johannesburg mayoral candidate."
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