Debating Excellence: St David's crowned the 2022 Gauteng Provincial Champions and Katlego Mokgosi ranked 3rd in the WSDC speaker rankings

18 Aug 2022

Over the past few months, our College debate teams have been hard at work, practising and competing, and have produced some extremely pleasing results.

Towards the end of July, our Senior Debating Team comprised of Matrics, Katlego Mokgosi, Ethan Kalell, and Ethan Batista, competed in the final of the Gauteng Provincial Debating Championship. The three students competed against over 80 schools throughout the course of the Championship to reach the finals, where they debated the motion 'This House regrets the rise of Green Capitalism'. Our debaters won the debate and the finals, and have been crowned the 2022 Gauteng Provincial Champions! We are very proud of this team and all the hard work they have put in to reach this milestone.

We are also extremely proud of Deputy Head Prefect Katlego Mokgosi for being chosen as a part of Team South Africa for the World Schools Debating Championships. The WDSC is a two-week tournament that has been held since 1988, and invites teams comprised of secondary-school learners from over 50 countries to debate social, moral, and political issues. The 2022 WDSC was held by the Netherlands and took place online from August 7th to 18th. Team South Africa went head-to-head against debaters from Brazil, Czech Republic, Mexico, Denmark, England, Spain, and Hungary. The team debated both unprepared and prepared motions from a vast array of topics, including:

  • This House prefers industrial unions to workplace unions.
  • This House would introduce a global carbon market.
  • This House regrets the decline of the family as the dominant unit of organisation in society.
  • This House would require all elected officials to stand for a recall election if a significant minimum threshold of voters within their constituency demand it.
  • This House prefers a world in which postcolonial African states had prioritised achieving economic and land reparation over enshrining civil and political rights.
  • This House would allow ex-convicts to join the police force.

Although Team South Africa did not break into the final rounds, Katlego ranked 3rd in the WSDC speaker rankings, meaning that he is now ranked 3rd in the world in secondary-school debating. We are extremely proud of Katlego for this incredible achievement and for all the hard work he has put in during holidays and weekends, while still juggling Matric and his leadership duties, in a truly Marist fashion!