It is graduation season in Lesotho. The moment is meant to be joyous. Families travel long distances, graduates put on rented gowns, and photographers line up to capture a milestone that comes only once. Yet behind the applause and the photo sessions lies a practice that speaks volumes about how our institutions of higher learning see themselves and see the young people they produce.
Universities and colleges now demand that photographers pay a fee to take pictures at graduation ceremonies. Three hundred here, five hundred there. It sounds small until you consider who is being asked to pay.
Many of these photographers are not outsiders. They are not strangers parachuting in to make a quick profit. They are graduates themselves or peers of the graduates, people who have turned to the camera because there are no jobs. They are part of the very generation the institutions failed to place in employment. For them, photography is not a side hustle. It is bread and butter. It is school fees. It is rent. To ask them for money before they can work is not policy. It is cruelty.
There is also a deeper insult. The photos taken at graduations are not for the photographers. They are for the families who sacrificed for years to put their children through school. By charging photographers, institutions are not only squeezing the unemployed. They are indirectly charging the same parents who already carried the heavy cost of tuition. Families are paying twice, first to educate and then to celebrate.
This is what makes the practice sickening. It reveals an instinct for petty revenue collection where there should be vision. Instead of asking how to create opportunities for the graduates they produce, institutions busy themselves with policing who holds a camera on the day. Instead of building pathways into the world of work, they close the gates tighter and collect from those struggling outside.
The truth is simple. If institutions of higher learning were serious about their role, they would be forming partnerships with these young photographers. They would be teaching creative entrepreneurship. They would be creating digital labs where skills in photography, editing, and media can be nurtured into sustainable businesses. They would be finding ways to add value, not extract it.
What we are seeing instead is short sightedness dressed up as regulation. It is a small act, but one that exposes the larger decay. Our institutions no longer measure themselves by the futures they create. They measure themselves by the fees they collect.
So here we are, in the season of graduations. The gowns will shine, the speeches will flow, and the photographers will still show up because they have no choice. But the question lingers. What kind of higher learning charges the very people who turn unemployment into survival? What kind of institution produces the jobless, then taxes them for daring to work?
The answer is in front of us. We could not secure you a future, but we will gladly charge you for trying to make one yourself.
