Professor Wim de Villier, Rector and Vice Chancellor of Stellenbosch University,
Mr Pali Lehohla, Statistician-General of South Africa,
Professor Manie Geyer, Director of the Centre for Regional and Urban Innovation and Statistical Exploration,
Professor Sabina Alkire, Director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Institute,
Invited guests,
Ladies and gentlemen.
I am honoured to have been invited to officiate at the 2015 Annual Isibalo Symposium gathering here at Stellenbosch University. Stellenbosch University claims its stake among the historic institutions in our country, not for only having provided academic excellence but also having contributed in the political being of our country.
This is an institution that has given rise to our erstwhile political leaders. And if this academic institution could provide outstanding education for the minority few in the past, it is well poised to provide the best education for the majority of people in a democratic society.
The Isibalo Symposium seeks to promote intellectual capacity in South Africa and beyond our borders. I have had the opportunity to address African young statisticians in the past, as they make their strides in the quest for statistical excellence under the auspicious ISibalo Capacity Development programme driven by our National Statistics Office, Statistics South Africa.
It is by no accident that Stats SA has teamed up with academic institutions in our beloved country to continue to search for what was lost in mathematics and statistics education in our country.
I am duly informed that the Stats SA and the University of Stellenbosch have since 2009 worked together through the Centre for Regional and Urban Innovation and Statistical Exploration (CRUISE), which is housed in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Stellenbosch University, to enhance spatial and statistical knowledge.
We are pleased today to mention that CRUISE has been providing research and training in urban and regional systems to capacitate public sector, non-governmental organizations and international development agencies on the African continent and has produced more than 50 Masters graduates in the past four years.
Academic institutions all over the world are known for their independent intellectual capacity. A premise for which they are established is that they do not have to be directed where to search for intellect, they have the carte blanche to decide.
Let me venture to set a challenge for CRUISE, of course with caution that my academic limitations may not measure up to all the Professors gathered here today. On 12 February 2015, on the occasion of the State of the Nation, President Zuma, address the country and said:
“Over R6 billion will be spent in 13 cities on planning, building and operating integrated public transport networks during this financial year. We will also continue to improve the infrastructure in schools and higher education institutions to create a conducive environment for learning and teaching.”
This policy statement has its beginnings and its endings with the work that Stats SA and the University of Stellenbosch had in mind when they set up CRUISE. I hope one of these days I will read a few academic papers that respond to many more policy statements like this. There is no successful policy formulation without academic excellence.
Programme Director,
We are reminded that on 17 September 1953, the then Minister of Native Affairs who would later become South Africa’s Prime Minister, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, addressed the minority Parliament and said:
“What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice.”
This statement should not be taken in a light context. It was a political statement delivered by a supreme apartheid leader who would later usher one of the most devastating edifices of such socio-economic and intellectual casualties that will take years and even decades to reverse.
And Dr Verwoerd is no stranger to Stellenbosch University, having been academically groomed here and even practiced here as an academic. It is for this very reason that Stellenbosch University has even a great role in our democratic society to reverse the legacy of the past.
The founders of Stellenbosch University understood that power and knowledge cannot be separated. They understood very well that the production of knowledge tends to be a critical function in the deployment of power.
Michael Foucault tells us that knowledge sets into motion a particular set of power relations, such as the interaction among people, institutions and even nations. Knowledge is therefore never neutral, objective or disinterested.
Implicitly, knowledge therefore becomes purposeful. Democracy teaches us to tread with caution the deployment of knowledge and power.
I raise this matter of knowledge and power because expertise sometimes serves only the affluent and powerful. Expertise is imbued with values and therefore cannot be objective, neutral or disinterested.
Disinterestedness is not realistic at all. We have often seen how experts have attempted, sometimes successfully so, to gain public trust through their rhetoric of neutrality.
Never, and never again, should another race dominate another through intellectual instruments so designed to exclude others from equality.
The development of knowledge, in general, and statistics, in particular, on the African continent is faced with many challenges. There are a number of developmental programmes that Africa has led in the recent past which require to be taken forward as unique African contribution to the global development agenda.
This is critical in order to consolidate Africa’s Common position on Post 2015 development agenda and Africa’s 2063 Agenda.
This requires a deliberate process by which African leadership should occupy the space to advance the cause and course of African initiatives. Failure to do so will always lead to Africa being left behind and its ideas stolen and repackaged for use by others.
There are four programmes that are strategically linked to one another and on their basis command attention by political leaders, with support from academic excellence.
First, in 2010 Africa adopted a programme on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) and this paved the way for leaving no one behind and by so doing defined the central elements of Data Revolution in Africa.
Second, the CRVS followed on a successful implementation of the 2010 Round of Censuses which saw Africa’s successful censuses in this round rise from 38 countries in the 2000 Round to 48 countries.
The programme provides hope for the developing world that indeed it is possible to eliminate the scandal of invisibility and that we should leave no one behind.
Third, Africa performed exceptionally in the 2011 International Comparisons Programme where 49 African countries participated and this has formed a rich data source for regional consumption markets which then provides critical information for Africa industrialisation strategy.
Fourth, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) has made it possible to measure governance, peace and security; a matter that had fallen off the agenda of the United Nations Statistics Commission.
The measurement of governance, peace and security draws its methodological possibilities from the APRM and this is a unique contribution by African Statisticians on measurement of governance, peace and security.
All these four African challenges cannot be dealt with without academic excellence. The Isibalo Capacity Building Program, and its inherent sub-programs, is well placed to address some of these challenges.
The CRUISE Centre is best placed to navigate the space between Stats SA and the University of Stellenbosch in that Stats SA would be in a position maintain independence from political interference.
We expect more collaboration between Stats SA and other institutions of higher learning. As we search for academic excellence, we will ensure that methods never trump numbers again in our history.
That way, Stats SA can appropriately assume a role of being a pathfinder for the nation as search for, and monitor and evaluate, policies that will bring a better life for all.
I have been duly informed that today the Statistician-General will releases two reports on the Morbidity and Mortality Patterns among the youth of South Africa as well as the National and Provincial Labour Market Youth report.
Experience has taught us that South African youth similar with countries across the globe are in a vulnerable situation in terms of both labour market and health outcomes.
The National Development Plan reminds us that it is widely recognised that health issues and services in South Africa have been shaped by powerful historical and social forces such as vast income inequalities, poverty, unemployment, racial and gender discrimination.
The National Youth Policy 2020, which was adopted by Cabinet on the 27th of May this year, relied heavily on the work done by Statistics South Africa and various other academic institutions to define the challenges facing young people and determine the progress made over the last 21 years.
The set of interventions proposed therein, in education, creating work, skills development, economic participation, fighting the scourge of drugs and substance abuse and the feasibility of its implementation relied heavily on statistical data available.
The enormity of work to be done in changing the quality of life of young people and benefitting from the democgraphic dividend will require the concomitant actions by all social forces, especially in academia and other non-government actors.
However, history has placed a heavy burden on the state to lead in the transformation discourse, and projects such as this one are crucial and building the capacity of the state to shape an inclusive developmental path.
We have to ensure that we destroy the enclaves of power that were created post-apartheid which seems to be reproducing the social relations of the past. We can only do this, if we empower young people to do things for themselves and eqully empower public institutions to create platforms for the realisation of the objectives set in the NDP and the National Youth Policy 2020.
We have been through trial and error over the last 21 years, but gradually, learning from our short experiences and through the institutions that we have build, we believe that we can and will make a breakthrough.
The continued discontent and justifiable impatience signifies that failure is not an option, otherwise, the threat to our democracy becomes even more real with every regression made in changing the lives of the majority.
There is a lot of work ahead of us for all developing countries, South Africa included. And knowledge, intellect and statistics are right at the center of this work.
We can only expect sections of our society to catch up speedily where other sections have benefited through centuries of colonial and apartheid increments if we work together without fail.
I wish you all the best in your deliberations, with the hope that this Symposium will add on the multiple initiatives that our country is engaged in so as we all have our day under the rainbow nation.
I thank you.
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