S Moloto: Autumn graduation ceremony of University of Venda

4 May 2007

Honourable Chancellor, Dr Cyril Ramaphosa
Acting Vice Chancellor and Principal Dr JV Leatt
Members of council
Members of management
Mayor of Thulamela Local Municipality
Executive Mayor of Vhembe
Executive deans and professors
President of the Convocation
President of the Student Representative Assembly (SRA)
Our graduates
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

We count a rare honour and privilege to be invited to your institution to
witness the passing out of your graduates in the fields of humanities,
management sciences and the law. Having been established only just 25 years
ago, the University of Venda (UNIVEN) is probably one of the youngest
universities in South Africa. This is a boon and an advantage which must give
the university the flexibility to adapt easily to any given situation. There is
evidence to show that the university has fared much better in the last 25 years
in comparison with its peers, despite its youthfulness. The collaboration we
have with UNIVEN on the training of Community Development Workers (CDWs) and in
other areas is an indication that the university has embraced the academic
transformation and curriculum change in most of its disciplines. The teaching
of community development work as one of the academic disciplines in particular,
stands out, as one of the most striking indicator of the university's ability
and determination to move with the times and changes currently taking place in
our country. We are proud that the UNIVEN is delivering on its mandate, as it
is promised in its mission and vision statement.

Mr Chancellor, our country is faced with the biggest challenge of skills
shortage ever experienced in its developmental evolution. Universities which
have embraced transformation should take the lead to ensure that this challenge
is overcome. In fact, we expect that it should be the task of all South African
universities to research and teach technically and socially relevant subjects
that are consistent with the common challenge whilst keeping abreast with the
evolving knowledge and skills based globalising economy.

It is in this context that our national government has initiated the Joint
Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) in order to close the skills
shortage gap. This JIPSA initiative has revealed the scale of the challenge
which we have always been taking for granted. These scarce skills which have
been identified by JIPSA hold the key to the country achieving the six percent
economic growth rate by 2010 and achieving the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) of halving unemployment and poverty by 2014. The skills required would
include high level, world class engineering and planning skills for the
'network industries', i.e. transport, communications and energy, urban and
regional planning, artisan and technical skills with priority attention to
infrastructure development. There is also a need to focus on management and
planning skills in the areas of education and health; as well as mathematics,
science and information and communication technology (ICT).

All of the areas which have been identified as potential areas for
increasing job creation and have direct impact on poverty as outlined in the
Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) programme
like Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), bio-fuels and tourism will not be
achieved if these important skills are not prioritised. The one area which is
not given adequate attention is dealing with the literacy levels of the
country. Experience in other countries has shown that this challenge of
eradicating illiteracy cannot be left to government programmes alone. If we
were to eradicate this, there would be a need for a popular campaign which
involves every South African who is able to read and write. We believe that
learning institutions, particularly institutions of higher learning, should
lead this type of a campaign.

We as the province have had our own share of experience of this shortage of
skills in the process of developing our Provincial Growth and Development
Strategy (PGDS). For instance in the development of this strategy we relied
more on universities like Pretoria and others which are located outside of the
province when in fact our expectation was that local universities would have
more information about the province than those located outside. There is still
a need for more research in all the areas of our comparative advantages like
mining, agriculture and tourism because we believe that the potential for
economic growth and development of the province is underrated.

The provincial economy is still largely primary commodity driven and there
is very little value adding or beneficiation in all our comparative advantages.
For us to be able to meet the MDGs and our immediate challenges of fighting
poverty and unemployment, it would be imperative for us to develop both the
secondary and tertiary sectors of our economy. That is new product offerings
and services related to these comparative advantages which will include
agro-processing for the agricultural sector, the mining input supply services
and possible downstream mining beneficiation.

All of our challenges, i.e. poverty and underdevelopment particularly
unemployment can only be addressed if we embark on a process of value adding in
the form of agro processing in the upstream and downstream mining activities
and expanding the potential of tourism. This would include coming up with new
product offerings which will then give us a competitive edge over the rest of
the country.

Our interactions with the private sector in all these areas which we are
convinced will increase the labour absorption capacity of our competitive
advantages, pointed to lack of skills and the necessary infrastructure as a
major obstacle to accomplish this objective. Through AsgiSA and JIPSA
initiatives government has embarked on an aggressive programme to develop
skills and we have already seen the revitalisation and recapitalisation of
Further Education and Training (FET) colleges in order to meet these
challenges.

Mr Chancellor, the main weakness in our education system has always been our
failure to integrate the system from primary to tertiary level. Both
universities and FET colleges seem not to be having keen interest in what is
happening at primary and secondary school level. We have got a big challenge in
the areas of maths and science and for us to be able to meet the challenge of
the priority skills mentioned earlier on, there is a need to improve on the
teaching of maths and science at primary and secondary levels. We do not want
to be pre-emptive because we may not be well informed about your outreach
programmes which are meant to mentor teaching staff at a foundation level but
it remains an area of great concern to us. We firmly believe that universities
have the responsibility to strengthen their community outreach programmes in
order to overcome this challenge.

Our provincial Department of Education is working on an initiative for FET
of teachers in specific areas of maths, science and commerce in order to bridge
this gap. We are told that the challenge they are facing is the availability of
tutors in these areas and the university may come in handy in complementing
this work.

Our provincial government is also investing a lot of resources in skills
development. Various government departments are offering bursaries in their
line function. The challenge that we are experiencing has always been the
uptake of students who are pursuing studies in those various fields. In many
instances the bulk of the money is not being used because the required numbers
of students are not reached in certain disciplines like engineering, chartered
accounting and regional and town planning.

Given the fact that our development path is unique in the world, there is no
model that you can easily refer to. The existing literature on the concept of a
developmental state does not embrace the unique feature and character of our
own government system. There is a growing need for documenting our own
experiences and important lessons we are drawing in the process of building our
democratic developmental State where there is more emphasis on consultation and
sufficient consensus on any development initiative which is pursued. We hold a
firm belief that the academic community must assist in this initiative of
documenting this valuable lessons which are learned in the process of pursuing
this path which we have chosen for ourselves as a nation.

From time to time we constantly get reminded of the fact that there are no
academic reference materials to most of the complex challenges which our
country faces at the moment, particularly at a local government level. If one
has to give an example in this regard, there are very few texts in the market
that have been written on such development concepts as IDPs, Local Economic
Development (LED), Izimbizo, ward committees and CDW. This as we have observed
leads to reduced confidence on the part of those who are supposed to implement
these programmes, thus resulting in a trial and error management system. We
have also observed in many instances that instead of coming up with viable
alternatives, our intelligentsia is only obsessed with criticism of these
initiatives.

Mr Chancellor, the other disjuncture which has always been a challenge in
our country is the distinct gap between the academic world and the practical
world of work. Our expectation would always be that universities are meant to
prepare students and young graduates for the work environment and the
preparation should involve equipping them with the necessary skills and
knowledge to be able to fit in the labour market. It is equally expected that
the young graduates will be equipped with the ability to search for information
which they could not have acquired at school or that is not readily available
at any given time. With the advent of technological advances throughout the
world, it cannot be that we are still faced with this knowledge gap which is
characterising our nation. Technology has made it possible through internet and
various other platforms that you are able to access any information from any
part of the world, even from here in Vhembe. In that sense our modern society
is in a better position to deal with whatever difficulty or challenges we are
facing than was the situation with our fore-bearers.

In the same vein, the notion of looking down upon FET colleges as a dumping
ground for the less privileged or less gifted and looking at university
education as the most prestigious training for the few should be corrected. In
one of our interactions with the mining input suppliers early this year, one of
the participants made a striking observation. He intimated that there is
nothing in any university throughout the world called mining compressor
engineer. This can only mean that all of your compressor engineers are trained
on the job after they would have gone through basic technical engineering
training. In this context, it is therefore important that institutions of
higher learning should form strategic alliances and linkages with various
industries. This can also enable practitioners from the workplace to share with
academics and students their daily experiences with regard to new inventions
and innovations.

Obviously, learners and students spent the bulk of their youthful life at
these learning institutions. We know that the primary aim of these institutions
is to provide a platform for students to acquire knowledge and skills for them
to be able to enter the labour market. It is our expectation that these
institutions should also strive to prepare them adequately for their future
adult life. It is disturbing that in the country there is a notion of
marginalised youth or so-called lost generation which have got no regard for
the values we aspire to develop as a nation. It is therefore in these
institutions where these learners and students need to be taught about such
values as patriotism, human solidarity (Ubuntu), nation building and
reconciliation. Our national endeavours of moral regeneration and restoration
of community values of selflessness and the culture of service would not be
realised if the whole of our education system does not embrace this effort as
part and parcel of their responsibility.

Our communities still hold in high regard people who have university
degrees. They remain role models to our people and any miscreant behaviour by
such individuals is accepted as a good norm. Therefore, our message to
graduates today is that as you move out of this university to your various
workplaces, you must know that you are not only representing yourselves but a
mirror image of the whole of the university community including the teaching
staff and other students who will be following in your footsteps. Any miscreant
behaviour will be associated with the university and the whole academic society
of our country.

Our expectation is that when you get out there you should become real role
models and continue to give a good name of the university by embracing
patriotism, selflessness, human solidarity and be ever eager and ready to serve
your people. You should know that your parents have sacrificed a lot in order
to provide you with the opportunities you are now exposed to. Many of your
parents may not be able to read and write but they saw the need to educate you
up to the level where you are today. They did so because they understood that
education is a weapon to break all barriers in life. We would appeal to you to
take it from where they would have left, with the knowledge that learning is a
life long experience. You must continue to learn in order to acquire more
skills and knowledge for you to become responsible citizens.

Mr Chancellor, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all parents
for your support and sacrifices you have made in educating your children. We
wish and pray that your investments would yield good returns. We urge you to
encourage other parents to do the same by investing in the education of their
children because we believe that education is the weapon to overcome all the
developmental challenges which we are confronted with as a nation.

In the same vein, we would like to take this opportunity to thank the
university council, management, academic staff, SRA and the entire university
community. We would like to say continue to keep the fires burning.

Thank you very much!

Issued by: Office of the Premier, Limpopo Provincial Government
4 May 2007