Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe
Minister Naledi Pandor
Western Cape Premier Helen Zille
Secretary-general of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, Professor John Tarrant, Chairperson of the ACU, Dr Theuns Eloff Vice Chancellor Dr Max Price Vice-Chancellors and Deputy vice-chancellors Distinguished guests
I am greatly honoured to address this important gathering. Coincidentally, this conference comes a mere two days after South Africa's first ever and historic Stakeholder Summit on Higher Education Transformation which was opened by our Honourable Deputy President. Amongst other things, this summit agreed on the following:
* The establishment of a permanent stakeholder forum, whose aim is to promote ongoing national dialogue amongst higher education stakeholders and also to make recommendations to government.
* To develop mechanisms aimed at eradicating all forms of discrimination in our higher education system, especially class, racial and gender discrimination.
* Develop a charter of learning and teaching in our higher education system and to enhance our focus on the student as the centre of our work.
* The revitalisation of our academic profession including the development of a coordinated plan to increase the number of younger researchers.
* Ensure commitment to good corporate governance.
* Institutions must contribute to the development of African languages as academic languages.
We believe that these and other related matters are very critical not just for South Africa but for other developing countries as well. It is not only the content of what we decided which is important but also the need to create mechanisms for ongoing engagement amongst all stakeholders both inside and outside universities.
The model we are trying to forge, that of a stakeholder driven but government led higher education transformation is something that we believe the ACU and the Commonwealth as a whole should reflect upon. A number of delegates to the ACU conference were over the last two days actively participating in the Stakeholder Summit for Higher Education Transformation and will further share some of the lessons learnt from this summit.
The international community, especially in the developing world, has many challenges to contend with and this has resulted in focused and targeted interventions deriving from the millennium development goals (MDGs) that all 192 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organisations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015.
They include reducing extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, ensuring gender equity, fighting disease epidemics such as AIDS, and developing a global partnership for development.
These also need to be reflected in South Africa's higher education and training landscape, with particular reference to the relationship between government and universities. Part of realising our vision has been the split of the Department of Education into Basic Education and Higher Education and Training.
My department's mandate can be summarised as the accelerated provision of post-school education and training opportunities with a primary focus on skills development. This will be done under the umbrella of an overarching human resource development strategy, led by our deputy president and managed by my department.
However, since 1994, if not before, as a country we have been absolutely clear that South Africa's economic growth and development and its education system cannot be advanced without cooperation with the rest of the Southern African region, the African continent and the rest of the world, especially the developing world.
It is for this reason that South Africa has constantly forged relations especially within the Southern African Development Community (SADC). These relations on the higher education front include a commitment to treat SADC students as South African students for the purposes of fees.
This programme has also been extended to other Sub-Saharan countries. We are also pleased that South African universities have attracted a lot of international students, estimated at 70 000 this year, with more than half coming from the African continent. Many of these countries we cooperate with are members of the Commonwealth.
This is an important contribution that South Africa is making to the development of intellectual resources and scarce skills in the region and the continent. We believe the ACU in particular and the Commonwealth in general can support and promote this cooperation by:
* Strengthening initiatives aimed at building African continental exchanges of knowledge and scholars
* Promoting multilateral cooperation between the more developed and developing member states of this Commonwealth
* Supporting networking amongst institutions and also confront the problem of the brain drain from developing to the developed world, even within the Commonwealth.
We believe and we hope that we can deepen relations with the Commonwealth to strengthen these African cooperation initiatives within our continent.
In the light of the global economic crisis, it is important also that the Commonwealth, including this association, must ensure that we protect and even increase investment into higher education rather than reducing it. It is investment in human development that will also be better able to shield us from such crises in future and put us in a stronger position to advance our developmental goals.
I wish you well in the deliberations of the next few days and trust that you will emerge with an even stronger programme to strengthen higher education cooperation within the Commonwealth.
Issued by: Department of Higher Education and Training
25 April 2010
