Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Prof Ihron Rensburg
President of Harvard University, Prof Drew Faust
Members of Executive Management
Distinguished guests
Staff and students
Ladies and gentlemen
A very good afternoon to you all. Let me begin by extending a warm welcome Professor Drew Faust, President of Harvard University to our country and particularly to Soweto, a very symbolic place in terms of our political history and the social evolution of South Africa.
Soweto has a turbulent and tragic past but has a vibrancy that permeates the cultural and social life of our country. Thirty three years ago, the youth of Soweto opened the eyes of the world to the horror of apartheid. The issue: an inferior education system which entrenched discrimination and inequality. The 1976 Soweto uprising sparked a chain of events which eventually led to the attainment of democracy in South Africa. Professor Faust, as you would have seen from driving through Soweto, the challenge of undoing the legacy of apartheid is immense.
But today we gather at this historic place to celebrate a partnership between Harvard University and the University of Johannesburg which will go a long way in dealing with our many challenges in education, particularly here in Soweto. The theme "Soweto campus rising!" is therefore appropriate to the activism that has defined this place as well as what this exciting partnership seeks to achieve.
Let me therefore congratulate both universities under the leadership of Professor Faust and Professor Rensburg in pursuing this collaboration to establish an Educational Leadership Institute. The three building blocks which this institute will eventually comprise: a Principal Network, systemic interventions, and research on school leadership and school leadership development are essential to our government's goal to produce a quality learning and teaching system.
What makes this collaboration so novel is that it goes beyond the bounds of the typical association between first and developing world institutions? This partnership uses the expertise of a world renowned institution like Harvard University, with three decades of teaching and practice in educational leadership, in a comprehensive programme targeting a core challenge in our education system with long term spin offs.
At a meeting with the country's school principals in August, President Jacob Zuma said government needed to put more effort in education and training which are keys to human resources development and skills acquisition. He said government was serious about doing things differently and education is a priority which should not be reduced to narrow opportunist politics.
The development and renewal of this Soweto campus is an ambitious project that is critical to national renewal in higher education and beyond. I am proud to have witnessed the announcement of these visions in 2008, long before I became Minister of Higher Education and Training.
The state's contribution of R300 million to the upgrading of the Soweto campus is a significant investment aimed at securing renewal of the UJ and its developmental contract with the people of the metro and of Soweto. The intent is to develop a premier city campus that would act as a magnet for all citizens, black and white.
The campus renewal and development includes UJ's contribution of R100m to turn the campus from "dormitory" where the campus is deserted after 5pm to fully functional with world class sports facilities, including indoor basketball and volleyball, soccer, cricket, netball and tennis, thus building our education institutions as centres of excellence in sport.
Renewal and development plans include a first phase establishment of residences to accommodate 300 students (2011), to supplement the 220 beds provided at the YMCA (2009) and the YWCA (2010). A critical part of the strategy is to ensure that high level programmes by renowned academics are offered at the campus to attract students. In this regard, UJ is transferring a significant part ofits programme offerings to this campus from 2011 from management, through economic and financial sciences, public management and governance, and initial teacher education (foundation and intermediate phase education, i.e. primary school education).
To give the campus a further edge, the Centre for Leadership in Africa is being developed, and will focus on the embedding of leadership themes in the undergraduate programmes of this campus, e.g. leadership ethics, values and skills, and modern management theories and practices. The methodology will include seminars, lectures, workshops, community services offered by UJ staff and leaders in SA, Africa and beyond. The joint programme with Harvard has been conceptualised as part of this renewal and will give impetus to the overall initiative to make the campus an attractive choice for study, teaching and research.
Ladies and gentlemen, towards the end of October this year, the Council on Higher Education released the Higher Education Monitor No.8 document entitled, "The State of Higher Education in South Africa". The report concludes by stating that, "South African higher education continues to make a valuable contribution to the lives of individuals, to the economy and to broader society both in producing graduates and in producing knowledge. The South African higher education system is the most robust and productive on the African continent and plays a leading role in education in Africa". This is very pleasing, but do we all have the same understanding of the very idea of a South African university?
It is important that all of us continuously mobilise our institutions to re-think, to re-orientate and re-energise institutions of higher learning: What are the roles of institutions of higher learning within a developmental state?
While acknowledging the pervasive power of the market, we need to remember that higher education is a public good, engaged in a developmental compact, which includes all people, rich and poor. In this regard, what are the responsibilities of a university as a change agent in transforming society? Also, what is the role of the university in the provision of post-school opportunities for especially the youth but also adults?
In raising these questions, we are calling for introspection, for self-reflection within the higher education sector about identity, roles and responsibilities of institutions of higher learning in this country.
Institutions, if properly oriented, can play a significant role in fighting poverty and providing development opportunities to the poor and working class. Ladies and gentlemen, it is for this reason that the development of this campus is so important. Soweto was first established under apartheid as a dormitory township for cheap labour. Government and private sector development is attempting to overturn that legacy but this institution can and is playing a particular role in the human and general development of this area. That example needs to be emulated in other communities where institutions of higher learning are located.
In the past fifteen years of our freedom, government has established the necessary policy and institutional frameworks needed to encourage knowledge production and its application to development challenges facing this country. As we seek to enhance our human potential, we look up to universities to continue to produce a new cadre of appropriately qualified graduates; graduates with the skills and aptitudes to respond to the growing demand for our economy and society.
Central to social and economic development, is the role played by universities as they adjust to and find their place in the changing national environment. The question we need to address is whether our universities and other public purpose institutions are indeed ready and willing to adjust accordingly.
The country has, since 1994, established political justice through our constitutional democracy and social justice by removing discriminatory barriers based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, language, or religion. Based on the recently published Ministerial Report on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions and Employment Equity Report of the Department of Labour, it is evident that at some of our institutions and corporations we have not yet established the cultural justice that would make our institutions inclusive environments, affirming rather than alienating people on the basis of culture and practices.
Careful and critical attention to the organizational culture and practices at our universities and other public purpose institutions is essential for advancing not only cultural justice but also to explore ways and means of increasing access in those areas of scarce skills such as engineering, business, agriculture and rural development.
Organisational culture needs to change if indeed the doors of learning are in principle open to all and all can truly feel at home in institutions once they walked through those doors. And again, as we reflect on the identity, roles and responsibilities of higher education, we need to assess how we have met the mandate for social and cultural justice.
Ladies and gentlemen, part of this mandate of social and cultural justice, includes the role played by universities and other public institutions as centres for the advancement of both human rights and human development. In formulating a comprehensive Bill of Rights in 1943, which was widely published as Africans’ Claims in South Africa, the leadership of the ANC identified access to education, including higher education, as a human right, while linking that right to human development, demanding that "facilities must be provided for technical and university education of Africans so as to enable them to enter skilled, semi-skilled occupations, professions, government service and other spheres of employment."
This was reinforced in the Freedom Charter which stated that "education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal" and that "the aim of education shall be to teach the youth to love their people and their culture, to honour human brotherhood, liberty and peace". It goes on to say that "higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit".
As we celebrate fifteen years of democracy, it is worth reflecting on how far we as a country in general, and as higher education in particular, have travelled toward these ideals. On its part, the government has since 1994 created the necessary policy and legislative framework for steering the system towards achieving social justice. The extraordinary growth in participation levels over the last two decades and the changing face of those attending our universities, (growth from 12 to 17% participation rate for 18-24 year olds; an increase of black students from 40 to over 60% enrolment) are the most obvious manifestations of the changes brought about by the new dispensation. Within the space of a single generation we have started to move from a racially elite system to a more inclusive system.
Our point of departure for the transformation of higher education, and in particular public higher education, is that it should play a central role in the social, cultural and economic development of society. In particular, it has to respond to the dual challenges of equity and development.
In order to achieve success in terms of both challenges, there is a consensus that higher education has to be planned, governed and funded as a single national system.
The 2001 National Plan for higher education provided the implementation framework for the five major transformation goals of the system: access, equity, diversity, building high level research capacity, and establishing new institutional and organisational types. Colleagues, the broad role universities have to play in society has grown ever more important for a South Africa that is grappling with the complex challenges of the current global economic recession, rapid social and demographic changes.
Ensuring that we harness the benefits of that change for a better quality of life for all and a more inclusive society remains our central challenge. Equally, we are ever mindful of the need to sustain and grow our economy in the context of the pressures of the global economy.
On each of these fronts, the government has identified the central and crucial role of our higher education system, a role that is reflected in the key profile and investment priority given to the sector in the country's strategic programmes.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is clear that we are now at an important juncture in the development of the higher education sector in this country. Government has already committed to very significant investments in higher education and research. There will be further investments as we grow participation and our research profile.
But the scale of investment is crucially dependent on confidence in government that the sector and individual institutions within it are delivering on the kind of outcomes the government expects and that our economy and society need. The department has a central role in ensuring that conditions are created where institutions can deliver on these outcomes. This is not to suggest that the department should, or needs to micro-manage the institutions.
A higher level of autonomy in our higher education institutions, combined with academic freedom, is a hallmark of our system and a key contributor to its success. But this has to be balanced with public accountability.
We all have to be more focused on what the sector is delivering and how what it is delivering meets our needs of today as well as our future development. We have to ensure that we get the balance between autonomy and accountability right, particularly when it comes to issues of transformation.
Together with commitments for investment in physical infrastructure, the reform of the funding allocation model and the enrolment planning exercise, there is now an important programme of development in place for the sector that underlines its central strategic importance to South Africa’s economic and social development in this century.
The fact that we now have a unified higher education system composed of institutions with diverse missions and as yet unrealised potential of working coherently to meet the many needs of our people and society offers great promise for the future of South Africa and we look forward to UJ's contribution to this endeavour.
In conclusion I would like to acknowledge the role played by our international partners, both governments and institutions, in supporting our institutions of higher education navigate the challenging transformation path traversed by all universities in this country in the past fifteen years. I also want to encourage UJ and Harvard University to consolidate and deepen the burgeoning collaborative relationship between the two institutions for the good of higher education in South Africa.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Higher Education
26 November 2009
