Vice Chancellor: Prof Mashupye Ratale Kgaphola,
Chair of Council: Judge Jerome Ngwenya,
Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi,
MEC of Health in KwaZulu-Natal, Dr S Dhlomo,
Deputy Mayor of Ethekwini, Cllr L Naidoo,
Chancellor of the Walter Sisulu University, Dr B Bam,
Council members,
Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT) Executive Management,
MUT community and distinguished guests from corporations, government, high schools and state owned enterprises,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is a great honour to have been invited to be part of this university. It is with a great sense of service and responsibility that I have accepted this nomination. Having spent many years in various universities myself, this feels like a home-coming. I am a product of many histories that continue to form and influence me and it would remiss of me not to state right from the start that the struggle for freedom is the major part of these histories that has shaped my development and thinking.
We, the ruling party have always taken a conscious decision that education will be a key priority for our government, because we value education. Not only because Apartheid had deliberately kept us in servitude and education was used as a pivotal instrument of this subordination. Not only because without it, no country can ever progress. Not only either, because we recognise that education is the ladder out of poverty.
But because we want you to have the benefit of what a great many of my generation, in their response to bantu education, willingly gave up their chance to study. They willingly took up arms, so that you can benefit from a country that is free and where education can be used and valued for its place in a progressive society.
I want to quote the former President of the ANC, Mr Oliver Reginald Tambo, who gave an historic address to the United Nations in October 1976 and said:
"For the first time in the history of the United Nations, a representative of the majority of the people of South Africa has been allowed and invited to share this prestigious rostrum with the representatives of the independent and sovereign nations and peoples of the world.
This is a development of considerable significance, for which I most sincerely thank you, Mr. President, and this august body, in the name of the African National Congress and the entire liberation movement in South Africa, and especially, on behalf of the oppressed people of South Africa, including their children, the current victims of murderous repression."
The “murderous repression” that he referred to was off course, the response of the apartheid regime to the 1976 uprising of the African youth against an oppressive, inferior education system. I mention this to remind us all again that we would not be here today if it were not in large part for that youth of our country – the 1976 generation.
What it must say to you, every day, is that that youth of 1976, who did not have the advantage of the youth of today, knew that the trajectory of our history depended on them. What it must say to you is that the youth have always been counted on to play a central role in the shaping of history and more so will again be counted on to play a central role. This time, with our future in your hands.
Today, 21 years ago, Chris Hani’s life was brutally ended by an assassin’s bullet. At your age, he deliberately took a decision to leave Ford Hare University, with all its education implied, to join the armed struggle. Just this week, I have had the painful experience of burying two outstanding struggle heroes of my generation, the one of 1976. They died because of trauma degenerative diseases, borne out of the harsh conditions of the struggle that was waged so that we can enjoy the benefits that you have today.
I take this opportunity to call upon you, the youth to honour the youth who laid their lives for you. I believe you will understand me that you have a responsibility to ensure that which they bequeathed to you will be used to maximum advantage. Seize the initiative and honour them by building our beautiful country. And do so not so much in the streets, but in the lecture halls of the Universities. For it is here, through education and innovation, that we will build a strong and successful South Africa that fulfills the promise of freedom we all fought for.
I accepted the nomination as Chancellor of the Mangosuthu University of Technology because we here represent the most disadvantaged, even of those in tertiary education and that we here, under the inspired leadership of our current administration, have taken upon ourselves the noble core values that I hold dear, and I found that this is a place where it is possible to inspire the youth, support them that they may be the leading light to create a society that lives and believes in acting with integrity, that committed themselves to strive to excellence in all they do, that in all they do, they respect others, and strive to be at the forefront of technology. My faith in you has been restored.
I am glad to note that the MUT leadership has been seized with the important perennial issue of what is the role of an African university and to quote Professor Yesufu. What we need is:
“a new philosophy of … university education for Africa, in the hope of evolving institutions that are not only built, owned and sited in Africa, but are of Africa, drawing inspiration from Africa, and intelligently dedicated to her ideals and aspirations” (Yesufu quoted in Wandira 1977: 21).
And I would have added “universities that are poised to solve African problems, which brings me to the next question, which this university must ask itself: “what should that African university entail in our context”. We must find a way of removing the colonial imprint that continues to define our institutions – both in terms of curricula – what is taught and how it is taught.
We must appreciate that there is distinction between universities in Africa, and African universities. The former represent institutions that are guided by their colonial heritage in terms of what they teach and the type of research they conduct. It would seem that we drop the ball during our transition in dealing with this unfinished business of history.
We now have institutions which pride themselves for the kind of affinity they enjoy with those of located in colonial centres. They are divorced from the social, economic and cultural reality in which they are connected.
As we speak, our institutions seem to be by and large a product and mixture of both a colonial imprint in our education and also self-created problem. In our eagerness to ensure that our institutions are not held captive by the government of the day, as was the case under apartheid, we crafted our constitutional framework that cements a structural and intellectual distance between our institutions on the one hand, and society and government on the other.
In putting this constitutional framework the intention was to ensure that institutions are enabled to perform their critical function without government interference. We inscribed in the centrality of ‘institutional autonomy’ and ‘academic freedom’. These are aspects that we cherish. But like all good intended provisions, they have since been twisted and used as weapons to undermine the democratic government and the transformation project. These sacred notions have become an arsenal that is routinely invoked to oppose the transformation project.
This we did not anticipate, in part because we believed, and perhaps naively so, that the educated would have been the first to recognise the folly of apartheid and the self-defeating practices of racism in the academy. To our dismay, we seem to have made far greater progress on the political front than on the academic front.
It is also worth noting that while other institutions are routinely engulfed in student-management conflict, MUT is rewriting a different script. In part this reflects the sterling leadership provided by executive management. It also suggests that there is hope for our students - that black students may be prone to but are not necessarily or genetically wired to being sucked into a culture of anarchy and anti-establishmentarism.
Evident from this development is that crisis that engulfs higher education today is nothing more than prevalence of an intellectual crisis of higher education leadership. I have often remarked to the Minister of Higher Education and Training that the danger of naming universities after individuals rears its head when anarchy takes over and embroils in it the name of the individual.
The second de-linking relates to the knowledge project itself. Our point of departure is that society looks up to institutions of higher learning as an important resource that will assist us in identifying society’s intractable problems. In our country we speak of persistent inequality, degrading poverty and chronic unemployment. Our expectations are that those endowed with higher order critical skills would participate in the search and crafting of solutions.
If we are to be truly South African universities our activities – teaching and research will factor in those issues and problems that continue to bedevil our communities. It is about placing strong emphasis in undertaking research that is relevant to the communities that we serve. Certain areas of research suggest themselves
We look to you to deepen your participation in the transformation of your world. This will save government a great deal of money. In the period from 2008 to 2011 the Western Cape government spent R10.3 billion on consultants. Imagine if that money was invested in universities and you were the consultants, how much further we could mutually benefit.
I want to explore the notion of a winning nation especially in the knowledge economy. Successful nations are often associated with thriving economies. What is rarely stated is the intellectual empowerment and the kind of attitudes that characterize such nations. The notion of “failure not being an option” describes such nations and individuals. I am pleased to note that the executive management of this institution has placed the leadership development top on its agenda. In the end this is what would define our graduates. As Einstein eloquently puts it; “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
It would be our attitude to learning that would ultimately determine whether we succeed as individuals or a nation. It is for this reason that the ANC government has placed lifelong learning as key component in government. To address the challenge of unemployment, our universities must produce entrepreneurs. This would not come out on its own. It has to be cultivated. We should support our students across the board, and turn our institutions into hotbeds of innovation and entrepreneurship.
The importance of your Mission cannot be overstated. South Africa is faced with a huge challenge of limited and poor participation of young people in the economy. A salient feature of this poor economic participation is high persistent youth unemployment, which means that young people are not acquiring the skills and work experience they need to assist in driving the economy forward.
The challenge we face is therefore a daunting one: the overall unemployment rate in the country stands at 25%. Youth unemployment constitutes 73% of the total unemployment in this country. Therefore the ratio of youth-to-adult unemployment is about 1:3 - that means for every unemployed adult there are three unemployed youth. Our youth unemployment statistics are much higher than emerging economies similar to South Africa.
Unemployed young people tend to be less skilled and inexperienced. Almost 86% do not have formal further or tertiary education, while two-thirds have never worked. The overall determinants of the high levels of youth unemployment are a lack of skills for jobs required by the economy; young job seekers believe the probability of finding a job is so low that they do not even look; lack of work experience; lack of job search capabilities and networks; companies find it risky and costly to employ young people; the rate of population growth among youth far exceeds the number of jobs created by the economy.
The South African Government has recognised the problem of poor economic participation of young people and has put in place numerous policy interventions geared towards bringing youth into the mainstream of the economy to enhance social inclusion and cohesion. Through a number of these initiatives and programmes, government is dealing with the problems of young graduates’ entry into the economy.
Since becoming a separate portfolio, the Department of Higher Education and Training has become the major political and policy actor in promoting the interface between science, technology, and innovation at tertiary level. In 2011, the total headcount in our 23 universities reached around 938 000 which is a 12% growth from the 2009 baseline. In terms of the National Development Plan (NDP) target, enrolments are expected to reach 1.62 million by 2030.
There have also been very encouraging benchmarks in post-graduate study: research Masters Graduates increased by 30% and doctoral graduates by 18% in 2012, many of them in disciplines related to science and technology.
With a very short turnaround and in the cooperation with Treasury, an additional R1 billion was made available for student bursaries this year through the National Financial Aid Scheme. But most tellingly about our commitment to university education is the fact that this government has devoted R26.2 billion to university education for 2012/13.
Even though South Africa ranks quite well in how we have managed to bridge the complex and difficult technological and innovation divide compared to our peers at similar levels of development, we still have some way to go in meeting this often frustrating and difficult challenge.
There are few germane issues here. Learning opportunities for innovation as you might well appreciate at MUT originate from a variety of sources. These include investments in new machinery and equipment, those who supply these, the mobility of labour, the interaction with other knowledge agents, and the strength of our trade and investment platforms. Then we need the capacity to export and supply global value chains as part of this process.
But since learning does not occur automatically and without costs, we are constantly challenged to put in place appropriate incentives, policies, and institutions that enable and promote dynamic opportunities for national innovation systems. This is key for promoting learning and knowledge accumulation in a manner that is coherent with the overall technological development objectives in South Africa; and quite fundamentally in ways that move the NDP forward.
In a country such as ours, we will find it increasingly difficult as a government and a society if we do not use the gains and benefits from science, technology, and innovation to raise our living standards, to feed our growing population, to keep our children healthy, to protect our environment, to improve our the standards and quality of our education system, and to generate jobs if we do not find cost effective and smarter ways of managing our growth and development challenges.
For these reasons, I will be very interested in understanding how MUT can ensure the development of socially useful interventions and processes that could advance our national development agenda in addressing the triple scourge of poverty, inequality, and unemployment.
And here there are several obstacles that we should be aware of. The first is how to finance often costly technology acquisition and innovation in an environment where we continue to feel the centrifugal effects of the 2008 global financial crisis and where our fiscal position at national level might not be as responsive to our short-, medium-, and long-term development needs as we would like.
Hence, mobilising resources for technological development remains a very important goal for all concerned in the public and private sectors. Secondly, there is the issue of incentives where considerations of the exigencies of the market, job opportunities, earning potential, and other commercial drivers all exert a strong gravitational pull on approaches, strategies, and methodologies of incentive structures.
In a country like South Africa, there is a need for a type of proactive policy agenda that focuses squarely on the extent to which science, technology, and innovation is able to address the needs of the poorest sections of our populations in a manner that is consequential for our social stability and democratic future.
Thirdly, we come to the question of information and how we collect, harmonise, and manage data in a more coherent way to support better decision- and policy-making as learning institutions and as government. The public’s right to know is a cornerstone in engaging all relevant stakeholders in sustainable development.
I must, at this point congratulate the Mangosuthu University of Technology in that this institution has played a very important and catalytic systemic role in both shaping and advancing the frontiers of higher education in science and technology. The vision statement of MUT eloquently sets out its essential purpose and core values as a vibrant and integral part of the broader tapestry of higher education in science and technology in South Africa.
The different dimensions of that vision speak to the pioneering mandate of MUT in providing strategic platforms for standards of excellence which respond to several imperatives. These include superior performance in the disciplines of MUT’s specialisation; providing the kinds of opportunities for historically disadvantaged students in a manner that promotes socio-economic advancement; placing a premium on teaching and learning which is complemented by investment in applied research and innovative technologies; and developing a robust interface for social and community engagement not only in this province but across the country and the Southern African region.
MUT is well ahead of the curve in this respect because of the necessity to make technology and innovation more participatory and inclusive so that there is public engagement in the scientific endeavour by the full spectrum of social actors such as women, youth, and communities.
In the NDP, issues of science and technology are very important for delivering on the range of targets and thematic objectives which it anticipates meeting. These include matters of national concern such as environmental protection, containing health epidemics, improving our physical infrastructure, mitigating the effects of climate change, providing creative opportunities for entrepreneurship, and enhancing the scope of growth in our human capital.
Ironically, much of the required basic technology is already available in the public domain but access and linkage to the required bases of knowledge and skills is neither automatic nor without cost burdens. It calls for investments in dynamic capabilities, especially those that MUT seeks to promote as national public goods across its various sub-disciplines in Engineering, Management Sciences, and Natural Sciences.
This is where I imagine that MUT can make an enduring contribution by fostering home-grown innovations where it has a competitive and comparative advantage as an institution dedicated to teaching and research. As part of our outreach, we have to encourage and demonstrate the value of science and technology education in primary and high schools.
Then we need better developed research poles that facilitate partnerships and joint ventures in critical areas of complementarity and in ways that also develop the necessary synergies with the private sector. And finally, we share interconnectedness with our region, the continent, and the world which we should nurture in the interests of learning and as brokers of knowledge.
Our domestic transformation challenges and our location in the international political economy have had direct implications on our growth prospects Even though GDP growth averaged 3 per cent between 1994 and 2003 and increased to 4-5 per cent up to the global financial crisis in 2008, the levels of poverty, inequality, and joblessness have rissen because of deep-rooted structural problems.
Between 18 and 24 million South Africans live in poverty, of which 8 to 10 million live in extreme poverty. Equally worrisome is that these levels of poverty have pronounced spatial, racial, and gender dimensions. When it comes to inequality, South Africa has one of the most skewed income distributions among developing countries.
Put another way, the poorest 40 per cent of mostly black households account for less than 10 per cent of total expenditure; while the richest 10 per cent of mostly white households consume 45 per cent of total expenditure. To compound the challenge, there is a strong statistically relevant correlation between poverty, inequality, and unemployment. If we take measures of household income, more than 80 per cent of households in the bottom fifth of our population have no jobs.
These challenges take on added significance because they tear at the very fabric of our society and help to explain why the government has adopted a strong policy and institutional orientation in moving South Africa inexorably and unambiguously towards a developmental state based on greater social inclusion, economic growth, and where the state plays a greater guiding and leadership role in delivery. In this developmental framework, skills and education initiatives have featured very prominently as a key driver.
As the incoming Chancellor of MUT and in view of the development challenges I have tried to elaborate, I would like to support all efforts that will continue to make MUT a relevant, confident, and responsive academic and intellectual home of science, technology, and innovation.
This must crucially be linked to its mandate as one of South Africa’s pre-eminent centres of excellence in teaching and research. In this regard, MUT has made great strides in maintaining the relevance of its programmes of study and research, ensuring high-quality teaching which places its graduates in a very favourable position to enter the labour market, and providing the incentive structure to attract creative and committed staff and faculty.
In terms of the benchmarks of the NDP, there is now greater scope for collaborative teaching and research relationships between relevant government agencies, universities such as MUT, technikons, industry, and other science, engineering, and technology institutions. This is important since science and technology are two sides of the same coin and both affect our society as a whole.
Harnessing our collective energy and capacity in science and technology is thus a critical part of our developmental enterprise and human experience as South Africans. I look forward to the challenge of being part of the MUT community and helping it to become a major part of the great cycle of virtue in science, technology, and innovation as well as in the promotion of progress and prosperity in South Africa.
Since my nomination as Chancellor, I have acquainted myself with the MUT and I am pleased to note that an all-male college that started with 15 students in 1979 has today grown to 10 000 students, with an approximately 50% split of males and females; I am also pleased to see a diverse MUT Council and leadership within the University itself.
I note from the MUT website that the highest improved pass rates in the past year (2013) were from the Engineering Faculty, whose laboratory was officially opened by DHET in 2011. I am happy to be associated with MUT, which currently is the only University in the country that I have heard of that is an alcohol free campus for students.
In conclusion, I am very honoured that I should be the first woman Chancellor of the Mangosuthu University of Technology. I am surprised that it took you so long to realise that in woman resides so much wisdom, dedication and care. I hope you will stay on this road and that the next Chancellor will again be a woman.
I pledge myself to serve you with dedication. I invite you to partner with my institutions SITA, the State Information Technology Agency and the CPSI, the Centre for Public Service Innovation.
In the words of Frantz Fanon, “each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it”. My generation is proud that we discovered and fulfilled our mission. The rest is in your hands.
Mr Vice Chancellor and members of the Council, it is with great humility that I accept the position of Chancellor of the Mangosuthu University of Technology.
I thank you!
