Minister Blade Nzimande: Real Centres 10th Anniversary And Wits Centenary

Address by the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, Dr Blade Nzimande on the occassion of the opening of the book launch celebration as part of Real Centres 10th Anniversary and Wits Centenary

Programme Director
Wits Vice-Chancellor, Prof Zeblon Vilakazi;
Wits Executive Management;
Deans of Faculties present;
President of Convocation;
Director and Management of the REAL Centre;
Representatives of labour;
Student leadership, led by the SRC;
Invited guests;
Members of the media;
Ladies and gentlemen,

Good Afternoon

Let me take this opportunity to thank the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Zeblon Vilakazi for his warm introduction. 

I am very pleased to be joining you today for a number of reasons. Firstly, to mark the centenary of Wits University; and say congratulations to you. Indeed, in celebrating a centenary we must not sweep our history under the carpet. The history of Wits University has been a history of uneven development, contradictions and a site of heroic struggles against colonialism and apartheid.

Wits University was founded as a mining school to support what we later called the minerals-energy complex, founded on the base cheap African labour and the super exploitation of that labour. The mining industry has historically been very central in what became known as colonialism of a special type - where both the coloniser and the colonised majority shared the same territory. We must still continue the struggle to transform Wits University away from its origins into become a truly South African and African university.

However, at the same time, as we celebrate the centenary of Wits University, we must at the same time celebrate the heroes and heroines who continued to struggle within Wits university. Today we must remember the likes of David Webster who was assassinated by an apartheid regime threatened by, amongst others, progressive research and researchers. We must also celebrate the many other academics and students who sought to challenge the dominant discourses and practices at Wits in order to build a non-racial and progressive institutions.

Ever since, this University has been the epicentre of knowledge, growth and social justice. The university has maintained its legacy of excellence by consistently providing quality higher education and staying at the forefront of innovation. 

This of course would not have been possible without the role played by distinguished former and current Students, University Chancellors, Vice Chancellors, Council Members, Labour Unions.

The university has produced many graduates who have made and continue to make their mark in South Africa and around the world.

Indeed, I regard the work of REAL as building on these proud struggles for progressive academic practice and research.

One such eminent person is our own current Vice Chancellor, Professor Vilakazi.

As you are all aware, Professor Vilakazi has been invited to become a fellow of the Royal Society, joining the likes of other luminaries such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Dorothy Hodgkin and Stephen Hawking.

Professor Vilakazi is an inspiration for all of us, especially at a time when young people need role models who have started from humble beginnings and with huge personal commitment and sacrifices who rose to the top of their professions.

Secondly, we are of course here to mark a very important milestone, that of the 10th Anniversary of the Centre for Researching Education and Labour, (REAL).

Thirdly, there could have been no better celebration than the launching of five books which REAL has participated in their research and production.

Before I venture into the purpose of our event today, let me point out that our event today takes place during the Women’s Month, which this year is celebrated under the theme: “Women’s Socio-Economic Rights and Empowerment: Building Back Better for Women’s Resilience!”

This year’s Women’s Month is a call to action to all of society, government and partners to take tangible steps forward in responding to the most persistent challenges affecting the lives of women and girls.

The year 2022 marks the 66th Anniversary since the march of approximately 20 000 women to the Union Buildings to petition against the pass laws of the country at the time.

I therefore call upon all of us to ensure that in our places of work we must implement interventions to transform the society particularly the transformation of unequal power relations between women and men. While also focusing on and addressing gender oppression, patriarchy, sexism, racism, ageism, structural oppression, and creating a conducive environment which enables women to take control of their lives.

I must also commend the very important attempts by REAL to mainstream gender issues in its research work. However, I want to pose a challenge to you and to all other gender activists, academic and research institutions, that the struggle to transform gender relations in society will always be half complete, until and unless we also begin to focus on the boy child and young men in society. The engagement and mobilisation of boys and young men is very important in even fighting against women’s abuse, as it is from the ranks of the boys and men that we breed perpetrators of gender-based violence for instance.

In your research I also urge you to focus on masculinities that are being forged in society, not least in education institutions and workplaces! I am for instance following and intend to ensure my own active participation, together with my two departments, in the the very important UNESCO led programme to focus on gender transformation and masculinities, with one of its recent studies and publication focusing on India, titled “Transforming ‘MEN’TALITIES: Gender Equality and Masculinities in India”

Allow me ladies and gentlemen to congratulate WITS on its centenary.

Congratulating REAL for its role in educational transformation

Allow me of course to also congratulate the REAL Centre on its 10th year anniversary. Perhaps not too many people are aware of the very important role played by REAL and a number of its researcher in the originating and evolution of the concept of ‘post-school education and training’.

REAL has been an important partner, albeit through critical engagement, in shaping the agenda of our Department of Higher Education and Training, in all aspects of its development. I can speak with authority, having been part of the founding of DHET, that without your research support, and of course critique, we would not have made the kind of progress we have made, albeit with many challenges that still lie ahead. Please continue along these lines!

REAL’s ability to conduct cutting edge research, offering teaching programmes and providing support to policy makers and regulatory institutions on areas of theoretical, practical, and policy concern has made it an indispensable research centre for the DHET, our country and indeed in Africa as a whole.

REAL, at least to me, has also built on the foundations of progressive research and scholarship in the tradition of the Education Policy Units (EPUs). What was the model of the EPUs? The EPU model was based on forging a link between, on the one hand, the struggles of South Africans on the ground for a liberated and non-racial and non-sexist South Africa, and, on the other hand, progressive research and academia. The EPU model also laid the basis for the many progressive education policies of the democratic government since 1994.

I must congratulate REAL for following in this great tradition, albeit in a new post-1994 reality, by ensuring that its academic and research practice is firmly located and anchored in contributing towards transforming especially post-school education and training in line with the overall developmental objectives in our country.

Congratulations on your achievements!!!

Real research agenda

Allow me to further congratulate the REAL centre on the five (5) books that we are also launching today, namely:

• Selling Out Education: by Stephanie Allais, 2014
• Knowledge, Curriculum, and Educational Preparation for Work: by Stephanie Allais and Yael Shalem, 2018.
• Green Skills Research in South Africa: Models, Cases and Methods: by Eureta Rosenberg; Presha Ramsarup and Heila Lotz Sistitka, 2020.
• Transitioning Vocational Education and Training in Africa: A Social Skills Ecosystem Perspective: by the VET 4 Collective, 2022.
• Higher Education and the Public Good in Africa:by  Elaine Unterhalter, Stephanie Allais, Mthobisi Ndaba, Colleen Howell, Christine Adu-Yeboah, Sam Fungwa, Jibrin Ibrahim, Tristan MacCowan, Palesa Molebatsi,  Louise Morley,  Siphelo Ngcwangu, Ibrahim Oanda, Mark Obonyo, Moses Oketch, Lerato Posholi, Cecilia Selepe, 2022
   

The dimension of REAL’s work of publishing in leading national and international journals as well as books is very important to the understanding of the complexities of the relationship of education to world of work.

These books that we are launching today grapple with the role that education and training can play to enable new entrants to access the economy, and for workers to retain their workers in different contexts and sites of education and training.

I will be delighted if the research that is captured in these books is sustained and feed into government policy processes in ways that supports government’s work. For instance, I would like to see you strengthening research into obstacles and factors facilitating work-placement as part of strengthening vocational education and training in particular. Please also interrogate my assumption that the reason why South African employers are way behind their counterparts in middle income and developed countries is because they are used to cheap labour. Is this correct? If it is so, how can we turn this around?

REAL is also focusing on a very important theme for our post-school education and training system, that is, the question of transition from learning to working. This is also a very important transition for our young people, as it often means the difference between remaining trapped in poverty or accessing post school education and the prospects of a better life. It is one of the most critical challenges facing South African society as a whole, especially the just under 4 million youth between the ages of 15 and 24 years who are neither in education, employment nor training (NEETs). The nexus between education and workplaces is particularly a complex one under capitalism, a system that relies on cheap (and cheapening of) labour. Research needs to help with the development of new models outside just of the narrow strictures of corporate capital.

The two most intractable challenges faced by our post-schooling system is that of articulation and recognition of prior learning. We can’t have a post-school education and training system without these two practices. Yet my experience tells me that there is still lots of resistance to these, especially by a university system that is still elitist and sometimes wanting to treat itself as an island that is distinct and distant from the rest of the PSET system. More research work needs to be done on this front to assist in breaking down barriers to articulation and RPL.

Related to the above, and drawing from the rich experience of REAL, another important area that requires attention is how universities should transform themselves to support the rest of the post-school education and training, particularly to strengthen (as well as meaningfully articulate with) the TVET and Community Colleges and the rest of the college system.

The relationship between universities and the college system is crucial in strengthening and diversifying our PSET system. It is also for this reason that I have published for public comment proposed new institutional types in higher education.

Our Department of Science and Innovation is deeply involved in the development of alternative sources of energy (eg. The hydrogen economy), and many other new areas like domestic production of vaccines.

This calls for new skills for green our economy as well as skills development capacity for new sectors of the economy. The DSI for instance has developed a Decadal Plan (2021-2031) on strengthening the role of science, technology and innovation in the development of our economy. REAL must help us in identifying the skills required for these priority programmes and how to accelerate their production.

I am also happy to see a link with the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (Codesria) in the book on Higher Education and the Public Good in Africa, as well as partnerships with important universities in South Africa, the rest of the continent and in the global North.

Your work further underlines the importance of strengthening social sciences and humanities in our university system in particular, and generally in the post-school education and training sector. In a way I am being proven right for having established the National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) in 2013, a year after the establishment of REAL, as well as supporting and interacting with the work of REAL as DHET.

Having said that, I would like us to strengthen the collaborations that the REAL Centre has with my departments and its entities. This will add on the collaboration that the centre had with us through the National Research Foundation (NRF) and   Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project on Pathways to the Public Good - Graduate trajectories – employment and civic engagement.

I would also like to see more collaboration between our centre with our institutions such the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) and the National Institute of Humanities and Social Science (NIHSS) which also produce leading-urge policy research within the humanities and social sciences.

Another source of collaboration should be with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) which is a leading scientific and technology research organisation that research, develop, localise and diffuses technologies to accelerate socioeconomic prosperity in our country.

All of these institutions are fortunately now under one Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, which make collaboration a lot easier than before. This ministry has created huge possibility for the development and forging of a dynamic higher education, science and innovation landscape, that is so crucial in achieving the many things that REAL is grappling with.

This strategic realignment further opened huge opportunities in the production of both knowledge and skills and with an enormous potential to contribute towards innovation in our country.

This integration offers the country with a unique set of strategic opportunities to realign, reposition and project their joint capabilities in new ways.

Furthermore, this integration is not simply to ensure greater administrative efficiency or bureaucratic streamlining, but to drive the post- school knowledge and skills development imperative more decisively, more effectively and with greater transformational impact in society.

It offers the country with a unique opportunity to realign, reposition and project the joint capabilities of the entire post-school knowledge and production system at the core of the national development agenda.

Within my Department of Higher Education and Training and my Department of Science and innovation, we also adopted a holistic approach when responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our government entities, agencies and our public universities had to collaborate to provide the necessary research and analysis that was so needed by our country and the world.

For an example, we made tremendous progress in developing South Africa's domestic vaccine manufacturing capability, whilst at the same time strengthening our epidemiological surveillance and strategic decision-making capability on the strength of the COVID-19 National Policy Data Observatory (NPDO) hosted by the Department of Science and Innovation.

Let me conclude by highlighting, as you probably know, that our Department of Higher Education have begun a process of crafting a one country one Master Skills Plan to promote a more efficient and effective mechanism for our country-wide skills planning. REAL researches played an significant role in the processes of the development of our Skills Strategy that we have launched to support the national Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Programme.

REAL has conducted evaluations, as well as conceptual and empirical research that has found ways to inform this policy in many ways. I would like to thank you for your contributions towards this important strategy.

We would also like you to be closer to the master skills plan development process.

Perhaps one way of summarising the importance of the work done by REAL is that it is making an important contribution in addressing what i regard to be at the heart of transforming our higher education science and innovation landscape, and that is the urgency and necessity to transform the relations of knowledge production in South Africa. It is a fact that our knowledge and its production is still very much embedded in the class, race and gender contradictions that are still pervasive in both South African society and academia.

As I have said, my ministry and its two departments see real as an important partner in journey to transform relations of knowledge production and specifically in our post school education and training system.

Once more, let me thank the Prof Vilakazi and the management of the REAL Centre for inviting me to join this important occasion.

Thank you very much.