Date: 01/02/2007
Source: The Presidency
Title: Mlambo-Ngcuka: Opening of Unisa academic year


Speech delivered by the Deputy President, Ms Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, at the opening of the academic year, at the University of South Africa (Unisa), Muckleneuk Campus, ZK Matthews Hall, Pretoria
Dr Mathews Phosa: Chairperson of the Unisa Council
Professor Barney Pityana: Principal and Vice-Chancellor
Professor Neo Mathabe: Pro Vice-Chancellor Vice-Principals
Executive management
Council members
His Excellency Mr Aristide and Madame Aristide
Honoured guests, staff and students of Unisa

Introduction
First let me take this opportunity to thank the Council of Unisa for extending this invitation to us on the occasion of the opening of Unisa's academic year.

Let me also congratulate Professor Barney Pityana on the extension of his contract as the Vice-Chancellor of this august institution.

It is perhaps a measure of your hard work, leadership and foresight that the University Council has deemed it proper to return you to another term of office to an institution that has stood the test of time, an institution that is very well positioned to contribute to furthering access to quality education in real time, wherever it is needed.

We believe you have just arrived back from a Sabbatical leave in the United Kingdom (UK), where you had the opportunity to refresh your mind and refocus on some of the academic challenges for the year 2007.

We look forward to the rejuvenated Professor Pityana and wish the institution a fruitful academic year and all of us trust that you will be equal to the challenges faced by higher education in South Africa, in particular Unisa, this year.

Chairperson, the Minister of Education has informed me of the positive manner in which the merger of the former Unisa, Technikon South Africa and Vista University has been implemented. There are, of course, many complex challenges that have arisen from the restructuring process.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Unisa stands poised to expand and continue its contribution to the human development project of South Africa and our continent.

The launch of the new campus in Ethiopia recently is a milestone in the African Renaissance's long road to quality education of which our Department of Education and our President are champions.

Presidential Working Group and Social Transformation
South African higher education is in the throes of profound changes and challenges in consonance with the societal transformation engendered by the onset of democracy.

The Presidential Working Group on Higher Education has identified some of the knotty challenges confronting tertiary institutions in South African today, some of them include:

* Higher Education in the context of Africa and the world
* Higher Education and social cohesion
* the responsiveness and intellectual leadership of the Higher Education sector
* the role of Higher Education in a developmental state.

The above points criticality reside in the symbiotic relationship we are trying to forge between Higher Education and socio-economic development.

As a developing country with challenges of inequality and poverty we do not have the luxury of producing graduates who are indifferent to the conditions of their society.

Issues around cutting-edge research, social cohesion and the intellectual leadership and insights that Higher Education can offer for the improvement of the quality of our input into socio-economic transformation, as well as helping define Africa's identity and role in the world today, should continue taxing our collective minds all the time.

We are constantly asking ourselves the question: What role are our universities supposed to play in consolidating democracy, in the development of our economy through relevant forms of knowledge generation, and through broadly engaging with society?

Clearly, changes in Higher Education are not only about staff composition, student intake and gender considerations, but, equally importantly, the identity, character and role of education in terms of socio-economic transformation.

As educators you undoubtedly understand the imperative for higher education to develop and generate the qualifications, competencies and skills that our nation needs in order to drive its development agenda.

Socio-economic prosperity presupposes a well-equipped and trained source of human resources capital, capable of facilitating the required development. Indeed, there can be no doubt that higher education is a national resource, fundamental to the growth and development of a nation and its peoples.

Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA)/ Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) and Higher Education

Where previously higher education institutions served as sites of relatively autonomous knowledge production that may or may not have been aligned to the country's human resource needs, there is now an urgent call for those same higher education institutions to respond more specifically to national growth and development imperatives, especially as articulated in AsgiSA.

While continuing to do the work of education and human resource development broadly, JIPSA must address specific challenges in the short term with the broad education framework set by the Department of Education (DoE) and the agreed protocols with the sectors.

While all other stakeholders must do what they need to do to put our education on a strong footing in the medium to long term no interventions can be bigger than or isolated from the core institutions.

What has been done and is being done by our departments, schools, universities and colleges, who are the custodians of our education system, is invaluable and must receive our full support.

So how do we achieve the kind of synergy that is required to advance JIPSA? How do we ensure that our higher education institutions fulfil their core mandate while contributing in a fundamental way, to the growth and development of our country?

How do we ensure that Higher Education in South Africa contributes to the development of all-rounded, conscious citizens with the ability to participate in and add value to the culture and practice of democracy in society?

These are some of the questions we believe, should take pride of place during the course of the year as we continuously grapple with key issues pertaining to the role of education in modern South Africa.

The quality of higher education is clearly in the interests of the public, and plays an important role in nation-building and national development. We have raised sharply the issue of unemployed graduates, and it is important to say that among unemployed youth, the majority are those without higher education.

Our focus is to ensure that we reduce even further unemployed graduates and for universities to focus on ensuring our education is in sync with the needs and skills demands of the economy. Relevance in education is a make or break, and so are outcomes. Underperformance has to be addressed and the DoE has the huge task of ensuring that we get good results and the knowledge is relevant.

The DoE needs your co-operation to succeed.

We cannot underestimate the valuable contribution of higher education in nation building, in much the same way that a prosperous, stable nation is an ideal environment for the flourishing of intellectual thought within the context of higher education.

It is that kind of synergy that we seek. The view satisfactorily postulates the dialectical dynamic between higher education and government, and this is evidenced in the undertaking by our Ministers of Education and Labour, contained in the Human Resource Development (HRD) Strategy of 2001, to "provide a plan to ensure that people are equipped to participate fully in society, to be able to find or create work and benefit fairly from it".

The challenge, it would seem, lies not so much in agreeing that education and development are inextricably linked to the progress of a nation, but in ensuring that one is not perpetually subordinated in service of the other.

At the same time, a swiftly changing global environment and the concomitant need to remain competitive and relevant in a global context, together with a dire need for socio-economic upliftment, necessitates that we continue to drive development with a sense of urgency.

So it is perhaps inevitable that we should see a shift in higher education, from the emphasis on the individual and how best he or she can be equipped to further him or herself - a private good, if you will (that is still evidenced in most northern countries) – to an emphasis on the sector and the contribution that it can make to socio-economic progress - the common good - which characterises societies in countries such as Tunisia, Malaysia, Chile, all developmental states, like ourselves.

We also have a lot to learn from a recently developed country like Ireland that used education very effectively to develop into one of the most equitable societies.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, if education is to serve a useful and sustained role in South Africa's growth and development, within its own contextualisation of a developmental state, then it needs to ensure that education becomes seamless; that there is a discernible continuity from pre-school to tertiary level, and we must also address illiteracy and conquer it. In this regard our DoE is seized with an ambitious but do-able plan of advancing Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET).

I am aware of the tremendous efforts being made by the DoE and by educators across the educational landscape, to achieve that seamlessness. Those efforts must be acknowledged, applauded and encouraged.

Ladies and gentlemen, higher education is charged with developing a citizenry capable of participating effectively in democratic processes; with producing intellectuals who can engage with the most intractable problems of society, and with producing high-level skilled graduates and new bases of knowledge to drive economic and social development, and to enhance the overall levels of intellectual and cultural development.

In our competitive global environment, higher education must also drive research and promote innovation and entrepreneurship. Government is aware that the restructuring process over the past few years may have left some institutions inadequately equipped to fully address these challenges. We are also dealing with that. We are working with higher education towards achieving the kind of security and confidence in their core mandate that will facilitate even closer collaboration with government on JIPSA priorities.

The following has been identified as JIPSA priorities in the short and medium term:

* the acquisition of intermediate artisan and technical skills
* the development of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) skills
* retraining and employment of unemployed graduates
* high level engineering and planning skills for the transport, communications and energy industries
* city, urban and regional planning engineering skills
* artisan and technical skills - specifically in infrastructure development, housing and energy
* management capacity in education and health
* mathematics, science, ICT and language competence in public schooling.

I am pleased to say that even as higher education institutions continue to forge their new identities they are collaborating with the JIPSA task team to kick-start the areas identified for immediate attention.

Together and under the leadership of lead departments, the DoE in the main, and the other departments with a responsibility for HRD, the Department Labour (DoL), Department of Science and Technology (DST), and the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), we must also forge strong links.

Minister Pandor, myself and the Higher Education of South Africa (HESA) have indeed been working hard to harvest these experiences for the benefit of both students and university staff.

In my view as government we need to find a way of supporting more post-graduate students in critical areas in and out of South Africa and e-learning at all levels must be seen as a critical opportunity to leap-frog to the 21st Century.

Our task team is also receiving ongoing reports of progress from all of the stakeholders in the education and training sector and that is indeed heartening. One might feel tempted to say that higher education is coping quite nicely with both the demands for its core mission and the commitment to providing the necessary human capital for our socio-economic development. I must however emphasise the critical necessity for ensuring that the "skills revolution" is successful.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I wish to restate that the role of Higher Educational Institutions such as Unisa in a developmental state should be viewed against the background of, one, an understanding of a developmental state, which must be informed by a Constitutional perspective; and two, the need for partnership with civil society.

We also need to create a public environment that is supportive and proud of its institutions; an affirming culture; promoting prestige about and respect for Higher Education, bearing in mind that Higher Education must be better governed and managed; and must be more relevant to the societies they seek to serve.

We remain convinced that, with close and strategic co-operation from all stakeholders, all these challenges can, with time, be overcome for the benefit of us all.

I thank you most kindly and wish you a successful academic year.

Issued by: The Presidency
1 February 2007