Date: 04/05/2007

Source: Limpopo Provincial Government

Title: Moloto: Autumn graduation ceremony of University of Venda

Address by Limpopo Premier Mr Sello Moloto, at the autumn graduation ceremony of the University of Venda, Thohoyandou, Vhembe District

4 May 2007

Honourable Chancellor, Dr Cyril Ramaphosa
Acting Vice Chancellor and Principal Dr JV Leatt
Members of council
Members of management
Mayor of Thulamela Local Municipality
Executive Mayor of Vhembe
Executive deans and professors
President of the Convocation
President of the Student Representative Assembly (SRA)
Our graduates
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

We count a rare honour and privilege to be invited to your institution to witness the passing out of your graduates in the fields of humanities, management sciences and the law. Having been established only just 25 years ago, the University of Venda (UNIVEN) is probably one of the youngest universities in South Africa. This is a boon and an advantage which must give the university the flexibility to adapt easily to any given situation. There is evidence to show that the university has fared much better in the last 25 years in comparison with its peers, despite its youthfulness. The collaboration we have with UNIVEN on the training of Community Development Workers (CDWs) and in other areas is an indication that the university has embraced the academic transformation and curriculum change in most of its disciplines. The teaching of community development work as one of the academic disciplines in particular, stands out, as one of the most striking indicator of the university's ability and determination to move with the times and changes currently taking place in our country. We are proud that the UNIVEN is delivering on its mandate, as it is promised in its mission and vision statement.

Mr Chancellor, our country is faced with the biggest challenge of skills shortage ever experienced in its developmental evolution. Universities which have embraced transformation should take the lead to ensure that this challenge is overcome. In fact, we expect that it should be the task of all South African universities to research and teach technically and socially relevant subjects that are consistent with the common challenge whilst keeping abreast with the evolving knowledge and skills based globalising economy.

It is in this context that our national government has initiated the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) in order to close the skills shortage gap. This JIPSA initiative has revealed the scale of the challenge which we have always been taking for granted. These scarce skills which have been identified by JIPSA hold the key to the country achieving the six percent economic growth rate by 2010 and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of halving unemployment and poverty by 2014. The skills required would include high level, world class engineering and planning skills for the 'network industries', i.e. transport, communications and energy, urban and regional planning, artisan and technical skills with priority attention to infrastructure development. There is also a need to focus on management and planning skills in the areas of education and health; as well as mathematics, science and information and communication technology (ICT).

All of the areas which have been identified as potential areas for increasing job creation and have direct impact on poverty as outlined in the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) programme like Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), bio-fuels and tourism will not be achieved if these important skills are not prioritised. The one area which is not given adequate attention is dealing with the literacy levels of the country. Experience in other countries has shown that this challenge of eradicating illiteracy cannot be left to government programmes alone. If we were to eradicate this, there would be a need for a popular campaign which involves every South African who is able to read and write. We believe that learning institutions, particularly institutions of higher learning, should lead this type of a campaign.

We as the province have had our own share of experience of this shortage of skills in the process of developing our Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (PGDS). For instance in the development of this strategy we relied more on universities like Pretoria and others which are located outside of the province when in fact our expectation was that local universities would have more information about the province than those located outside. There is still a need for more research in all the areas of our comparative advantages like mining, agriculture and tourism because we believe that the potential for economic growth and development of the province is underrated.

The provincial economy is still largely primary commodity driven and there is very little value adding or beneficiation in all our comparative advantages. For us to be able to meet the MDGs and our immediate challenges of fighting poverty and unemployment, it would be imperative for us to develop both the secondary and tertiary sectors of our economy. That is new product offerings and services related to these comparative advantages which will include agro-processing for the agricultural sector, the mining input supply services and possible downstream mining beneficiation.

All of our challenges, i.e. poverty and underdevelopment particularly unemployment can only be addressed if we embark on a process of value adding in the form of agro processing in the upstream and downstream mining activities and expanding the potential of tourism. This would include coming up with new product offerings which will then give us a competitive edge over the rest of the country.

Our interactions with the private sector in all these areas which we are convinced will increase the labour absorption capacity of our competitive advantages, pointed to lack of skills and the necessary infrastructure as a major obstacle to accomplish this objective. Through AsgiSA and JIPSA initiatives government has embarked on an aggressive programme to develop skills and we have already seen the revitalisation and recapitalisation of Further Education and Training (FET) colleges in order to meet these challenges.

Mr Chancellor, the main weakness in our education system has always been our failure to integrate the system from primary to tertiary level. Both universities and FET colleges seem not to be having keen interest in what is happening at primary and secondary school level. We have got a big challenge in the areas of maths and science and for us to be able to meet the challenge of the priority skills mentioned earlier on, there is a need to improve on the teaching of maths and science at primary and secondary levels. We do not want to be pre-emptive because we may not be well informed about your outreach programmes which are meant to mentor teaching staff at a foundation level but it remains an area of great concern to us. We firmly believe that universities have the responsibility to strengthen their community outreach programmes in order to overcome this challenge.

Our provincial Department of Education is working on an initiative for FET of teachers in specific areas of maths, science and commerce in order to bridge this gap. We are told that the challenge they are facing is the availability of tutors in these areas and the university may come in handy in complementing this work.

Our provincial government is also investing a lot of resources in skills development. Various government departments are offering bursaries in their line function. The challenge that we are experiencing has always been the uptake of students who are pursuing studies in those various fields. In many instances the bulk of the money is not being used because the required numbers of students are not reached in certain disciplines like engineering, chartered accounting and regional and town planning.

Given the fact that our development path is unique in the world, there is no model that you can easily refer to. The existing literature on the concept of a developmental state does not embrace the unique feature and character of our own government system. There is a growing need for documenting our own experiences and important lessons we are drawing in the process of building our democratic developmental State where there is more emphasis on consultation and sufficient consensus on any development initiative which is pursued. We hold a firm belief that the academic community must assist in this initiative of documenting this valuable lessons which are learned in the process of pursuing this path which we have chosen for ourselves as a nation.

From time to time we constantly get reminded of the fact that there are no academic reference materials to most of the complex challenges which our country faces at the moment, particularly at a local government level. If one has to give an example in this regard, there are very few texts in the market that have been written on such development concepts as IDPs, Local Economic Development (LED), Izimbizo, ward committees and CDW. This as we have observed leads to reduced confidence on the part of those who are supposed to implement these programmes, thus resulting in a trial and error management system. We have also observed in many instances that instead of coming up with viable alternatives, our intelligentsia is only obsessed with criticism of these initiatives.

Mr Chancellor, the other disjuncture which has always been a challenge in our country is the distinct gap between the academic world and the practical world of work. Our expectation would always be that universities are meant to prepare students and young graduates for the work environment and the preparation should involve equipping them with the necessary skills and knowledge to be able to fit in the labour market. It is equally expected that the young graduates will be equipped with the ability to search for information which they could not have acquired at school or that is not readily available at any given time. With the advent of technological advances throughout the world, it cannot be that we are still faced with this knowledge gap which is characterising our nation. Technology has made it possible through internet and various other platforms that you are able to access any information from any part of the world, even from here in Vhembe. In that sense our modern society is in a better position to deal with whatever difficulty or challenges we are facing than was the situation with our fore-bearers.

In the same vein, the notion of looking down upon FET colleges as a dumping ground for the less privileged or less gifted and looking at university education as the most prestigious training for the few should be corrected. In one of our interactions with the mining input suppliers early this year, one of the participants made a striking observation. He intimated that there is nothing in any university throughout the world called mining compressor engineer. This can only mean that all of your compressor engineers are trained on the job after they would have gone through basic technical engineering training. In this context, it is therefore important that institutions of higher learning should form strategic alliances and linkages with various industries. This can also enable practitioners from the workplace to share with academics and students their daily experiences with regard to new inventions and innovations.

Obviously, learners and students spent the bulk of their youthful life at these learning institutions. We know that the primary aim of these institutions is to provide a platform for students to acquire knowledge and skills for them to be able to enter the labour market. It is our expectation that these institutions should also strive to prepare them adequately for their future adult life. It is disturbing that in the country there is a notion of marginalised youth or so-called lost generation which have got no regard for the values we aspire to develop as a nation. It is therefore in these institutions where these learners and students need to be taught about such values as patriotism, human solidarity (Ubuntu), nation building and reconciliation. Our national endeavours of moral regeneration and restoration of community values of selflessness and the culture of service would not be realised if the whole of our education system does not embrace this effort as part and parcel of their responsibility.

Our communities still hold in high regard people who have university degrees. They remain role models to our people and any miscreant behaviour by such individuals is accepted as a good norm. Therefore, our message to graduates today is that as you move out of this university to your various workplaces, you must know that you are not only representing yourselves but a mirror image of the whole of the university community including the teaching staff and other students who will be following in your footsteps. Any miscreant behaviour will be associated with the university and the whole academic society of our country.

Our expectation is that when you get out there you should become real role models and continue to give a good name of the university by embracing patriotism, selflessness, human solidarity and be ever eager and ready to serve your people. You should know that your parents have sacrificed a lot in order to provide you with the opportunities you are now exposed to. Many of your parents may not be able to read and write but they saw the need to educate you up to the level where you are today. They did so because they understood that education is a weapon to break all barriers in life. We would appeal to you to take it from where they would have left, with the knowledge that learning is a life long experience. You must continue to learn in order to acquire more skills and knowledge for you to become responsible citizens.

Mr Chancellor, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all parents for your support and sacrifices you have made in educating your children. We wish and pray that your investments would yield good returns. We urge you to encourage other parents to do the same by investing in the education of their children because we believe that education is the weapon to overcome all the developmental challenges which we are confronted with as a nation.

In the same vein, we would like to take this opportunity to thank the university council, management, academic staff, SRA and the entire university community. We would like to say continue to keep the fires burning.

Thank you very much!

Issued by: Office of the Premier, Limpopo Provincial Government
4 May 2007