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The South African Communist Party (SACP) congratulates the University of Fort Hare, a public university in Alice, Eastern Cape Province, for reaching the milestone of a Centenary from 1916 to 2016. The University produced many intellectual revolutionaries who became active in our struggle for national liberation and social emancipation. The progressive role it has played goes beyond the borders of South Africa.

There is a significant number of African revolutionaries, heads of state and government who received their higher education and training at the University of Fort Hare: ANC and first democratically elected President of South Africa Nelson Mandela, ANC President Oliver Tambo, SACP and ANC stalwart Govan Mbeki, SACP General Secretary Chris Hani, founding Presidents of independence in Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana: Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Robert Mugabe and Seretse Khama respectively, and several prominent leaders of society in various fields of life.

Being the only university in South Africa that offered degrees to black people during its formative years, Fort Hare University could not escape the possibility of some among its graduates becoming turncoats against the people’s liberation movements. This includes graduates who accepted the apartheid segregation of South Africa and its partitioning into the so-called homelands or those who also served as the “chief ministers” of such Bantustans, among others Cedric Phatudi, Kaiser Matanzima, Mangosuthu Buthelezi.

It is ironic that Buthelezi, whose role against our liberation struggle leaves much to be desired, was selected to present the university’s “Z.K. Matthews Centenary lecture”. Z.K. Mathews, a stalwart of our liberation struggle, played an important role among those who envisioned the Freedom Charter and participated in drawing it up although he could not attend the Congress of the People in 1955 where it was first adopted.

The Freedom Charter is a revolutionary document. It is not some document for the so-called free market – the economic regime of human exploitation pushed by Buthelezi and his ilk. In addition, rather than federalist political enclaves, the Freedom Charter stands for a united, non-racial, non-sexist democratic South Africa.

Like all our universities, the University of Fort Hare has an important role to play in intellectual production and research and development towards a prosperous South Africa. In particular, the university faces the challenge of maintaining and further developing its credentials as the centre for leadership development for our country’s and continent’s goal of complete liberation and social emancipation.

The SACP calls on the Council of the University of Fort Hare, the Senate and broader academia, students and workers in general to ensure that it does not fall from its stature as a progressive higher education institution. The SACP particularly calls on the students of the university to embrace its progressive role and develop a scientific outlook of development.

The illustrious legacy of the University of Fort Hare must not be betrayed. The revolutionary values of the majority of its prominent former students must not be denounced. The Progressive Youth Alliance and its components have a leading role to play in this regard and must unite to give effect to this role. The Progressive Youth Alliance must ensure that the university’s progressive legacy is not hijacked and driven into a reactionary path, including liberal anti-majoritarian disguises of democracy while in fact they are engaging in a broader agenda to preserve colonial- and apartheid-acquired white privilege.    

The defining challenge facing South Africa as the University of Fort Hare begins the journey of its second centenary, is that of placing our democratic transition on to a second, more radical phase. This requires an intellectual cadre who is capable of developing and running advanced production, thus contributing in solving the problems of unemployment, poverty, inequality and untransformed ownership. Such a cadre has the capacity to break new, scientific and technological grounds through research and development, including discoveries and inventions, product and production process design and innovation. This are the basic attributes of an intellectual cadre South Africa needs to transform its vast mineral resources and primary goods into finished products, to diversify production and expand productive work.

Issued by the SACP