HESA notes with great concern recent reports of apparent plans within and outside the North-West University (NWU) to undermine efforts by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dan Kgwadi, to build a single, unitary, non-racial university that will enable equity, redress, and globally competitive teaching and research across all NWU campuses.
The goal of building a single, unitary and non-racial university system should determine how universities are governed and managed, and is explicitly set out in the White Paper on Higher Education Transformation (1997), the National Higher Education Plan (2001), and our Constitution.

HESA notes with interest that Professor Kgwadi’s efforts to build an integrated university are informed by the findings of an independent, international evaluation that was commissioned 10 years after NWU’s merger. HESA believes that the interventions that he is proposing, involving the restructuring of NWU’s institutional and academic design, are necessary in order to overcome fragmentation, inequality and inefficiency across all the NWU campuses.

HESA recognises the importance of protecting indigenous languages, as is enshrined in our Constitution and upheld by our legislation. However, HESA strongly opposes the use of language and/or culture, either wittingly or by implication, as a tool for advancing an ethnic or racial agenda. The protection of an indigenous language should not be used as a proxy for the exclusion or marginalisation of others, and the ethnic balkanisation of university campuses.

HESA therefore supports Professor Kgwadi’s attempts to move away from NWU’s current, federal model, which has resulted in unacceptable levels of racialisation. We call on the university community to embrace and support the goal of building a single, unitary, non-racial university, and a governance and management system that expresses this goal. This will best enable NWU to offer a wide range of educational opportunities to all South Africans, irrespective of race, gender, age, creed or any other marker, as envisaged by our Constitution.

 

Issued by HESA