Onderstepoort, 10 March 2000
Chairpersons of Council of the Medical University of South Africa (MEDUNSA) and the University
of Pretoria
Vice-Chancellors of MEDUNSA and the University of Pretoria
Staff and Students of the Academic Community
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
As the integration of our country and our cultures continues to gather momentum, building on the start that we made in 1994, it is about time that our higher education institutions become part of this endeavour. We know that apartheid was a vast UN melting pot of human cultures, determined to define blood from blood and culture from culture - often laughably, artificially, in order to keep us apart. And we know that apartheid created legal and other mechanisms - with higher education institutions playing a central role - to assist that mad ambition.
So we have a fractured inheritance, here in South Africa, and the question we face is: what do we do with it? One possible answer is that we should glorify and celebrate the historically black institutions -transform them from the educational dumping grounds that Verwoerd designed them to be, and make them bastions of the new democratic excellence. This is not a vision entirely without merit. Whatever the intentions of the apartheid rulers, the fact is that individual students and professors - black and white - made, and continue to make, valuable contributions from these venues that were intended as dumping grounds. Their contributions cannot simply be discarded.
But the real and difficult question is: how do we best enlist this defiant legacy - this asset that we remain with, despite the best efforts of the apartheid asset strippers - how do we best make it work for us now? Some have argued that the old historically white institutions were "organically" and "legitimately" linked to the mainstream - meaning white economy - in the past; and that, for different reasons in the present, this differentiation should continue.
I do not agree with either view. There is admittedly something romantic and appealing, as I have said, about the first view - that we should today celebrate the forced diversity that apartheid imposed, turning it against the intentions of those old rulers, moving forward with it in new and now positive ways. One can see the appeal of this approach, for instance, in the question that the Polish American critic Eva Hoffman puts. "In a splintered society, to what does one assimilate? Perhaps the very splintering itself?"
This might mean that we should glorify our fractured legacy. But Hoffman was speaking as a first generation immigrant into the life in that fabled melting pot, the United States. She attended one of its best universities and ended up, after a hard struggle to assimilate, as an editor of the New York Times Book Review. Hers was the classic story of the American dream - the white immigrant makes good. We cannot easily translate this romance to South Africa; here, with a bitter racist legacy still upon us, we must build differently.
It therefore gives me enormous pleasure to join you today to celebrate the launch of the new National Faculty of Veterinary Science. This launch is long overdue. It has taken some two and a half years from the time that the decision was made to amalgamate the then two Faculties of Veterinary Science of MEDUNSA and the University of Pretoria in September 1997, to this point when we are in a position to launch formally the new faculty. In fact, if the various investigations and feasibility studies are taken into account, it has taken much longer than two and a half years.
The long and extended birth pangs suggest a salutary lesson for policy-makers and politicians: that is, that making decisions is often a lot easier than ensuring the implementation of such decisions. It also confirms the international evidence on mergers and amalgamations, both in the public and private sectors. The evidence clearly indicates that given the complexities involved, careful planning and the building of trust and good relationships between the affected parties and organisations is a critical, if not central, component in the building of a new institution - irrespective of the time this takes. Indeed, the evidence suggests that most mergers tend to fail unless there is a clear commitment to making the "soft" issues - like trust, respect for each other, relationships, etc. - work.
It is therefore clear that the two and half years it has taken to establish the new National Faculty has been time well spent. We can take pride in the fact that despite all the difficulties, and sometimes, the pain and the angst, associated with unions of any sort, we have successfully navigated the journey.
The signposts are clear: where previously there were two arrows pointing in opposite directions, there is now only one arrow pointing to a new path that will ensure that the veterinary training needs of the country are met. The change in signposts is of enormous significance. It symbolises the beginning of the end of the spatial geography of apartheid that has continued to characterise the institutional landscape of the higher education system post-1994.
This state of affairs is clearly untenable both morally and educationally, and cannot be countenanced in a democratic society. It not only goes against the values and principles that are entrenched in the Constitution, but it also perpetuates the worst aspects of a higher education system that is unable to meet the basic human resource development and knowledge needs of the country.
The launch of the new National Faculty of Veterinary Science could not be more timely, coinciding as it does with the recent establishment of a Task Team by the Council on Higher Education (CHE). I have asked the Council to advise me on the restructuring of the higher education system, which as you may be aware, is central to the implementation of the higher education component of the Tirisano campaign, which I launched in January this year.
I have also asked the Council on Higher Education to assess whether the existing institutional landscape of higher education is best suited to addressing the social, economic and human resource development needs of the country. More specifically, the Task Team is to investigate whether the size and shape of our higher education system is helping South Africa to meet the needs of the 21st century, in terms of the teaching and research foci, as well as the affordability and sustainability, of our institutions and the system as a whole.
In this context, the importance of establishing the new National Faculty of Veterinary Science cannot be over-emphasised. It represents and prefigures, although on a smaller scale, the structural changes that are necessary and likely to result from a reconfiguration of the institutional landscape of the higher education system. It provides a glimpse into the future and enables us to imagine new possibilities for creating higher education institutions with new values and philosophies, new directions and methodologies and new reference points and symbols. In short, it enables us to imagine higher education institutions that are defined by their common South Africaness and not by the race-tinged lenses of our past; that is, institutions that are neither black nor white, advantaged or disadvantaged, English-speaking or Afrikaans-speaking, but truly South African.
The imagination of possibilities is the key challenge that faces the new National Faculty of Veterinary Science. The bringing together of two disparate faculties with different institutional cultures, values, philosophies and priorities under a common roof is no mean feat. We acknowledge and celebrate this today. However, it is only a small path of the journey that has to be travelled.
The real test and measure of success of the new Faculty will be in the meaning and understanding of the idea of a National Faculty of Veterinary Science. So what does this mean? It means that, given the legacy of the past, institutional mergers cannot simply involve the repackaging of old wine in new bottles. It is not, as I have indicated to the CHE Task Team, about the assimilation of one institution or one faculty into another. It is not the world of take-overs.
We cannot simply collapse the black apartheid institutions and personnel into the historically white ones - which could mean the mere disappearance of an important legacy. We must be smarter than that with our limited resources. So I throw the question out to you today: what do we do?
Well, the prize is this: It is about creating new institutions, with new identities, new cultures, new values, new philosophies, and new priorities. We need genuinely South African higher education institutions. We cannot have segregated institutions in an unsegregated state - even if that segregation is, today, no longer the result of law, but now of historical inertia. To surrender to this inertia is to allow the dead hand of Verwoerd to rule our day. And we can't have that.
The real challenge therefore that the new faculty must address is to give meaning to the idea of a National Faculty of Veterinary Science. This will not be easy. It will require enormous good will, sensitivity and hard work on the part of all the staff and students. It will require that the staff and students try to leave behind the baggage of the past that they carry, in particular, the comfort zones provided by old institutional identities and ties. It will require a single-minded sense of purpose and commitment to the common good. I have no doubt that the commitment exists. This launch is testimony to that commitment. But we must build on it.
So: how do we achieve genuinely hybrid, really South African, institutions? This must be a process of dialogue that transcends the barricades that apartheid placed in our path. It is a dialogue that I urge you all to join. But we must join this dialogue on the basis of a shared and unambiguous understanding that the objective is to build a new, hybrid, institution, and to end the legacy of institutional segregation. I urge that we all accept that at the outset.
I would to like to identify briefly five issues that require addressing if the new Faculty is to successfully establish itself successfully as a National Faculty of Veterinary Science. First, attention needs to be paid to developing a vision and mission that reflects the new Faculty's role as a national training facility that will meet the veterinary resource requirements of the country.
Second, the faculty's training programme must, through the development of new and innovative teaching and research approaches, address the diverse needs of the agricultural community: in large-scale and small-scale production, within the national parks - in relation to the sustainability of our wildlife species, which is critical to the development of the tourist industry - as well as to the needs of our domestic animal industry. This will require close interaction between the faculty and the relevant actors such as the Department of Agriculture, the National Parks Board, National Farmers' Associations - both established and emerging - and the agricultural industry more generally.
Related to this is the need to pay special attention to enhancing the post-graduate training programmes within this Faculty. Being a National facility implies a claim to excellence. Such a claim, however, ought to rest not only on excellence in teaching and scholarship, but on a first-rate research and post-graduate training programme as well. I am aware that the allure and profits of private practice may make it difficult for you to attract students to post-graduate training and research programmes. This is, however, a challenge you have to confront head-on.
Third, we must develop a balanced curriculum in relation to production and small animals. In this regard, I want to emphasise that the dichotomy that is often posed between production and small animals, in particular, the linkage of this dichotomy to the race cleavages in our society, is a false dichotomy. Both black and white farmers are involved in agricultural production and while they may have different needs linked to the scale of production, access to resources and extension services, they all require veterinary scientists to service their diverse needs. Similarly, domestic animals are not the preserve of the white community as is often suggested by way of caricature.
Fourth, strategies must be developed to attract more black students into veterinary science. This is critical not only in relation to equity of access in higher education, but also to the broader issue of equity of employment. I was struck by a letter in the Sunday Independent last week in which the writer suggested that although tourism has been identified as a key economic growth nodal, the tourist industry, and specifically the National Parks, remain essentially white in terms of the key staff that relate to tourists such as game rangers, etc. I cannot but agree with the writer of the letter that the success of the tourist industry is in part dependent on its ability to reflect the broader picture of our country and people. Professionalism and representativity must go hand in hand.
Fifth, an institutional culture needs to be developed that transcends the social, cultural and historical differences that divide the student body. This will require addressing attitudes and perceptions, as well organisational forms and functions in relation to various aspects of campus life: for example with regard to the SRC, in addressing issues pertaining to how students live together in the residences, to the extent to which students (and staff) from different walks of life are made to feel welcome and valued at Onderstepoort, etc.
In conclusion, I want to suggest that the successful creation of a National Faculty of Veterinary Science is critical not only in its own right, but also because of the possibilities that it opens up for change and restructuring within the higher education system as a whole. The lessons that have been learned in the process of amalgamation to date would serve as a valuable guide for any future proposals on the merging of institutions and/or faculties. And the lessons that remain to be learned as the faculty grapples with the substantive issues linked to the development of a new identity, new values, new philosophies, and new priorities, will similarly inform and impact on the broader processes of restructuring and transformation that lie ahead.
I am confident that a new National Faculty of Veterinary Science that we can all be proud of will emerge from the ashes of the old. I wish you well as you continue your journey into the future.
Siyabonga.