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Rhodes University SRC meeting
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Speeches and Media Releases
 Premier's Office

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EASTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT

Speech by Premier Makhenkesi Stofile

at the

Rhodes University S.R.C. Meeting
 17 May 1997

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Minister Mohamed Valli Moosa,
Colleagues,
Students, and
Academics at this distinguished University



I wish to thank you for affording me the opportunity to speak to you today at this auspicious occasion. An occasion such as this always 
reminds me of my own many happy years of teaching as a theologian at the University of Fort Hare, not far away from here. It also evokes a 
strong memory of the hopes and dreams we used to cherish of the society that one day will begin to awake from the long nightmare we have 
all been traumatised by. It is good to know that such hopes and dreams have not been in vain.

In recent years, as you are all aware, there have been much discussion and often heated debates on the nature and role which universities 
have played in the past, and should play in the &#145;new’ South Africa. All of us, even you, have been witnesses to apartheid.

There is no simple, one-dimensional role which universities should play in any society. Their roles tend to be multiple and diverse, and 
change over time. However, there is no question that universities hold quite a unique position. Like the Greek god Janus with two faces 
looking in opposite directions, we can view university institutions as being concerned with the past as well as the future.

Of the past, there is much to talk about and much to do. As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is pushing known violators of 
human rights to come out with the truth, it also raises wider questions about the witnesses of apartheid - about the people who saw these 
things taking place, who voted for this system, about the kind of society - which had the audacity of calling itself &#145;civilized’ 
(sic!) - which bred these men and women of brutality. It poses very uncomfortable questions about where &#145;you (and I) were when this 
was happening’, what did you say, what you did not say, and did you do when it was happening.

I strongly believe that we all have a duty to talk about this past. Not because we want to live in the past. But because the past, not 
matter how you look at it, still continues to live on in the present. What we say about the past will have important consequences for how 
we - and our children - our going to live in the present and future. If we do, we may have a better chance to avoid what is presently 
happening in that Pretoria high school where black and white parents and students were confronting each other the other day.

I believe that this process of moral reflection should not be seen as a once-off thing, or reduced to a spectacle on television to which we 
merely have a passing interest, of no relevance to or affect on our lives. We all have been witnesses. Indeed, we all have been 
participants - actors playing different roles - in the drama of apartheid. The universities of South Africa, including this one, have been 
no exception. So you too, I think, have a story to tell.

Our universities, as both witnesses to, and participants in, this dramatic historical experience have a set of unique capacities to enable 
us to better understand how to deal with its traumas, its ghosts, its stories of amazing heroism and courage, its pain, and most of all, 
its lingering memories which simply refuses to do away.

Of course, this interrogation of the past is not unique to South Africa. It has been a tradition since Nuremburg after the Great War of 
1939-1945. It is happening in Bosnia. It is beginning to happen in Rwanda. And it has been going on in Latin America in Chile and 
Argentina. In a sense, it is gratifying to know that we are not unique. We know that human rights violations know no boundaries, has no 
colour or creed, and has been done in the name of virtually every ideological rationale - racism, nationalism, ethnicity, religion - that 
stalked the earth.

It is important that the categories, the language or discourse if you wish, in and through which this process is understood enables us to 
have a much better way of dealing with the future. I think universities are eminently placed to perform this role. I think we ought to see 
more research into the &#145;near’ past, more creative representations of this period, able to bring out the subtleties and complexities of 
the stereotypes which have so often been attached to black people, women, rural folk, and so on.

But universities of course have more than a moral and historical role to play. They are also preparing for the future in other ways. They 
are, or at least should be, very much at the cutting edge of the search for new ideas, new ways of solving old problems. This is where 
their uniqueness lies, in their refusal to over-celebrate &#145;certainty’, and their thirst for pushing the boundaries of knowledge 
further and further, and in doing so pioneering new frontiers in science, arts, technology, literature, and so on.

Think of the spectacular changes which have been fomented by the force or effect of &#145;globalisation’ over the past decade. It is here 
too that I would like to pose the new challenges to the university community, including of course, its students.

Nearly every facet of social, economic and political life throughout the world, in both developed and developing countries, have been 
altered beyond recognition. We are facing a world marked by far-reaching integration of the world’s financial systems, of trade, of 
manufacturing, of services, of technology in every field. Competitiveness, flexibility, adaptability, mobility and a capacity to constantly 
innovate, have become critical determinants of success in this new brave world.

Today, unlike before, not only countries compete. Regions, and in many senses, local towns and cities, are becoming integrated, dynamic and 
highly versatile geographical units of competition in global terms. Think of Catelonia in Spain, Silicon Valley in the United States, the 
Rhine in Germany, or the revival of major cities such as Manchester-Liverpool in England. Key to their success has been their ability to 
forge strong, dense and integrated local linkages around which local economic development can take place.

The Eastern Cape Province will have to rapidly find its distinctive place in the new global political economy because it is only in and 
through this new landscape that its developmental objectives can realistically be achieved in the post-1990’s.

If we do not, there is a very real danger of the &#145;centre-periphery’ type divide of the past continuing - high growth rates around the 
traditional PWV-Western Cape-Durban-Pinetown growth poles - effectively leaving provinces such as the Eastern Cape out of the equation; and 
perpetually dependent on fiscal hand-outs and development aid. This situation cannot be allowed.

This is where our greatest challenges lie - to think in the context of our role in the Province, as a potentially integrated social, 
political and economic entity. If we are to radically &#145;break’ from the past, we cannot simply rely on &#145;business-as-usual’. We 
cannot rely on old, and vested interests. We cannot rely on &#145;old buddy networks’. We cannot depend on old institutions and the 
traditional faultlines by which they have come to be defined. We need a totally new way to thinking, of doing things.

If you study the success stories of the &#145;Asian Tigers’ - of Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. - you will find a widespread commitment 
not only of Government, but of citizens behind the national economic and social objectives. This is evident everywhere you speak to people - 
in the civil service, in parliament, in business companies, taxi drivers, informal sector operators, and so on. Even though there may be 
many disagreements about various aspects of the National Objectives, these countries seem to have developed an ability to take the majority 
framework, and wholly throwing their weight behind it.

It of course requires total commitment to, and mobilisation around, a set of common economic and social objectives, with which every 
institution and individual can identify and work towards. This is what we need in our Province today. We have a policy framework in place - 
from the RDP to GEAR, and many sectoral policies for health, education, agriculture, land, etc. What we need is commitment.

We also need greater provincial unity of purpose around the specific policy priorities and objectives of the Province, within the context 
of our place in the nation and global community. We need greater networking, linkages, cooperation and exchange within and among the 
institutions and social forces that drive the development of the Province.

If we do not, one can only see islands of prosperity emerging around a sea of poverty, opening the way for the poor to seek refuge through 
crime in order to survive.

I want to pose some very real challenges to you today.

In the Eastern Cape, we have five major universities. Yet it is strange, no sad, to see how little real cooperation there has been - in 
teaching, in research, and in institutional development. There can be no argument that their separate creation and existence was driven by 
rational logic or sound planning. They were all created by interests very much bound to a thinking that belonged to the past. Why is it 
that we have not seen more movement in this direction?

In recent times, rather belatedly, newspapers have picked up the long-held view that the Province’s universities should work towards a 
&#145;super’ University of the Eastern Cape. Perhaps like UCLA with different campuses in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Berekly, and so on, 
with each specialising in particular teaching and research sectors.

Certainly, there is an urgent need for programmatic and forward-looking linkages. Take technology research and development for example.

Technological capability will increasingly become vital to the productivity, competitiveness and success of the present generation of small 
to medium-scale companies emerging the last few years. If they are break into the larger, more competitive markets, they will have to 
invest in, and draw on, constant technological innovation and development. This resource can be vigorously driven by university research 
institutes.

Information Technology is another emerging technology already making a dramatic impact on the world economy as more and more exchanges are 
mediated through sophisticated networks. We need to take early advantage of this technology - not only in the newspaper industry, but also 
in the way public goods and services are delivered, in the administrative systems on which Government draw to make decisions, in 
communications in the most remote rural areas, in distance learning schemes, and so on.

Already there are some excellent pockets of excellence in this Province. What we need to do is to spread this resource base, because it is 
only if one has a network that its full economic, educational, social and cultural advantages can be apprehended. The example of Malaysia 
with its Multi-Media Super Corridor project is a case in point.

I hope this convocation will provide you with some thoughts on how those dreams and hopes we used to cherish in the 1970’s and 1980’s can 
be animated in the economic and social life of this Province. I also hope that my challenges will be taken up.

Thanking you.

Premier Makhenkesi Stofile.

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