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Rhodes University Graduation ceremony
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Speeches and Media Releases
 Education

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EASTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT

ADDRESS BY THE HONOURABLE MEC FOR EDUCATION : MR STONE SIZANI

ON THE GRADUATION CEREMONY HELD IN RHODES UNIVERSITY, EAST LONDON

19 MAY 2000



Mr. Chancellor, Vice  Chancellor and your Management team, all University staff, academics, administrative and service personnel, parents, 
students and all the graduands of todays ceremony, allow me to begin my address by expressing my gratitude and humility on being invited 
to address this august occasion.I am fully aware that the expectation on a day like this, is that, because this is an occasion to celebrate 
achievement, then we should all speak about issues of achieving, celebrations, and the like. Not that we are insensitive to peoples 
achievements, but we believe, quite strongly too, that what should be an important tone that rings through such, is the issue of life after 
graduation, which for me is much more the reason why we came to University in the first place. And so, Mr. Chancellor, with your 
permission, I would like to address myself to issues that unfortunately seem outside  of the graduation ceremony, at a superficial 
glance, but which in my view, do have a bearing on graduating. Such issues are for instance issues that have to do with the University as 
an institution of higher learning, and the responsibilities that go with that, in the first instance.

Second are issues that have to do with the curricula that we offer in our Universities and how those address issues intrinsic to society. 
Then thirdly are issues that address students and their studies and the relevance of that to the needs of our society. Maybe these are but 
a few of the issues that I would like to address tonight, and share my thoughts with you on.

Our particular province is blessed with five Universities and three other institutions of higher learning. The issue for us in Education 
is: If all five of these Universities that we are so proud of seem to be in competition about the number of B.A's that they produce, can we 
still say that in reality we have five of them. For I do not think that we want five of the same. Rather we would have loved for them to 
talk to one another about how each can help address the real needs of society out there.

I do think it is time for each of these Institutions to establish a niche for themselves that is different from the others. They cannot, in 
my view be all competing for students if they each could find their niche. It is our strong belief that the individual approach to planning 
will not take us anywhere. Rather we should sit and plan together, for the expertise that comes from one institution can complement the 
experience and understanding that comes from the other. If we went into that collaborative mode, then we would be addressing issues of 
cross  cultural understanding, and our students will be better equipped to go into the schools, for instance, to challenge the 
intransigence that is sometimes evident in the formerly advantaged sector; the intransigence that assumes that when the formerly 
disadvantaged move into the advantaged context they must assimilate and become like, instead of encouraging a new culture to evolve out of 
the coming together.

Universities are at least autonomous, and, we believe, they can set the pace for a fairer cultural understanding that the students take 
back with them into our society.

This brings me to some of the issues that are raised in the report submitted by the Task team on Size and Shape in Higher Education. I do 
not wish to go into the controversies that arise out of the document, suffice to say that it is in the nature of discussion documents that 
heated debates arise, and controversies emerge. However, I would like to refer to some of the issues coming out of that document which I 
consider relevant for us today.

In that document is raised the issue that I am addressing, that Institutions of Higher Education have a critical role to play in 
contributing to economic and social development, an equitable society, and a robust democracy through ensuring excellence and equity in 
teaching, learning and research

Allow me Mr. Chancellor to dwell a little on the latter issue of research, if only to emphasize a point. Of concern regarding the levels of 
research among our black people in particular.

There is a need for us to produce a cadre of black researchers for our country as a matter of great urgency. There is a need for the black 
perspective to go into our research culture, so that the hegemony held by Western standards and systems of belief can be challenged on 
academic grounds rather that on emotion! We need to say it openly as well, that research is not, and can never be the preserve of some 
institutions and not others. Excellent research grows out of excellent teaching. Therefore all institutions should become teaching 
institutions. Similarly all of them should become research institutions.

That was a short diversion. To come back to the issues at hand, I would like to quote from an Inaugural address given by our President, 
Thabo Mbeki on the occasion of his inauguration as Chancellor of the University of Transkei. This because it echoes the same sentiments 
raised by the size and shape task team on the responsibilities of these institutions of Higher learning. He said:

As Chancellor of this institution I believe that my primary responsibility will be to contribute to the creation of an atmosphere within 
which the ethos of the freedom of intellectual activity and academic excellence can be promoted, protected and guaranteed.

I believe, however, that intellectual and academic freedom can only find its full expression if it places itself within the larger context 
of the pursuit of the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

As a consequence of this recognition, he goes on to say, it is difficult to conceive of intellectual and academic freedom committed only to 
its own protection and pursuit, without reference to what those who enjoy this freedom should do about the vast economic, social and 
cultural disparities which derive from the apartheid legacy of race, ethnic and gender discrimination. Indeed it is difficult to talk of 
full academic freedom where many institutions of learning still bear physical and ideological features bestowed on them by many decades of 
apartheid and racial oppression.

Mbeki goes on to say, that we cannot confine the achievement of intellectual and academic excellence to the narrow realm of individual 
success.

Rather we should link that excellence to the objective of the emancipation of the people from the darkness that derives from ignorance and 
poverty, for the spiritual and material fulfillment that is the prerogative of all human beings.

Minister Fraser  Moleketi, addressing a similar congregation at the Border Technikon made the point that:

Education in the year 2000 has a unique and powerful role to play in the development of youth in South Africa as a whole. It needs to be 
put into the context of the realities of Africa generally, and the realities of South Africa in particular.

Issues of poverty characterize that context. The complex issues of HIV/AIDS characterize that context. These two maladies should be at the 
centre of our curricula.

In its editorial comment that was in reaction to the release of the size and shape discussion document, the Daily Dispatch had this to say:

Any initiatives aimed at rescuing tertiary education from what some critics have dubbed its terminal deterioration will be doomed to 
failure, unless they are coordinated with tandem remedial action to address the equally serious crisis confronting many of our schools.

Indeed, the editorial goes on to say, the decline in numbers and standards at many tertiary institutions is a direct consequence of the 
malaise in the school system. To fix the one we will have to fix the other.

Governments the world over, have the tendency of setting the goal that education be accessible to all children around the globe. As far 
back as 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights said that everyone has the right to an education. Again in the sixties, those heady 
days of post colonialism as some journalist has referred to them, developing countries set 1980 as the target for universal primary 
education.The Jomtien conference of 1990 put the alleviation of poverty through the eradication of illiteracy as a target for the year 
2000. However, a recent report by Oxfam, suggests that at the moment 125 million children around the world are not attending school. A 
rough estimate would, without any doubt, put a large percentage of those children in South Africa, and still a larger number in Africa. The 
target that the world had set was that by 2015 we would be able to achieve the target of universal primary education. The Oxfam report goes 
on to say that if we do not meet the target by 2015, then we are condemning one quarter of the next generation in developing countries to 
have no chance for economic development

This Mr. Chancellor is my attempt at justifying our focus as a Department on basic Education. The point I want to emphasize, however, goes 
beyond just basic education, but asks the question: If these are our intended goals, then what are we doing in order to ensure that we have 
teachers for all these children.

If one were to cite the number of primary school educators that our system has been churning out over the last years, the audience would be 
surprised to hear that I still say that we need teachers, and primary school teachers in particular. Beginning from the regime of the days 
of Bantu Education, right up to where we are now, it is my view that we have not nearly addressed the classroom needs of our teachers. Yes 
we have given them the pieces of paper. But we needed to have gone further to say, for example:

* Do our curricula for teacher education address the language issues in our society  the fact that ours is a multilingual society?
* Do our curricula take into consideration the issue of multi  level classroom on the farms
* Are our methodologies in synchrony with our transformation agendas that emphasize independence and the absence of an authoritarian 
approach
* Do our approaches speak to issues of independent and critical thinking etc?

These are issues that our curricula needed to have been sensitive to in order for our Education faculties to be able to say that they were 
addressing a need out there. This, Mr. Chancellor is still lacking in our Teacher In-service offerings.

We cannot afford to demy our children the basic right to an education, especially, as the statistics reveal, girl children from rural 
communities.

In a proposal that we were presenting to the British Government in 1996, we had identified the following four as areas that needed 
intervention in our Education, and it is our belief that our partners, as well as our teachers and parents need to understand that those 
needs still persist. These were

* Our capacity for policy development, planning and budgeting>
* Our capacity for management, especially at the level of our schools- therefore the training of school heads in management of the school
* The quality of teaching and learning
* The quality and the availability of appropriate teaching and learning materials, and
* The extent to which our communities were involved in the education of our children.

Mr. Chancellor, if any Institution of Higher learning were to say to me, What is it that we can help with in order to get education 
happening in your province, readily I would say Take this list of only five areas of concern, and structure your teacher education package 
around them, and in five years come and see the difference in our classrooms, the enthusiasm, which is not there all the time because 
teachers havent the necessary confidence to do all these things.

May I conclude then, by first apologizing if I did not go into the celebratory spirit that usually accompanies occasion of this nature. 
Nonetheless I should congratulate todays graduands and welcome those who are coming for the first time to the unpredictable world of work.

We need to come to a common understanding of what it is that we are grappling with in the human endevour generally, in meeting our 
countrys needs, and more specifically in meeting the needs of our own province in this context.

Once we all reach that understanding, only then can we say that we can evolve a strategy for addressing the lot of our people and for 
making their lives better.

Allow me to leave you with the words of a great African writer, Ben Okri:

Out of the wonder and agony of being come these cries and questions and the endless stream of words with which to order human life and 
quieten the human heart in the midst of our living and our distress.

Thank you all.

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