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Speech at the National Conference of the Education Association of South Africa
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Speeches and Media Releases
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 EASTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT
SPEECH BY PREMIER STOFILE
 AT THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION OF SOUTH AFICA
 AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PORT ELIZABETH
 ON 17 JANAURY 2001

Ladies and Gentlemen, Vice-Chancellor, Members of Faculty, Distinguished Colleagues and Guests,

The transition to democracy in the 1990's has once again sharply put into focus the role of the intelligentsia in South Africa. This 
question, as you may recall, confronted academics especially during the post - 1976 period when student protest broke what the German 
resistance fighter, Pastor Niemoller, (in another context) has termed the &#145;conspiracy of silence which prevailed after Sharpeville.

The &#145;problem, or more crudely put, the &#145;enemy (apartheid) was almost ridiculously easy to single out and define. It was 
&#145;them against &#145;us. You were either on the &#145;right side or the &#145;wrong side; the &#145;good guys or the &#145;bad 
guys. The choice was fairly clear : pro-apartheid or pro-democracy. That was then. In the post-apartheid period, it would appear the world 
is a rather different, and more complex place. Now, many of the certainties of yesterday can no longer be said to be the same as todays. 
The &#145;mission suddenly appears to escape any simple definition. Now, the &#145;enemy is poverty, unemployment, crime, inflation and a 
host of other inanimate indicators of social scale.

This raises the crucial question to educators : Now that the fight against apartheid is over, what are we to do? What is our new mission? 
How does such a new role relate to the States mission? How do we deal with a convergence or divergence in perception about this mission? 
More specifically, what then should be the role(s) of educators? How do they deal with the quest for new relevance in an age of democracy?

A good starting point seems to be not an esoteric search for meaning from within, but rather to look at what happens outside of these 
walls. In other words, educators can only discover their mission and role, in other words of one famous African scholar, Amilcar Cabral, 
through a &#145;return to the source  to return to the society and community of which they form an integral part.

&#145;Relevance, so to speak, will therefore not be found in the Greek classics, or through a nostalgic look into the past. It will come 
from the social validation which flows from the knowledge that your ideas, your knowledge, your efforts are making a visible and real 
change in the lives of ordinary people.

IMPLICATIONS OF THE NEW EDUCATIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR UNIVERSITIES

The new realities of transformation and development has placed an enormous strain on public and private resources in this country. Today, 
Government is confronted by rising and multiple demands for investment in nearly every sphere hitherto neglected by the past regime. 
Education is a critical area of social expenditure. And the education system is a vital underpinning of the transformation and development 
strategy of this country.

The budget, our main instrument, is under severe pressure by competing demands on the development agenda  whether it is housing, primary 
education, teacher salaries, infrastructure, or university education. Inevitably, in the midst of competing claims, universities are often 
feeling the squeeze, as hard choices often have to be made between basic needs and strategic priorities of our country.

There is also no indication that the squeeze on public resources, especially for the tertiary sector, will abate in the immediate future. 
Education, especially university education, is unfortunately a very expensive commodity today. This is not because of any depreciation of 
the status of our universities in the thinking of government. To be sure, we see universities as fundamentally crucial in ensuring that the 
benefits of our countries intellectual resources are harnessed in the interests of democracy. There should be no question about this 
commitment.

Universities are being challenged to play a catalytic role in realizing the strategic aims of the recent White Paper on Science and 
Technology in terms of:

* Promoting Competitiveness and Employment Creation;
* Enhancing Quality of Life;
* Developing Human Resources;
* Working towards Environmental Sustainability; and
* Promoting an Information Society.

Each of these challenges are very much bound up with out countries strategic position within a globally competitive world. Fifty years 
ago, the Oxfordian ideas of the mainly spiritual purpose of higher education may perhaps have gone down well. Today, this is merely a 
reminder of the age of dinosaurs.

We are truly living in an age when almost every facet of social, economic and political life throughout the world, in both developed and 
developing countries, have been and are being altered beyond recognition. It is a world marked by far-reaching integration of the global 
financial systems, trade, manufacturing, services and technology in every field. In addition to massive changes in industry, spectacular 
advances have been made in computer and Information Technology. The Information Age, as Alvin Tofler calls it, has already dawned on us. 
And it is fundamentally changing the way our economies function, governments communicate, individuals relate, public sector organisations 
work, and even our traditional forms of education.

In this brave new world, competitiveness, flexibility, adaptability, mobility and a capacity to constantly innovate, have become critical 
determinants of success.

Today, unlike before, not only countries are competing. Regions, even local towns and cities, are becoming integrated, dynamic and highly 
versatile competitive forces in the global economic arena. This is the case for example, in Catalonia in Spain, Silicon Valley in the 
United States, the Rhine in Germany, and the revival of major cities such as Manchester-Liverpool in England. Key to their success has been 
their ability to unite as a regional entity, and to forge strong, dense and integrated local linkages around which local economic and 
social development can take place.

We need to construct our development strategies  be they in education, welfare, industry, science, technology, etc.  as part of a 
National Growth and Development Strategy. This agenda should involve a number of strategic elements:

* accelerating the rapid development of our Nations human capital resources  both within the education sector and within our communities;
* harnessing the benefits of our Nations scientific and technological capacity to the interests of rapid economic development  especially 
small, micro and medium-scale enterprises;
* modernizing our public administrations and institutions, especially local and provincial-level governments;
* developing a nation-wide Information Technology strategy  in education, public management, service delivery, and industry.

This is where our greatest challenges lie  to think in the context of our role in the Country, as an integrated social, political and 
economic entity. If we are to radially &#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 fault-lines by 
which they have come to be defined. We need a totally new way of thinking, of doing things.

The strategy to deal with these challenges should include important facets such as implementation of the National Skills Development 
Strategy, the improvement and expansion of the quality schooling, transformation of the higher education, literacy, early childhood 
education, the further education sector, the integration of education and training; and science and technology.

What we need is a unity of purpose around the specific policy priorities and objectives of the Country, and through this find our distinct 
place in the nation and global community.

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.

We may not know where we are going, but we know where we have been.

REV. M.A. STOFILE
 Premier : Province of the Eastern Cape

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