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University of Fort Hare Graduation ceremony
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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

UNIVERSITY OF FORT HARE GRADUATION CERAMONY , ALICE

7 MAY 1999

Honourable Chancellor Govan Mbeki,
 Acting Vice-Chancellor, Chairman of Council and Councillors,
 Members of Senate and Faculty, Graduants,
Students, Parents and Distinguished Guests,



I wish to greet you on behalf of the Eastern Cape Provincial Government on this most auspicious day. It is a great honour for me to address 
this historic university on a day that has always been a very special part of our academic tradition: graduation. I guess I cannot be seen 
as a visitor to this place. Like many of you, my own life has been tied in intricate ways to the history of this glorious institution. For 
many of the 'old guard' sitting in this audience, I am sure you cannot think of a life outside of Fort Hare. And I guess for many graduants 
sitting here today, Fort Hare will always remain a part of you long after you had left this institution.

So today, I shall be speaking to you not as a Premier, but as a colleague, not as only as a member of Government, but as a member of 
Convocation, and as someone who, like many of you, holds this institution's future fate very dearly.

It is also a special privilege to speak to you on this day in the presence of our most esteemed Chancellor, the honourable Comrade Govan 
Mbeki. 'Oom Gov', as he is affectionately known throughout this part of the world, has been Chancellor for the last five years. Under his 
chancellorship, this University has seen many important changes. Today, we know that Oom Gov shall be standing down. And I want to make use 
of this opportunity to salute you for the commitment that you had shown to this institution. I want to salute you for the dignity and 
impeccable leadership that you had shown to us. For me, this demonstrates the quality of our leadership - many of whom themselves have 
graduated from this fabulous university.

But I shall also hope that as Oom Gov steps down, we shall not be robbed of his presence, that we shall continue to draw on his wisdom, his 
courage, his strength, his intellectual energy and his vision for a better tomorrow.

As we say goodbye - but not farewell! - to our esteemed Chancellor, we also take great pleasure in celebrating the coming of academic age 
of our new graduates! For like all youth, they hold the key to the future of this country.

1. Message to Our New Graduands:

After today, many of you shall be entering another world for the first time - the world of work. It is not going to be easy. And you may 
have to learn things the hard way in making the journey in life. But it is a road that we have must all travel. It is a journey that begins 
with one step. And you have taken that first bold step. You have passed a difficult challenge: the challenge of mastering the knowledge and 
skill to help you find your way into the future. Now you have to take the next step.

I think you know that the world has changed dramatically from the time you first had set foot on campus. And it is changing faster by the 
day. These changes will demand much greater resilience on your part - more than any of your predecessors. The brave new world requires 
considerable skill to choose the right career options, to be entrepeneurial, to be innovative and creative in starting your own businesses, 
to be inventive, to make your own opportunities in order to succeed.

You must remember: larger numbers of graduates, often with higher qualifications, are continuously streaming from our universities and 
technikons onto the market place. Having a degree, however important, is no longer a unique selling point. You will have to develop an 
ability to market yourself - not something a strong part of our culture. You will have to compete with others in finding jobs that are 
increasingly scarce and progressively more demanding not only in terms of abstract knowledge, but concrete skill and commitment.

Our economy is now more and more competitive than ever. We are living in a more open economy than before. Money, goods, services, people 
and skills move faster and faster as global forces dictate the pace of economic change in this country. We may not like this reality. But 
we cannot stop it. We have to creatively live with it.

Our graduands will have to look beyond traditional places of work. Before, when the system of apartheid was still in place, government or 
the civil service was seen as one of the few place of employment for many graduants. Today, this is no longer the only option. Neither 
should it be. Yes, Government needs more skilled and capable people to manage public resources for transformation. Yes, we need more 
managers. But not all public service jobs are made up by managers. And it is not only enough to have a formal qualification to be a 
manager.

Moreover, Government believes that we must dramatically expand the frontiers of economic empowerment in this country. Everything depends on 
our ability to succeed in achieving this vital objective. Our graduands must find their way into the wider market economy. This economy 
requires new types of skills, new knowledge, new ways of doing things. And if your formal studies at Fort Hare did not teach you all what 
you need to make it in this brave new world, you have to discover ways of equipping yourself to match the competitive challenges of the 
future.

In beginning something, you need not feel alone or act as individuals. Groups or networks of students should club together, and begin 
initiatives aimed at starting projects that can attract funding from government or other development agencies.

There are many new areas where Government has stimulated new opportunities for new graduants. For the past five years, much energy has gone 
into into small, medium and micro-business development. We have started major public works initiatives to ensure more job creation. We have 
launched the Skills Development Act to encourage the economy to recognise new types of skills and learnerships to foster skill formation in 
the workplace. We have also invested into the 'new economy' - those sectors of the economy that may be the driving forces of future growth. 
The Year of Science and Technology is an expression of our determination to not only create an awareness of the new technological 
challenges, but to actively stimulate more and more movement of our students into careers that will take advantage of technology-based 
forms of economic growth and development.

But our graduants must not only look at utilizing this new knowledge in finding a job in an existing economic system - a passive approach. 
They must also look at ways to creating business initiatives for themselves and for their communities. Remember: the script for the future 
is still being written as we sit here today. You can be the authors of that future. You can begin your own initiatives. If you need 
inspiration, simply take a look at the new role models of successful enterprises that are springing up all over this country.

Let me now turn to the institution from where you have graduated. Here again, I am speaking as a member of convocation, as one who sees 
himself as still very much part of the extended community of Fort Hare.

2. Our University at the Crossroads:

Over the past five years, since the early nineties, Fort Hare had been at the forefront of many changes. We were the first university to 
take the lead in bringing to an end the strangehold of the apartheid years. It was here where the transformation project had found its 
roots. It was at Fort Hare where students, academics and workers alike had swept away the vestiges of the old order. It was here where the 
revolution in our education system had begun.

And yet, we find ourselves today in a situation where it is hard to remember the great spirit that was there at the beginning of the 
nineties when things were starting to change - the optimism, the joy, and the confidence in a new beginning. Today, Fort Hare is finding 
itself at a crossroads.

For the past two years, you have been going through some difficult times. Clearly, the university is faced with enormous challenges:

* Spiralling financial debt and major expenditure difficulties;
* Declining student numbers against strong competition from other institutions;
* Serious weaknesses in internal management systems;
* Gradual loss of many good academics (to government, private sector, etc.);
* A general decline in staff morale and institutional prestige.

Now, my view is that these problems can probably be cited as characteristic to many of our tertiary institutions. So, we are not alone. But 
your problems are serious. And I feel strongly that you should take these problems as challenges that can and should be overcome. They have 
been created by human beings. And they can be 'uncreated' by ourselves.

In my view, you have made the right decision to bring about a change in management - so that an atmosphere is created for the challenges 
ahead. We welcome and support the appointment of the new Management team under the leadership of the Vice-Chancellor. We are encouraged at 
the support and solidarity shown by the structures to the new team. And we hope this support will continue in the task that lies ahead.

But it must be remembered that Fort Hare's problems are not simply one of weak leadership in the past. Its problems have to do with 
critical structural problems that face the university. Even if you have the best of managers, and weak systems, this is not likely to make 
a major difference. We have the lesson of the public service to demonstrate this point.

Moreover, we can no longer simply look at the past in establishing the reason for our existence. Yes, the past is important. We will and we 
should never forget it, because it is our barometer for the future. But the future is also important. It is to the future that we should 
turn our heads.

In the next few years, this university community shall have to make some difficult decisions regarding the type of future it wants. It must 
begin to pose fundamental questions about the type of university it wants to be. Like others, it cannot be good at everything. Like others, 
it will have to find its own unique strengths. Like others, you will have define your special niche in the academic and social marketplace.

Yet, Fort Hare cannot be alone in deciding on its future. It is part of the life of this community, a part of the wider South Africa. So, 
in answering the question as to the type of university you want to create, I would urge you to speak to the community, to its various 
stakeholders: ask them what type of education they want for their children in the future. I would urge you to speak to commerce, industry, 
agriculture and to government about what type of skill and knowledge is relevant for the future.

3. Implications of the New Educational Framework:

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. This is clear from the RDP as much as it is evident in the many sectoral policies which had seen the light of day 
the past 2 years or so.

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 our 
commitment.

However, like many other countries, including industrialized democracies like the US and Britain, fiscal constraints have meant that the 
universities are forced to operate on very different grounds than before. Traditional ways can no longer work. The times have changed. Our 
circumstances are different from ten or twenty years before. For university management, it cannot be &#145;business as usual. In the 
context of scarcity of resources, the logical thing to do, it seems to me, is to focus our energies on the vital skills and knowledge 
required for our workforce of the future.

To this end, a new policy framework for the education sector has been developed in the White Papers on Education and Science and 
Technology. Curriculum 2005 remains to be our most potent challenge. A generation of hard work lies ahead in converting our current 
educational institutions to promote and develop the eight (8) learning areas enunciated in the White Paper on Education, and the 
developmental vision laid out in the White Paper on Higher Education.

Similarly, 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 our 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.

4. Finding New Meanings to Our Existence:

We are living on the edge of the post-modern reality. In less than a decade, we have seen quite spectacular changes throughout the world, 
more extensive in scope and intense in tempo than any other similar period in human history. If future historians write back about the end 
of this millennium, I am sure that the words rapid and constant change would be written all over their texts.

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 organizations 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 Catelonia 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.

Within this country, similar trends are about to happen. And we cannot sit still and await hand-outs from Pretoria. Our 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-1990s.

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

* accelerating the rapid development of our Provinces human capital resources - both within the education sector and within our 
communities;
* harnessing the benefits of our Provinces 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 provincial-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 Province, as an 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 fault-
lines 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 - 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, they have succeeded to mobilize around a common effort.

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

This requires greater networking, linkages, cooperation and exchange amongst and within our educational institutions.

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.

5. The Role of Fort Hare in the Region:

In this context, our local universities become the treasure chest of our people, scarce resources to nurture, to encourage, to promote, to 
rebuild and transform. The Eastern Cape Province has no less than five (5) universities - UPE, Fort Hare, Vista, Transkei and Rhodes. Their 
creation, or the original reason thereof, as you also know, was very much tied up with the history of apartheid. Had it not been for 
apartheid, and before that, the policies of racial segregation, we would perhaps not have had some or any of these institutions.

But they are here and they are ours. If we agree that they belong to the people, then I say, it is time for us to stop talking about 
&#145;them and &#145;us. For we now have a moral and collective responsibility for ensuring their success. Our government is fully and 
firmly committed to this strategic imperative.

First of all, we must encourage our regional universities to accelerate the pace of their working together. I am aware that this is already 
taking place. But we should see much more bolder initiatives aimed at forging our energies together. Only if we act together can be ensure 
the successful development of this region. No single institution, no matter how well it thinks it is structured, can shoulder the task of 
educating our region's students.

Secondly, whilst it is obvious that universities fall under the competency of national government, they are also based in a particular 
geographical area. Fort Hare forms part of the Eastern Cape. And it is time that we begin to look at its role in relation to this region's 
future. Government would be interested to regularly meet with the Fort Hare community - management, heads of faculty and departments, and 
stakeholders - to examine future options.

Today, Government spends a great deal of money on external consultants, mainly from the private sector. We see no reason why a well 
structured university could not compete for these services, in the process extending its research capacity as well as also generating new 
sources of revenue. If you are going to survive, you must surely find new ways of expanding your resource bases. Not only can this make 
academics more relevant to the real world of development. Students could have learnerships and work attachments in government departments 
and agencies for periods where they can build important experience needed for a time when they complete their formal studies.

Thirdly, Fort Hare should focus on making its core curricula more relevant and more in line with the requirements of the Higher Education 
Act. This is the only way that we can ensure that our students will have the right kind of knowledge and skill to be able to successfully 
compete in the labour market. This is your obligation to society, whose students pay our salaries and in whose interests our education 
system must work.

Finally, let me say that you have the support of many thousands of people in all walks of South African life in your quest to make this 
institution succeed. Many alumni want to make a meaningful contribution. I urge you to find creative ways in which the many friends of Fort 
Hare can actively support your cause. And remember: you will never be alone in your efforts to bring about the transformation of this 
important institution.

I thank you.

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