RESPONSE BY PREMIER
Master of Ceremonies
MEC'S
Vice chancellor and Principal Professor Johan van Zyl
Staff of the University of Pretoria
Friends.
Thank you for inviting me to this highly valued educational institution.
I would like to take advantage of this happy ceremony, which takes place with the participation of staff of this institution of higher learning and members of my executive committee sincerely to thank all of you for the wonderful time we had.
On behalf of the Mpumalanga government and the people of the province,
I thank you for disproving the thesis that our academics at institutions of higher learning are incapable of responding to invitations from politicians.
In fact throughout my life professors were depicted as these dreamy characters who are most definitely not in touch with reality. In fact there is a story about a professor at some university who while walking on campus ground would suddenly stop and scribble something on the ground.
Having done that he would dash to the laboratory. Because he had just managed to solve a complex theorem.
There are also those who considered professors as inaccessible. I remember being told of a learned professor, shortly before addressing a gathering of parents at one or the other university said those with PHD's are allowed into the hall. Those with Doctorates would be allowed to stand at the windows and listen. Well, those with Masters Degrees where told to go and stand at the sportsground.
Well, you can guess where he said people with honours degrees and bachelors degrees should stand. Let alone those parents and students still struggling to complete as degree.
I am glad you are not like nutty professor. Professor van Zyl and staff, we live in times of extreme turmoil. Our universities have become so-called sites of struggle.
How then can we produce well-rounded citizens when daily we are faced with people who consider it a right to waste taxpayer's money by engaging in endless boycotts?
Lecturers, professors and the administration at our institutions of higher learning must themselves apply themselves with great devotion to the task of producing a well-qualified and competent intelligentsia, comparable to the best in the world.
I am raising these questions because surely all of us must have cause to be gravely concerned about some of the things that are happening at some of the historically black institutions.
It is here that there is the highest level of instability, which necessarily subtracts from the critically important task which these institutions, must fulfill, of education and research.
I am told that one of our university vice-chancellors has made the correct observation that universities are not a site of struggle but a site of learning.
I do not know how many of us have heard this message, understood it and taken it to heart in terms of our behaviour.
I am certain that even where we have to engage the issue of the transformation of our institutions of higher learning, we can do this in a manner that does not deny us the possibility to proceed with the task of the education of our youth.
Similarly, we must get this out of our minds that there are inexhaustible funds available within our system of public finances which will make it possible for us immediately to redress the gross imbalances we inherited from the apartheid years.
Indeed, acceptance of this reality should lead all of us to reject totally the notion that students are entitled to fail.
And to repeat classes as long as they wish, thus wasting scarce resources that could have been spent on students who have more respect for themselves, their families and the millions of the poor in our country who are ready to sacrifice so that our youth has access to education.
To clear away the confusion, including among those who entertain the false notion that the democratic order provides an opportunity for licentious conduct
and a collapse of social and individual discipline, a new initiative will have to be born among our youth targeted at mobilising the millions of our young people to participate in the process of the rebuilding of our country.
Of necessity, we must also raise the question of the startling and terrible relative absence of the black intelligentsia from the public discussion going on in our country about its transformation.
There seems to be a paralysis of thought or a withdrawal from an open engagement of the burning issues of the day among this important section of our population, which is difficult to explain.
And yet it was natural to expect that these, who are the most educationally empowered among us, would be in the forefront of the struggle to set a national agenda focused on the genuine emancipation of the millions of black people from whom they originate and of whom they are part.
But it is not only the black intelligensia that is at fault.
How often have we seen some statistics about fraud in Mpumalanga been bandied around? How many times have we heard about HIV/AIDS statistics in the province? Rape statistics; etc.
And why don't you as intellectuals stand up and put things into perspective? I had promised not to speak for too long.
But before I sit down let me say it is the purpose of higher education to add permanent value to learners, to stimulate curiosity, to foster a spirit of critical enquiry and to impart skills.
Higher education requires, therefore, more detail, greater depth of insight and more intellectual mastery than other sectors of education.
Once again thank you for having us. We hope to put your facilities and your brains to good use for the benefit of the province and the people.
Thank you.