[ Home ] [ Speeches & statements ]

Director of Ceremonies
Chairperson and Members of Council
Vice-chancellor, Professor Itumeleng Mosala
Honoured Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen

This is my first visit to Technikon North West. It is therefore a source of pleasure to be here this morning.

The long-term success of any higher education institution hinges on the quality of both its academic and governance aspects. That is why I am pleased that today's function at your institution addresses both these requirements. You inaugurate a Council comprising some of the luminaries of our country, at the same time as you launch a Unit whose focus is technology, a field with great potential for our country.

As we review, rationalise, and restructure our higher education landscape, the quality of men and women at the helm of governance becomes increasingly critical. I am sure that you have, over the last few weeks, been witnesses to both positive and negative engagement with the restructuring process by institutional councils.

I am sure that you have seen some institutional council boldly grasping the nettle of opportunity even as another - or at least some members thereof - have been trapped in unimaginative conservatism. Your new Council, then, will soon be confronted with the challenge of leading this institution into a new higher education terrain after the National Working Group has made its recommendations vis-à-vis possible mergers and collaboration in the higher education environment.

Whether your Council members place themselves within the macro environment of national interest or the micro situation of parochial vanity remains to be seen. On my part as Minister of Education I wish this Council wisdom and success, and I promise it my respect and support, of course within the parameters of mutual commitment to the well-being of higher education in our country. I should add that we are on track with the implementation of the National Plan and I look forward to cooperation with the Council of the Technikon and the technikon community as a whole.

Council membership is unlike corporate board membership. It is not about financial benefit from a profit-making entity. Rather, it is about public service in a developmental institution. It is about national contribution to the social and economic cause of education. It is about a vision to see the bigger picture, and the mission to create the canvas of opportunity for the youth of our country. Those who accept it assume one of the nobler challenges of our existence as a society in transition from oppression to freedom, from moral and material poverty to constructive democratic values and economic development.

Dare I say, therefore, that this time in our higher education milieu calls for old-time honour and integrity on the part of those who accept positions of leadership? The weight of our times calls for leaders of substance - leaders who understand that leadership is less about the self and more about the institution within the national context.

Let us therefore celebrate the inauguration of your Council in the expectation that it signifies and will exemplify the characteristics I have put before you. And let us thank these eminent men and women for agreeing to serve our nation.

The launch of your new Mechatronics Unit today is a creative and vital statement of your institution's commitment to ongoing academic renewal. Our technikons stand at the forefront of our obligation to maintain technological competitiveness in an era of the digital divide and globalisation. How we harness technology for economic development will determine our future as a developing nation. All economic activity - be it in the manufacturing industries or the service sectors - is now driven by rapid technological advances, and success will come to those who respond speedily, qualitatively and with innovation to the moving target that is technology. Therein lies President Mbeki's convention of eminent minds in the information and communication technology arena.

The hopes of developing nations rest on technology. Only through strategic and judicious exploitation of technology can we hope to keep the fast-moving developed world within our sights. We have to ensure that we remain literate on all aspects of technology, particularly as it moves at the speed of a shadow. Our higher education institutions, especially the technikons, face the mammoth task of representing our nation in this race. In partnerships among themselves, and together with research organisations, government and industry, they need to constitute a relay team to ensure that, as a country, we remain competitive even as technology threatens to run away from us. We can expect no less from the higher education sector, especially as every year we invest billions of Rand in it.

Our national human resource development strategy has highlighted the acute paucity of skills in the science, engineering and technology areas. Your investment in the Mechatronics Unit is a commendable response in this regard.

What I find particularly exciting about Mechatronics is its multi-dimensional character. The fact that this discipline covers a cross-section of technological fields is something to celebrate, as it is sure to lead to cost-savings while maximising educational benefits. Where, traditionally, a student would learn one skill, we now have an opportunity to teach him or her multiple skills in technology. The generic aspects of technology are better presented at the same time as students get the opportunity to master more than one individual areas of technological expertise. At least in the short term, this promises to plug some gaps in our shortage of skills as graduates of your Mechatronics training will doubtlessly be multi-skilled, thus being positioned to contribute to particular areas based on need.

I appreciate your academic vision to see beyond the confines of your campus. I thank you for your mission to serve the country in strategically critical areas.

By establishing this Unit, though, you have posed a challenge for yourselves. You have created a standard that you will have to reach through visible success. In this regard your graduation rates in the field of technology will be a yardstick through which you are measured. Current rates in the technikon sector, I must say, are not as impressive as we would like them to be. But one would hope that facilities such as your Mechatronics Unit would jerk up the performance of those exposed to them, and therefore improve the throughput rates in the system.

With the Rosslyn industrial area - with its automotive bent - neighbouring them, the three technikons in Tshwane are strategically placed. How you develop and exploit possible synergies between yourselves and the industry in Rosslyn is critical not only for you as individual technikons but also for the region and Gauteng as a whole. I am sure that all technological possibilities offered by your Mechatronics Unit have counterparts in the factories represented in Rosslyn. There is thus a tailor-made practical training environment for your students as well as a potential employer for your graduates. Partnerships are a foundation and the future of our democracy, and they should characterise technological education and training in this region. Such is the pace of change and innovation in the sector that it is only through private-public and public-public collaboration that we as a nation can hope to maintain our competitive strength.

You may be aware that restructuring and rationalisation have been taking place not only in higher education but also in the further education and training sector. That, as you know, is the sector closest to the technikons. I would therefore urge that linkages be forged with that sector as well. We are transforming further education and training into a vehicle to impart first-level practical skills to our society. In that sense it is likely to feed into the technikons, and for that reason linkages between the two are not only desirable but also critical. The further education and training sector has much to learn from the experience of technikons, and in that sector technikons have a captive market.

Further linkages worth singling out are linkages with the sector education and training authorities. These structures are supposed to bring about greater coordination in skills training within their various sectors. I cannot see them operating in isolation from the formal skills training sector occupied by technikons. One must therefore advise our technikons to be proactive and open up channels of communication with the SETAs. On our part as the Ministry of Education we are in constant dialogue with our counterparts in the Ministry of Labour.

I speak in such detail about partnerships and linkages because these remain a critical source of weakness in our country as we continue to address the legacy of apartheid. One of the pillars of the apartheid system was to silence the vocal and to block interaction of any sort. Education is by nature an interactive phenomenon, and we should exploit that characteristic for the ultimate benefit of our society.

I drew attention in the National Plan for Higher Education to the extreme forms competitiveness in the area of higher education. Vice-chancellors and Councils do not receive kudos if they enter into self-centred relationships, which seriously affect smaller higher education institutions. Instead what we do need to see is greater collaboration amongst higher education providers to ensured the co-ordinated provision of quality education and training so that we can meet the human resource needs of our country.

More than any other sector, those of you in the technikon environment are entrusted with preparing our people for the world of work. South Africa has an unacceptable level of unemployment - 26% by some conservative estimates. Employers are saying that is the result of not so much the absence of jobs as the unemployability of many of our compatriots. They argue that the skills level in our country is something of which we cannot be proud.

This is the gauntlet I throw down for you. The question is whether you are equal to the task. Are you broad enough, intellectually speaking, to rise to the challenge of a modern technocratic world where today's technology is tomorrow's material for recycling, and tomorrow's innovations are obsolete the day thereafter? Over the last few days we have been reading about Microsoft's latest Windows operating system. It crossed my mind that this is a system, which is updated and revised virtually every year. Are we, on the education side of the technological sector, updating and revising our approaches in step with the companies that produce technology?

Part of the response is contained in the strategy detailed in the National Plan for Higher Education especially to encourage inter-institutional collaboration both regionally and nationally, with specific emphasis on collaboration that enhances research capacity in historically black institutions and technikons. This includes re-defining research to give Technikons credit, for instance, for new patents, and other forms of intellectual property.

One could go on ad infinitum about how innovative South African institutions need to be, how we need to adapt to the changing socio-economic and political changes around us - and I mean both at the academic, managerial and governance levels - but that is ultimately not why I am here today. I am here to congratulate you on the inauguration of your new Council and to celebrate the opening of this new Unit with you.

You have my thanks for the progressive steps you are taking, and you have my best wishes for the future.

I thank you all.

Issued by Ministry of Education

6 November 2001