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Mr Chancellor,
Chairperson of Council and Council Members,
Mr Vice Chancellor and Members of Senate,
Chancellors and Vice Chancellors from other Institutions of higher learning,
Members of the academic and administrative staff,
Esteemed dignitaries who have graced this day,
Dear parents and relatives,
University workers,
Students of the University of Fort Hare.

I must say from the outset that being here for me brings back strong memories of yesteryear. Sweet and bitter memories. Even a sense of nostalgic yearning of the virtues of university life and experience. A large part of my professional life, as most of you know, was spent as a student and a teacher at this famous university and other neighbouring institutions. I made many friends here and many enemies too. I also had my personality and future moulded, sharpened and bruised here. In Lumine Tuo Vidi Lumen! (In your light, I saw light!).

Only last month we had a long chat with another Fort Harian who graduated here in the early 1930s. Mrs Apavoo of East London. We shared long and sweet memories of different epochs at Fort Hare. We spent three (3) hours on this but could only adjourn proceedings for another day.

Such is the fondness with which this campus is remembered by most of her children.

I mention all this to indicate to those still on Fort Hares' structures that there is a whole host of people out there who are on your side. We just need to find the suitable formula that will harness all these forces into a massive shoulder on which the programmes of this university can stand. Not mechanical or file programmes. Real, active and interactive programmes.

We owe this to Fort Hare because its where many of our dreams of democracy and freedom were given a deeper philosophical and moral meaning. Not all of us readily grasped that philosophy. For some it took forced exile and imprisonment to interpret that philosophy. For others it was interpreted, however dimly, by advantages in stations of life that exposed us to creative and progressive thought. One way or the other, this University leaves no one unscathed.

Today I would like to share a few thoughts on what I think should be some of the new roles of our universities as we are building a new future for our children and ourselves. Momentous changes are taking place in our country. These changes form part of and are affected by a much wider process of economic, social and political change elsewhere in the world today. We cannot afford to be spectators and mere consumers of these processes. We must influence these processes. We cannot stop change, but we can influence its content. That is what the Fort Hare of Professor ZK Matthews did to South Africa and Africa.

Universities in an Age of Democracy: The Quest For a New Relevance

2.1 The transition to democracy in the 1990s 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 'conspiracy of silence' which prevailed after Sharpeville.

Then, the challenge which confronted mainstream intellectuals was to stand up and speak out against apartheid. During these years, many - though not all - of our universities refused to collaborate with 'the system'.

Many institutions actively opposed the Verwoerdian image of "ethnic education". Universities, especially this one, became fortresses in the struggle for democracy. Here, many of us found new strength in our moral belief in the virtues of non-racial democracy. Through books and discussions we could trace the philosophical roots of our own struggle back to thousands of years of human history and from the freedom of slaves by Spartacus in Rome, to the national liberation struggles of Guiseppi Garibaldi in Italy, Che Guevera in Cuba and the cry of Uhuru in Nkrumah's Ghana.

Academics could turn to their writings to contest or question the lunacies of racism and domination. Students could mobilise in defiance against a regime which had long lost any vestige of moral authority. And many of our universities literally became safe havens for the dissenters of apartheid. In those days, as we know today, many courageous intellectuals spoke out and worked against 'the system'.

The 'problem', or more crudely put, the 'enemy' (apartheid) was almost ridiculously easy to single out and define. It was 'them' against 'us'. You were either on the 'right' side or the 'wrong' side; either the 'good' guys or the 'bad' guys. The choice was fairly clear: pro-apartheid or pro-democracy. That was then.

In the post-apartheid, 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 today's. The 'mission' suddenly appears to be much more complex, if not ambiguous today. The proverbial 'enemy' seems to escape any simple definition. Now, the 'enemy' is poverty, unemployment, HIV/AIDS, crime, inflation and a host of other inanimate indicators of social scale.

Today, there is no longer an all-powerful, authoritarian State simply able to dictate to society at whim. We have made sure that would not happen.

This raises the crucial question to universities: Now that the fight against apartheid is over, what are we to do with its legacy? What is our new mission? How does such a new role relate to the State's 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 universities? 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, universities can only discover their mission and role, in the words of one famous African scholar, Amilcar Cabral, through a 'return to the source' - to return to the society and community of which they form an integral part.

'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.

Broadly speaking, I think the nation's universities could, and should, combine two very important, but rather different roles. On the one hand, a developmental role which sees the university becoming involved in a range of possible types of interventions - through teaching, training, research, etc. - aimed at building the capacities required by our people to improve their conditions of existence. In many respects, this role is already being played by many of our universities. But interventions tend to be fragmented, ad hoc and piecemeal.

Beyond this, I think our university institutions should continue to play their traditional critical-contemplative functions in society - through teaching and research asking searching questions, raising problems, making inputs, pioneering new ideas, and pushing the frontiers of knowledge further and further.

Implications of the New Educational Framework for Universities

2.2 The University of Fort Hare is a mirror - image of the most deprived communities of our land. Her students bring to this campus the experience of poverty, low self-esteem, job-seeker mentality as opposed to participating meaningfully in the economy, no sense of investing, little or no support from the business sector etc. etc. This situation challenges both the University community as well as the state and the private sector.

Poverty and starvation is our main challenge in this Province. This is not because of the lack of arable land or able-bodied persons. There is no one to work on the fields and no resources or skills to render the land productive. The Bantu-education system denuded the countryside of people with passion for producing wealth from the land and the animals. The white-collar job syndrome has reduced younger African generations to permanent but middle class slaves. A caste of job seekers.

This University has correctly identified its strategic role in regional development and Agriculture. We suggest that a partnership be built between the University, State and Communities. The focus of such a partnership should be sustainable food-productions. The state has the farms. Fort Hare has the expertise and farming know-how. There is no need for the University to own the required land. The University could also assist peasant youths with short courses in farming skills. These could be done where the people are - on the mielie fields and herding velds.

Rural science and Technology could also be fertile ground for a vibrant partnership between the state and the University. Such beginning is in the weather sensors/discs which will be able to detect tornados and adverse weather conditions in time. The disc in Umtata will also service parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Lesotho.

Our country is plagued by the degeneration of morals that is worrying all of us. Both the Departments of Psychology and Sociology should have seen this as a national crisis and researched into its causes. A government which does not benefit from the expertise of its intellectuals cannot succeed. The trauma of change seems to be overwhelming our country and its values. Academics cannot sit back and teach Comte and Feurback and ignore present challenges. Universities cannot just rely on state subsidies. Productive research should earn the money.

Clearly, the squeeze on funding tertiary institutions is affecting universities like this one. These Universities were never endowed with riches. Their resource-base is almost zero. Our belief is that the extent to which these Universities position themselves for promoting competitiveness and employment creation, enhancing the quality of Life, development of Human Resources, work towards environmental sustainability and promote Information Technology, that extent will determine the unlocking of additional funds for projects and programmes.

2.3 The question of how the Universities are funded MUST be informed by ideological clarity. It must be guided by a sound political theory. To simply juggle figures and statistics, we believe, is to hide behind the convenience of amnesia. We cannot forget where the history of disadvantage come from for Black people and their institutions. So funding of these institutions IS A SITE OF STRUCTURE. We must insist on a funding formula that combats the disadvantage of black people in general and Africans in particular, and their Universities. This is an African Century. Everything must be done to equip us for a meaningful and quality participation in the African Renaissance.

The circumstances under which we transform our country have been transmitted to us by the past. They are not friendly to our agenda of change. So we must be ready to do battle and do it for many more years. We live in a time of revolutionary crisis, to quote Karl Marx writing in the 19th Century. We have to strike the balance between being harbingers of the past on one hand and historical amnesia on the other hand.

What we are arguing for here is the need for the transformation of tertiary institutions; even those in the Eastern Cape. But we are also warning against economism being the sole determination of the configuration of our institutions. The past and the future must be key pillars for managing the present. We ignore this to our peril.

2.4 CONCLUSION

The University wrote Karl Jaspers, "is a community of scholars and students engaged in the task of seeking the truth." We would agree with Karl Jaspers but we would emphasise the practical rather than the abstract or metaphysical notion of the truth. The social imperative to improve the lives of the rural poor, especially women, youth and children, the challenge to defend the integrity of our liberation against HIV/AIDS and crime; these challenges demand a practical emphasis in the quest for what is to be done, of truth.

In my view, the University of Fort Hare must actively engage the transformation agenda. Not to change it but to influence it. The starting point is the National Working Group proposals. In the meantime, our tertiary institutions in this Province must co-operate with one another. They must fine-tune their areas of specialisation and find core competencies that will assist the national agenda. Whatever the outcome of the various configurations proposed, in the end we need a network of robust and highly competent and efficient tertiary institutions that are able to provide the social, agricultural, scientific, technical and moral needs of our Province and our country.

I trust that this is the challenge that this class of graduands, their predecessors and successors will take up. Always in partnership with other stakeholders. We are of Africa. We are in Africa. Let your light benefit your home soil first. This should be our contribution to NEPAD and the African Union.

Congratulations to the graduands and their families and friends.

Issued by Office of the Premier, Eastern Cape, 19 April 2002