Universities critical to independent thinking

IN 1966, a student leader of the University of Cape Town, Ian Robertson, invited [former US senator Robert F] Kennedy to speak here. The apartheid government, furious at the visit but scared of the diplomatic fallout of refusing the possible next president of the US, did the next best thing — it banned the 21-year-old student who had invited him.

Robertson was banned from any social or political gatherings, seeing more than one person at a time and, because he was a white student, prohibited from going anywhere where black South Africans lived.

Using the words that today mark his grave at the Arlington National Cemetery, Kennedy correctly identified how alone activists here felt in those dark days of the 1960s: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and, crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Another South African who was prohibited from attending the talk was only a few miles away, out to sea, on the notorious Robben Island prison: Nelson Mandela, whom Kennedy was obviously unable to meet. Mandela lived to return to the mainland 21 years later, turning those ripples of hope into a flood that overwhelmed South African apartheid and inspired the world.

President Barack Obama’s visit to South Africa is rich in symbolism — and this is likely one reason that he chose to speak at UCT.

I suspect his choice of a university platform is also directly related to the more explicit goal of his visit — to promote economic relations between the US and the African continent in ways that buoy economic growth.

There are many drivers of renewal and growth. Perhaps the most significant are education, innovation and preparing the next generation of leaders, movers and shakers, teachers, thinkers and entrepreneurs. Universities make an indispensable contribution to all this. All our South African universities are committed to producing the next generation’s economic leaders, so Obama’s particular emphasis on the power of the youth speaks directly to the relevance of a university setting.

A cornerstone of this university’s mission is to educate the next generation of leadership for the African continent. But UCT also represents something more — it is a leading research university that offers the prospects for bilateral relations between Africa and the rest of the world that transcend the hierarchies and paternalism of

They make an indispensable contribution to renewal and growth

North-South relations in the past.

The continent has made progress in expanding access to higher education, but over 15 years the numbers of students have increased three times more than funding. As a result, the quality of their education is often jeopardised and — in particular — the university’s research agenda takes a back seat.

The question may be asked: Is this a priority in a developing, low- or middle-income country? My answer is an unequivocal “yes”. The need for research expertise, nurtured by research-strong universities, is global and applies equally to developing and developed nations — even if there will be particular challenges of resource allocation in the case of developing nations.

Unless Africa wants to remain a consumer of other people’s knowledge and innovation, the recipients of received wisdom with no critical capacity locally to interpret, challenge or advance alternative views of the world; unless we see ourselves as unable to contribute to global knowledge; and unless we think all global technologies are locally appropriate and that we do not need the capacity to develop locally relevant solutions, African countries need to further their own research capacity.

That capacity resides first and foremost in research universities. Not every university can or should be a research university, but every country needs at least one. And middle-income countries such as South Africa should support several.

Moreover, we should set our standards high. If we want independent thought and leadership and a capacity to determine what is best for us, then we not only need researchers and research institutions, but they need to be on a par with the global North.

Democracies create privileged spaces in which critical analysis and debate can occur. One such space is the universities. It was in no small measure through the limited degree of autonomy of this university in 1966 — even as it was being restricted and pressured by the state to implement apartheid policies — that the protected space existed that could allow Kennedy to be invited here at all, and that gave him a platform to speak truth to power.

It seems particularly fitting that Obama should choose a university setting to make his principal policy speech on Africa.

Price is vice-chancellor of UCT. This is an extract from an address welcoming Obama