OFFICE OF THE RECTOR AND VICE-CHANCELLOR

Prof Robert J. Balfour

Rector and Vice-Chancellor

University of the Western Cape

rbalfour@uwc.ac.za

University of Western Cape Vice Chancellor’s Address at the celebration of the 100th issue of New Agenda 

1. Introduction and Context

Good morning, and welcome.

The Iyatsiba Lab at this Centre for Humanities Research in Woodstock is the result of a deliberate institutional choice. It shows UWC’s commitment to place some of its important intellectual work here in the city rather than only on our main campus in Bellville. Academic work has greater impact when it remains connected to the social world around it because ultimately knowledge and new knowledge generation is about changing our lives and the world as we know it. And scholarship should be linked to activism in a public university devoted to the freedoms associated with the struggle for equality and inclusion in South Africa.

It is a privilege to be here at this venue and on this occasion. I wish to begin by acknowledging those who have joined us today. We are honoured by the presence of Mr Kgalema Motlanthe, former President of South Africa and Chairperson of the IFAA Board, and I believe a friend too our former Vice Chancellor, Prof Tyrone Pretorius. We welcome Professor Michelle Esau, Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at UWC and our facilitator today. We are grateful to Professor Amiena Bayat of the New Agenda Editorial Board. We welcome Emeritus Professor Ari Sitas, Chairperson of the Board of the National Research Foundation and member of the IFAA Board. We also acknowledge Mr Tony Ehrenreich, COSATU’s Deputy Parliamentary Officer and IFAA Board member. We are indeed among the great and the good today; people who have paved a way to the freedom we cannot take for granted, through their work, their scholarship, their commitment. Thank you for this.

To all distinguished guests, scholars, civil society partners and colleagues, you are warmly welcome.

Today we recognise 25 years of New Agenda and a long-standing partnership between UWC and civil society. At a time of persistent inequality and growing uncertainty, this dialogue asks what it means for universities to act in the public interest with courage and honesty. It also asks how universities might reclaim their intellectual and activist role in a world defined by global disruption and increasing inequality.

2. The meaning of this partnership

The framing of this dialogue makes an important argument. The partnership between UWC, IFAA, and New Agenda, sustained through UWC’s Institute for Social Development, forms part of a longer intellectual project. New Agenda has provided an important platform for progressive public debate in South Africa. UWC’s own history belongs to that same tradition of intellectual resistance and critical scholarship. This partnership rests on a shared view that knowledge must be publicly relevant and socially accountable. The 100^th edition is significant because it shows New Agenda as a space where scholarship stays connected to public life. It remains attentive to policy consequences and willing to name issues that institutions often avoid.

It is also significant because the journal has sustained a critical orientation across changing political and institutional conditions. Its engagement with the legacy of #FeesMustFall returns us to the unfinished work of transformation. It also makes clear that universities remain implicated in wider social inequality. That is why the idea of the university as a public good still needs care and commitment. Credibility does not rest on expertise alone. It depends on honest engagement with society and a willingness to face difficult debates directly. New Agenda has for 100 issues been committed to that honest debate. I have vivid recollection as a young academic at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, reading a copy of New Agenda in the Department of Built Environment and Development Studies on the Howard Campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Adam Habib worked there; Patrick Bond worked there; while Ari Sitas was at the Industrial, Organisation and Labour Studies, also there. A UWC, similarly great scholars such as Professors Amiena Bayat, Mulugeta Dinbabo and Abdulrazak Karriem teach here and inspire lives and scholarship here- and New Agenda is a part of that story continuing at UWC.

3. The university as a public good

A public university is, at its foundation, an expression of shared social trust. It is funded by the wealth of society. In South Africa, however, not all public universities are the same; some arise from complex privileged pasts of colonial complicity; others like UWC are creations of an Apartheid imaginary; a colonialism of a special kind and resistance to it, whilst yet others are born out of the new democratic vision. All our Universities deserve public support; all are committed to the transformation journey although at different points perhaps on its trajectory. It is for this reason that when we speak of the common wealth and common good, we must understand how difference still makes a difference in our society. Our wealth is derived from the labour of all people whether in the so-termed formal or informal sectors, and that the origins carried by a university leadership are part also of our social obligations, not to shareholders, not to markets, but to the public. Our mandate is therefore inherently a public one. We exist to serve the common good across generations, layering contributions to science, to the arts and humanities, to care, and to development in ways that no balance sheet can fully capture. Yet this foundational understanding is under pressure. As Mahmood Mamdani observed, there has been a sustained and deliberate shift in how higher education is framed, away from the idea of the university as a public good, and towards the idea that it is, and should be, primarily a private one. That shift changes what universities are for, who they serve, and ultimately, whose interests they protect. It is a shift we must name clearly, and resist with equal clarity.

That brings me to UWC itself, which has long understood the university as a public good. Seeing the university in those terms asks more of leadership and institutional culture. It also asks more of the relationship between scholarship and social impact. At UWC, this commitment is visible in the choices the university makes about where it works and with whom it partners. The Dullah Omar Institute, for example, has helped draft legislation such as the Children’s Act and the Child Justice Bill, while also contributing to human rights work on the continent. That is scholarship with direct legal and social effect. Another example is the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, which has for 30 years made a similar contribution through its work on land, property rights, and rural livelihoods. This work has informed public debate and policy, while also strengthening the ability of communities to make their claims heard. UWC’s School of Public Health, as a World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre, trains health ministry officials from across Africa. This places knowledge in practical service of public need.

None of this work stands apart from society. It depends on sustained partnerships with communities, civil society, other institutions, and international networks. That is how a university serves the public good in practice.

4. Closing Reflections

There is considerable experience in this room, drawn from the university and from civil society more broadly. We are joined by people well placed to take this discussion further, especially on what it means to understand the university as a public good. If universities are to remain credible in a society as unequal as ours, producing knowledge is only part of the task. We also have to be willing to put that knowledge to work in ways that serve people and communities, and we need recognition by the state and society that the differential development of universities in South Africa requires special attention, consideration of the support and the means put to the disposal of these institutions to develop capacity commensurate with their public duty..

This event raises an important challenge for us. It asks whether we are ready to be unsettled by what genuine partnership with civil society demands. The idea of the public university holds only if we defend it in practice. That defence lies in the work we choose to do. It lies in the partnerships we remain committed to, and in the honesty with which we meet the demands of this moment. I hope today’s discussion helps us think more clearly about what genuine partnership with civil society asks of universities. Congratulations to New Agenda, IFAA and the Faculty on the wonderful achievement and contribution not only to our public good but our common wealth.

Thank you.

Bibliography

Mahmood Mamdani. 2007. Scholars in the Marketplace: The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989–2005. Dakar: Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA).

New Agenda: South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy. 2026. 100th edition. South Africa: Institute for African Alternatives.

University of the Western Cape. 2024. Annual Report 2024. Bellville: University of the Western Cape.

University of the Western Cape. 2026. Universities, Activism and the Public Good: Reclaiming the Intellectual Project through Partnerships. Event programme, 21 April 2026. Iyatsiba Lab, Centre for Humanities Research, Woodstock, Cape Town.