Official opening 2015 Prof Corli Witthuhn: Goeiemore aan almal vanoggend hier vergader! Good morning to everyone this morning! It is such a fantastic event this morning. We are officially opening the university for 2015 and I am certainly looking forward to 2015. I think we are going to have a fantastic year. We have some things in place and I am looking forward to what the year will play out, as well as to all the achievements of our staff and students. It is going to be a good one. So, welcome to all staff and students. A special welcome to our Vice-Chancellor and Rector, Prof Jonathan Jansen; the Chairperson of the Council, the Honourable Judge Ian van der Merwe; the Vice-Rector: Operations, Prof Nicky Morgan; the Vice- Rector: External Relations, Dr Choice Makhetha; the Vice-Rector: Academic, Dr Lis Lange; the acting Registrar, Ms Elna van Pletzen; the Campus Head of the Qwaqwa Campus, Prof Prakash Naidoo; the acting Campus Head of the South Campus, Prof Daniella Coetzee; and the UFS council member, Mr Derek Vorster, who has also joined us on stage this morning. I would also like to welcome the deans of the faculties, specifically Prof Caroline Nicholson and Prof Sechaba Matlamoholo, who are the new deans it is their first official attendance of this event. I would also like to welcome the acting Dean of Student Affairs, Ms Cornelia Faasen and the President of the SRC, Ms Mosa Leteane. We are going to start the activities this morning with a performance by V Chord. Hulle sing I was here van Beyoncé, en n selfgekomponeerde werk wat handel oor Kovsies. V Chord is a group of singers dedicated to sharing their stories through their music. They have performed in various genres and in different languages across our globe. These seven Kovsie students say they believe that the music they perform help them to grow as individuals and also to share their memories with the audience. So, we are looking forward to their performance. Thank you to these incredibly talented students. We are actually here to listen to our rector this morning and to get some understanding of his vision for the university for the next five years. So, without any further ado: Prof Jonathan Jansen: You should never applaud until you hear the speech. Goeiemore, dames en here, kollegas, studente. Baie hartlik welkom aan veral ons kollegas van die Qwaqwa- en die Suid-kampus. Ek is baie dankbaar dat julle so vroeg opgestaan het dié van julle wat nie van die Vrystaat is nie om hier te wees. Die meeste van die mense staan baie vroeg op en ek is baie bly dat u die tyd maak om na dié rede te luister, veral die rigting wat die direksie van die universiteit wil inslaan oor die volgende paar jaar. Justice Van der Merwe, Mr Vorster, members of the council, members of senate, Ms Leteane and team from the SRC students, our sports staff and so on, to all of you a very warm welcome. Now, this university is in the first place about what we have come to call the Academic Project and also about the Human Project. As you know, when it comes to the Academic Project, we attempt to set the highest standards for students, and particularly for incoming students. I am delighted to share with you that in the audience today, we have a young girl from Kimberley, who is doing a bachelor in Accounting and is one of the top students in the country. At least in the 2012 exams and I would like to ask Chantel Groenewald to stand, please. Waar is jy, Chantel? Please give her a warm round! Here we have this absolutely lovely young woman Chantel, baie welkom hier by ons.
The Academic Project is important to us, because a university stands and falls as I will describe later by the quality of its academics. Everything else, such as die eerstejaarsverwelkoming en die atletiek all of those other things we do are important, but not critical to the life of the university. What is absolutely critical the only thing that matters is the quality of the academics. That is it and that is the only reason why we are here. One of the most prestigious scholarships in the country and in the world is called the Mandela Rhodes scholarship, and I am very, very happy to say that at least one of the three students is here. Valashiya is here today. Valashiya, where are you? Our Mandela Rhodes scholarship award he is also one of the best-dressed men on this campus, as my daughter reminds me. One of the other things we are really good about at this university, is not just outstanding academic students like Chantel and Zola, but we also make a huge effort to enable top, top students in our country who are academically aspiring, but do not have the funds to study at a top university like Kovsies. Last year we started developing relationships with a school called the Gansbaai Academia, which is in the Western Cape. You know Gansbaai it is a little fishing village outside of Cape Town with one of the top schools in this country. Last year we had the privilege to bring Bianca de Koker to our campus and we fully funded her as a top student. This year we again have a top student from Gansbaai Academia Andisiwe Molana, who has just arrived by bus. Andisiwe, where are you? She is from Gansbaai she is probably still sleeping, but if you do meet her, please give her a round of applause as well. As a university, we have worked very hard to undo the harm and damage done in the past to people and to our country. The way we do that, is to create opportunities for reconciliation and bringing people together. I am really, really excited to thank Dr Choice Makhetha, Prof Morgan and others, for working very hard in making sure that the children of the workers who became known as the Reitz workers, enter into graduate studies and get their degrees so that they are able to stand up and stand strong as they live their lives in South Africa. I would like the children, Carol, Monica Adams, Anna Adams and others, would you please stand. Give them a round of applause. Thank you. I d like to thank Justice Van der Merwe for allowing me to take a break. The good news is that I started on 3 November with page one on my laptop and on 30 January on page 275 I finished the book that I started to write and sent it off to the publishers. The book will hopefully contribute to our research outputs. You see, a rector must also earn his keep. I also want to say that in the first year, the royalties from the book will go into the staff bursary fund. Thank you all for contributing to the staff bursary fund for poor students. If you have any questions about what I did in those three months, here are some of the answers. While I was out of the country, I literally received calls from people saying, Prof, kom jy terug? I found that very, very strange. Are you coming back, is it true that you are not coming back, and so on. Somebody sent a question to the university this is one of the most beautiful Afrikaans expressions I have ever heard: gerugte doen die ronde. Isn t it beautiful? Gerugte doen die ronde. That is untranslatable into any language. Gerugte doen because gerugte walk by themselves to do the ronde but no, no I am not going anywhere. I am right here. The reason for this is because the Academic Project and the Human Project are incomplete. I suppose the vicious rumour which really hurt me deeply, was the rumour that I had shifted allegiances from the Bulls to the Stormers. I want you to know that it s not true. That will not happen in our lifetime. But it is good to be back. I want to start by thanking all of you for the hard work that was put in, especially at registration. To every one of you who worked so hard to register the highest number of students in the past three years and also the highest number of students registered on a single day all of that happened in this January period. Almal wat betrokke is by die registrasie van studente baie, baie dankie vir die harde werk, Ook vir die laat ure wat julle gewerk het. Dit word raakgesien en dit word waardeer. So thank you very, very much for that. It is not easy to register students in the summer heat in this part of the country. So, thank you very much.
I d like to thank all of those involved with student affairs, residence life, campus security, library, computer services, the campus grounds and maintenance. Campus grounds and Maintenance, this is now the second day I have come onto campus seeing a huge sort of unevenness in the road as you come into the main gate. If you can try and fix that today, it will really be wonderful. To those in sports, communications, strategic communications, every secretary, every cleaner, to all of you, thank you very much. A special thank you to Nico Janse van Rensburg and his team, for giving us such a beautiful campus. There is always building happening, always signs of life. I just come from a campus which looks very much like this, where everybody is building when a campus is building and extending, people have a sense of renewal. I want you to look very quickly at some of the newest buildings on campus, as well as a short video on our other star campus, the Qwaqwa Campus. If you are an atheist, driving to the Qwaqwa Campus through the Golden Gate Park might change your mind. It is a beautiful, beautiful part of creation. I want to thank our two unions, UVPERSU and Nehawu, for the hard work you put in with my management team in twice reaching agreement on the salary negotiations. I don t want to talk about how people misreport this in some of our media, but as you know, we have an agreement that keeps this university financially strong. The agreement is that the increases every year depend on the subsidy income from the Government. We are not entirely in control of the revenue stream from the subsidy. We have developed a plan yes, there is hard negotiations led by Prof Morgan and his team, but we always come out with an agreement. There is an initial agreement and once the subsidy levels are announced, there is a final agreement on the salary increases. Our salary increase was actually higher than some other universities with much more money and much longer histories higher in fact than Stellenbosch University and just under that of Pretoria University. So, when you hear rumours about great loss and so on, it is not true. Universities can only increase their subsidies, because if they don t I made a solid promise to UVPERSA and to NEHAWU that we will never again at least not while I am here I don t know what you are going to do when I am not here, but while I am here, we are not going to lose jobs. We are not going to let any academic at this university lose a job because we mismanage the funds of the university. We can only do that if our unions understand that the university does not exist for tomorrow, it exists for the next hundred years. It exists for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren to come here. A university is not like a company that can close and open depending on profitability. A university is an institution and therefore it exists for posterity it exists for the long term. Our commitment to you is to make sure that our staff don t have to worry about whether they have a job or not when they go to bed at night. I know it happened before at the University of the Free State, and I know that some of you who have lived here long enough, still have bad memories of losing friends and colleagues. Well, in this period we are not going to do that, but the only way we can do that, is for people not to play politics with salary negotiations, or demanding things that we cannot deliver, because if we do I have now worked at four different universities, and I have seen some of them go under. The reason they go under, is that we do salary negotiations which are being driven by populism. Let s eat today and tomorrow they don t think about eating next week and next year. I give you my word the reason we manage our finances so tightly, is precisely because we want to make sure our university remains financially strong. Of course you cannot reason that you didn t get a salary increase because we spent the money on fixing X or on a student development programme. People who don t know how university funding works, make those wild accusations. University funding is determined by the subsidy income. We can only act in relation to that. To Frans van der Watt and the team at UVPERSA, I know you worked up a huge pressure for people who put you on a stick around these negotiations, and our colleagues at NEHAWU who were under huge pressure, I want to thank you for putting the university s interest first. If anybody tells you that you received no salary increase, tell them that Stellenbosch has more
money, but they gave the lowest salary increase, and that is the way in which we survive. So to all of you, thank you very much. I know Prof Morgan sometimes gets hot under the collar, but he has a huge amount of work to do financing HR, and he runs a tight ship. He is very, very conscious of the requirements of council, in particular Judge Van der Merwe and Mr Vorster, to cut our suit according to our cloth, or whatever the expression might be. When I got to Stanford University, I had lunch with one of my supervisors or formal council supervisors, a very famous political scientist who has now retired. He is now the chairman, the secretary of the academic senate, a very senior person. You sit there and you watch one of the most competitive universities in the world, make their reputation. So I said to him, Hans I am sure this question is asked to you all over the world, but let me ask you. What is the secret to creating a really, really great university? He said, oh, my friends in Europe ask me that all the time. This is what he said, you have to listen very carefully. He said, there are only two things you need to do. Be very, very picky about who your students are and be very, very picky about who your professors are. You get that right, and you become a very good university. That is my only aim in working with you as your rector to do that. Talking about being very picky with the professors that we choose I want to tell you that we had the great honour and so did Professor Naomi Morgan, who was honoured by the French Government. I don t quite know how this award works, but Lucius, come here please, because my French is incredibly dangerous. What is this award? You did that award, you just give it a try. Prof Lucius Botes: He is putting me on the spot now and I only know my few French words, like merci beaucoup. It basically means a Knighthood in the Arts from the French Government. I believe only two other South Africans have had this honour also the honour for her work in creative translation and studies. Thank you very much. Prof Jansen Professor Naomi Morgan, are you here? Would you stand please, so that we can see you? Congratulations. It gives me great pleasure to tell you that in my field, the field of Education, we have never had at least in South Africa an A1-rated scientist. The closest, or the highest rated so far, was a friend of mine at Wits University who got an A2. This year, for the first time in the history of South Africa, we have an A1-rated scientist in the field of Education. Would you please put it together for Professor Melanie Walker? She is also the first woman at Kovsies ever to get an A rating. Somebody said to me, but Prof, aren t you also in the field of Education? Ek is uitgestof! If you ever say that in public, I will deal with your bonus but well done, Melanie. In his absence, Professor Max Finkelstein from the field of Mathematical Statistics he is the only person in that field to have achieved this high rating an A2 rating. So, in his absence he has flu, so he apologised that he couldn t be here could you also give a round of applause! Professor Corli Witthuhn and her small team have developed the criteria for the first ever scholarly book prize at the University of the Free State. I think it is also one of the largest book prizes in terms of financial reward. The reason is, one of the ways in which we make our money at the university, is by encouraging people to write scholarly books, serious scholarly books. I am really delighted to say that the six judges, internal and mainly external people, decided that the inaugural scholarly book award for this year goes to a very interesting book, called Translation Theory and Development Studies. If you know what that means, let me know, because the sub-title is A complexity theory approach. Now, most people don t do complexity theory because it is too complex, but with a book award of R75 000, the first winner is Professor Kobus Marais. Baie geluk, prof Kobus.
Before I go on, I also want to mention that we have in fact the largest number of NRF-rated scientists in our history, and I am particularly pleased that we have five NRF-rated scientists from Qwaqwa Campus. This includes Professors Dejene and Mukwada, who are present on the Qwaqwa Campus via live streaming this morning. So, both in the research performance and in the rating of our colleagues at the Qwaqwa Campus, will you also give a round of applause to them. One of the things one has to do as a scholar is to deal with cuts, to deal with what we know and to use that to plan the future. As I mentioned earlier, I am extraordinarily pleased with the way in which our team, under guidance of council, and in particular the finance committee and the residence subcommittee, deal with the issue of finances. Every year without fail, irrespective of the external environment, we invest 2% of our income and put it away as my parents would say for a rainy day, because you don t know what is going to happen downstream. You don t know what is going to happen, and so I am hoping that this rectorate, or the rectorate that will replace us, will continue to do that, irrespective, so that over many years, the University of the Free State stands strong. Bestendig, I believe is the Afrikaans word, in the face of challenges from outside. You can only do that if you have really strong financial control regiment and so I want you to deal with the facts and not with the rumours. I want you to understand that our investment, for example, grew from R200 million in 2008 to more than double that, to over R400 million in 2014. That is good for the university, because we are also susceptible to changes in the external environment. Our research income that is the money we are dependent on to do research competitive grants that our staff apply for, grew from one source alone that is another research foundation from R26 million in 2012 to R56 million in 2014. That is more than double in a very short period of time. I can go on like this. I can talk to you about foundation support. The Mellon Foundation has just given us the equivalent of R10 million for one researcher, Prof Gobodo-Madikizela, to do research. People only give you money if they believe in what you do. They don t give you money because you wrote a proposal. That helps, but they give you money because they believe in the project of the institution. I say that to encourage you, I say that so that you too, can feel strong about the future of a university. How does a university build its reputation? Around postdocs. Two years ago, we only had 16 postdocs. Thanks to very wise investments from our colleagues, we now have 17 postdoctorate fellows. Those are the people who become our future professors our productive researchers. This year we have seven new B-rated researchers, including a few B1s. I am delighted at the leadership of Professor Witthuhn. She doesn t smile often, but she drives a hard bargain. This year she forced me to also put in my NRF application. So Corli, I just want you to know that it will be done by 15 February, or whatever the closing date is. In fact, not just on finances, not just on academic application, but on political stability. You would see in any given year that there is huge political instability on campuses. You even see it now at the beginning of the academic year. You have no idea how one s stomach turns at two in the morning when my SMS light flashes and talks about a crisis in place X or potential crisis in place Y. My stomach turns, because a student is lacking or scared or fearful. When I came to this university, there wasn t a day that went by that there wasn t a serious upheaval either on the Takaneng Bridge or on the Qwaqwa Campus or somewhere on one of our campuses. We now have one of the most stable campuses in the country. The reason we have one of the most stable campuses when I say campuses, I mean all three of them is simply because of the very hard work put in by Student Affairs, by Rudi Buys who gets lambasted unfairly so often, and so personally, in some of the media. He has done an incredible job. He has been able to work with incredible student leadership to give us a campus that is stable. Just at the beginning of this year, so many things could have gone wrong. But then you get people of the character of Mosa Leteane who are able to defuse difficult situations. This is not something that happens automatically. This is something that happens because of the quality of student leadership and the quality of the leadership at Student Affairs. I am very grateful that we can befriend a campus in which more and more students are mature, understanding, respectful of each other not all of them will be, because every year you take in another 5 000 first-year students who come from all over the place. Some of them are very angry. Some of them are very bitter with
their second-generation memories. We work very hard through Student Affairs to bring them into communion. The big difference between now and five years ago, is that now we have seniors who understand what the Human Project is about. We would not be where we are today if it wasn t for somebody like Bernhard Louw in JBM the current prime and last year s prime. If there ever was a South African I believe is going to lead this country into stability and peace one day, it would be somebody like Bernhard Louw. If you haven t met this guy, meet him. He is inspirational. Many days I sat with him and he was broken, because people from the past try to spiral us back into the past. But Bernard knew that this is not about today, this is about the future. To him, to Mosa and their team, to previous student leaders, to Rudi Buys, to Cornelia Faasen as the acting team of Student Affairs, to all of you, thank you very, very much for what you gave us because you cannot do research, you cannot teach uninterrupted if your campus is unstable. That I know from experience. So, I am very grateful for that as well. I want to conclude with the two most important things that will drive the university over the next few years. The first and the most important thing is that we are going to be even more picky about who we hire as our lecturers and our professors. You are not going to get hired because your grandfather worked here. You are not going to get hired because of what you look like. You are going to get hired because you are the best, or potentially the best in your field, whether it be Biochemistry or Sociology or Commercial Law. Whatever your field, we are going to hire the best young people, like we did with Louise Samakapela, with Albert Nel, with George du Plessis. We are hiring and I get involved with some of these things the best young people who are the most promising academics, because the reputation of the university depends on whether it is picky about who its professors and incoming lecturers are. The university is not great because it is beautiful in its landscaping which we are the university doesn t become great because it churns out huge numbers of research articles. That is important, but that doesn t make you great. What makes you great, is the quality of the people who teach. This takes time, you can t just do this overnight. Yesterday I did a workshop with master s and doctorate students. The only reason I do that, is because I know there are some of them who will become Kovsie academics. We are going to be very picky, the rules of the game have changed. We are only going to hire the very best or potentially the very best academics, young and accomplished, because this university will only be known by the extent to which it gives us hundreds of Melanie Walkers and Max Finkelsteins and Naomi Morgans. That is the only way you become really great by being picky about whom your professors are. And secondly, yesterday the senior management sat several hours off campus to talk about a number of things that need to improve. One of these things is that we are going to be very, very picky about whom our students are. As you know, I lead the team in marketing around the country, as well as in the region, in Zimbabwe and other places. Why? Because we want the best students in the Free State, the best students in South Africa, the best students in the world to come here. One of the ways a university can go down very quickly, is in an act of rush populism just to open the gates and say, anyone comes in. That is fine, but what happens? Poor people come in, they cannot finish their degrees, they are saddled with debt and the university s reputation takes a knock. That is not going to happen. The kinds of students, the pickiness principle will apply not just to the professors and the lecturers, but also to the students. Every day when I walk on campus, like yesterday, I am amazed that students who would never have come here from schools that normally send their kids either overseas or somewhere else, now send their students here. That does carry a risk let me be honest with you. It carries a risk that, in the short term, you might have fewer students than if you simply allowed everybody to come in as quickly as possible. That carries a risk in my job, with finance versus students to keep one eye on the quality of the students and another eye on the sustainability of income. Both those things are important, but ultimately we believe we can win by getting the top students in the country to come to this beautiful University of the Free State and all three its campuses. Those are the two big things. There are a lot of other things that must be done. This year, for example, we are going to completely revamp our systems in administration that we think have been
broken for many years from the day a student applies to the day they graduate. I am not happy with what is going on there. We are going to make major changes, as you will see in the next few months. So, all of those things will happen, but that is not why the university exists. The university exists to make sure that its academic reputation stands strong. That is my promise to you. How do you create I ask Hans a really, really good university? By being picky about your professors and being picky about your students. The second term for any vice-chancellor is always more difficult than the first term, I can assure you. I ask for your prayers and for your support, not just for myself, but for the team with which I work, because we are in fact dependent on you to make Kovsies a truly great university. Baie dankie, thank you very much. Prof Witthuhn: Professor Jansen, thank you for looking into the future and specifically thank you for celebrating all the achievements of our staff and students. To all of the staff that were congratulated at this function, from my side, I am so proud of A-rated researchers and people who win book prizes that external evaluators look at. But for those of you who were not specifically mentioned at today s function, academic and support staff, thank you for working so hard. Thank you for improving what we do at this university. It has been an interesting ride over the past few years. In closure, I d like to ask that we sing the national anthem our singing will be led by Jani Marais. Jani matriculated at Eunice and is currently a first-year on campus, studying Drama. Jani het ook verlede jaar tydens die Julie-gradeplegtigheid die volkslied gesing and another feather in her cap is that she sang the Spanish Cuban anthem during the graduation ceremony at the South African Cuban-trained medical graduation ceremony that was hosted by the UFS last year. An interesting fact is that Jani s father, Kobus Marais, received the book prize this morning. So it appears that we have a talented family on campus. After the anthem, I would like the guests to remain standing so that the procession can leave the hall. I d like to invite all of you to please join us for refreshments in the foyer. Thank you so much for attending.