SACP General Secretary Address to the Congregation at a Graduation Ceremony of Mangosuthu University of Technology

South Africa needs a graduate of a special type

9 May 2008

I wish to take this opportunity to thank the University for the honour to address this graduation ceremony. Let me also take this opportunity to warmly congratulate and wish graduates well in the future. In addition we need to congratulate the parents, guardians, lecturing staff and management for continuing to produce the much needed skilled graduates in our country.

Graduation ceremonies are always an enjoyable moments that must be celebrated when our own youth attain knowledge and skills that our country needs. I can attest to this having been to my eldest son’s graduation two days ago.

The role parents, guardians and communities played for you to reach this stage is very important and should always be celebrated, as most of you were not worried where the next meal will come from when attending classes and studying to acquire the qualifications you are here to officially accept.

We should also pay tribute to Mangosuthu University of Technology for giving its students the opportunity and space to progress. With the historically embedded challenges of underdevelopment and insufficient resources and funding, the fact that you continue to produce graduates should be celebrated.

The importance of natural sciences and technological skills

There is no doubt that our communities, nation and the world is in constant need for Natural Scientists, with the capacity to apply innovative ways on how we make ours a better world and a better environment and place to live in.

We are hopeful that the kind of education you have received in this institution is not the kind of education which Antonio Gramci says produces “incubators of little monsters aridly trained for a job, with no general ideas, no general culture, no intellectual stimulation, but only an infallible eye and a firm hand.

We however hope that you will be science graduates of a special type, who must understand that the application of your knowledge does not only have technical or scientific impact, but that it is knowledge that must be applied in a particular society, at a particular historic period in time, and will affect human beings.

Challenges facing South African society today

You are graduating at a particular time, in a particular historical period. Your role is different from that played by the previous generations of students and graduands of this institution and it will certainly differ from that of future generations. At least the previous generation of especially black graduates did their best to leave a better South Africa and Technikon for you. They were part of the struggle to liberate South Africa from the tyranny of apartheid, and fought hard to transform this institution from being a bantustan entity – that extension of the apartheid regime - into a South African institution of higher education. However you need to take the baton from the role of the previous generation of management, students and alumni by ensuring that you hand this institution to future generations a better institution than you found it.

The challenge in this regard is for you to understand the challenges facing South Africa today and the role that you need to play in tackling these challenges.

• The first and fundamental challenge facing South Africa today is that much as the majority of the people of this country now have political power, but economic power still remains with the same old white capitalist class. Yet our liberation can never really be complete without meaningful economic power in our society being in the hands of the overwhelming majority of our people. The question you have to ask yourself as new graduates is what contribution will you make in ensuring that there is economic redistribution
• We also have a challenge that much as our economy is currently experiencing relatively high levels of growth, but this growth is not being shared with the overwhelming majority of our people. It is shared by a minority whilst we still have about 40% unemployment and poverty for more than 50% of South Africa’s population. Growth without redistribution is meaningless growth
• For you to be the graduates of a special type you must also understand that when we talk about transferring the wealth of our country to the people cannot mean transfer of wealth from the white rich into a tiny minority of a black rich. This is unfortunately what is happening with the current model of Black Economic Empowerment.
• We still have an economy that does not merely exclude the majority of the black people, but also still remains a male-dominated economy where women still occupy the bottom of the rung. In order to be graduates of a special type you need to fight for gender equality in the workplace and in South African society in general, as there can be no true freedom whilst inequality and gap between men and women remain as it is.
• One of the biggest challenges we have is the paucity of particularly scientific and technological skills especially within the black community. Part of the reason for not sharing in this current economic growth is the lack of skilled black persons, one of the most reprehensible legacies of apartheid
• A challenge for all of us is to ensure that we do indeed prioritise access to education, especially for the majority of the people of our country. Access to education must not only focus on matric pass rates, important as these are, but on access to pre-school education for all, and ensuring that we improve the quality of education at lower levels. Usually the matric outputs are a reflection of the quality of education at lower levels, especially the first four years at school, including pre-school education
• All of us have a duty to ensure that government significantly increase the resourcing of education as a whole, including higher education. This will also have to entail reviewing the impact of mergers of institutions of higher education. It is clear that on the whole that these mergers have not produced what we had hoped for, but instead further privileged those institutions that were privileged in the past. We must at least applaud that this institution remained a technikon, as technikons still remain a vital component in our overall education, training and skills development strategy.

A special kind of graduate to meet these challenges

We hope that you are graduates who will be responsive to societal needs and developmental challenges South Africa, Africa and the world faces today.

Much as you are trained as natural scientific graduates, it is important that you also strive to understand the broader societal role of natural sciences.

One of the biggest challenges facing South African society is that of ensuring that we defeat the creeping attitude of selfishness, of dog-eat-dog. As you go out into the real world of work, many of you will be tempted by short-term selfish interests to enrich yourselves and forget about where you come from, and the responsibilities of developing the very same communities that you came from.

Much as we correctly congratulate your parents and guardians who have brought you to where you are, you must never forget that, it was whole communities that directly and indirectly contributed to your success, whether through encouragement by neighbours for you to continue with your studies, and the creation of a community environment that is supportive of what you have been doing. As the saying goes it takes a whole community to bring up a child.

Therefore you need to be graduates of a special type who must know that they are eternally indebted to your communities, and that your own progress and advancement is directly related to the extent to which you also work to uplift these communities.

You are growing up in a capitalist society, whose sole motto is everyone for himself/herself, thus leaving the majority of our people living in poverty. In order to be graduates of a special type you must be part of the struggle to create a caring society, characterised by values of social solidarity and upliftment of whole communities.

To be practical, our country is currently facing many crises and challenges that require not only your skills but your commitment to change things for the better. We are currently witnessing rising food, electricity and fuel prices. So when you work in these industries you must always know that some of your bosses are involved in price-fixing, artificially fixing the prices of basic foodstuffs like milk, bread and mealie-meal in order for those who are rich can reap huge profits at the direct expense of the poor. You must act consciously not to be part of these scandals, partly as an honour to your poor parents and communities, who had to feed and educate you despite these astronomical rise in the cost of living.

The graduates produced by institutions of higher Learning should be the kind that understands that the single most important goal is the development of our country to meet the basic needs of the overwhelming majority of our people. You must also use your skills to ensure that we embark on development that is environmentally sustainable and protect the planet for the sake of our future generations. Remember, you must always strive to live this world a better place than you found it!

A key challenge for graduates of a special type is how do we use our knowledge for communities to have access to productive agricultural land, and acquire the necessary skills to have sustainable livelihoods.

Interestingly it is for all these reasons that I am a socialist, a believer in the good of humanity, and that it is indeed possible to build a different world. As our late General Secretary, Comrade Chris Hani once said, “"Socialism is not about big concepts and heavy theory. Socialism is about decent shelter for those who are homeless. It is about water for those who have no safe drinking water. It is about health care, it is about a life of dignity for the old. It is about overcoming the huge divide between urban and rural areas. It is about education for all our people. Socialism is about rolling back the tyranny of the market. As long as the economy is dominated by an un-elected, privileged few, the case for socialism will exist."

It is to these goals that we expect graduates of a special type to contribute towards, in order to deal with the challenges facing our society today. Our view is that whilst grounded in all fields of Natural Sciences, graduates should understand the socio-economic realities of our communities and society as a whole, and ensure that their absorption into the world of work is not guided by the need to seek individual solutions to collective problems, but to seek collective solutions to the collective problems of poverty, unemployment and environmental degradation, whilst applying your skills you gained as an individual.

As young people and graduates of a special type, you need to immerse yourself in tackling the challenges facing our youth today. One of the most serious challenges facing our society is that of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the manner in which it is destroying many promising young lives. A graduate of a special type needs to be a combatant and fighter against this pandemic, through your own behaviour as well as participating in all the programmes aimed at defeating this scourge.

If you are to be true graduates of a special type it is also important to understand that the world is not just about getting jobs in the private sector. It is of vital importance that we train and retain public servants who are committed to serving government and the broader public interests of our people. Do not be overwhelmed by the temptation of immediate gratification of only working in the private sector, but we need cadres for the public service in order to build a country that is able to address the interests of the overwhelming majority of our people.

Remember society needs natural scientists much as it needs health-care workers, teachers, public servants, social workers, as the needs of our people require all these skills. Do not treat yourselves as being separate from all the many problems and challenges facing our country and our people. The production of skills, knowledge and expertise should be holistic and primarily respond to the needs and aspirations of all our communities and people. Over and above this go out there and be innovative and come up with new creative and scientific solutions to solve these many developmental challenges that we face.

With these words we say, once more, congratulations! We wish you the best of futures, and please do go out and be graduates of a special type!