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South Africa is engulfed with turbulence and racial polarisation and student graduates urgently needed to play their role in speaking out to save the country from deceit and poor leadership.
This was the hard-hitting message from Rhodes University Vice-Chancellor Sizwe Mabizela at graduation ceremonies held for 2457 students over the weekend.
Students were graduating at a time when the foundations of the country’s constitutional democracy were being challenged and “extraordinary events” were unfolding.
Avoiding naming President Jacob Zuma directly or the impact of his late-night Cabinet reshuffle that saw Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan being axed, Mabizela said it was beyond dispute that at the core of the challenge was a “spectacular failure of political leadership”.
“You are graduating into a society in which greed, corruption, deceit and malfeasance have been perfected into an art form. You are graduating into a society we could not have imagined even a month or so ago. These are extraordinary times. These are uncertain times.
“The current crisis should underline the importance of electing leadership that is competent, accountable, honest and trustworthy.”
In his prepared speech, he urged students to not be trapped in a state of powerlessness. They needed to challenge falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims that passed for fact, and the “spin” and sham explanations that “discredit and insult us all”.
South Africa had entered a “post-truth era”, he warned, urging students to be especially vigilant of “anti-intellectualism, populist rhetoric and empty sloganeering”.
“You have a significant contribution to make in ensuring that we pull our country out of the abyss in which is finds itself,” he said, saying that students were part of a privileged, powerful group called the “knowledge elite”.
“We cannot afford to lose the hope that sustained us in the dark days of apartheid; we cannot afford not to imagine a better society and a better world than the one which we pray we inhabit temporarily.
“Never be afraid to raise your head above the parapet on social, economic and political ills that afflict our society,” he said.
The world was fraught with frightening levels of anger, intolerance, poverty and inequality.
“Our country is at a crossroads … Our country has been pushed to a breaking point and society is unravelling fast,” said Mabizela.
• Pickets were held in the build-up to the six weekend graduation ceremonies after wage negotiations at the university deadlocked. Unions are demanding 7.5 % increases and the university has offered 5%. Against the backdrop of financial pressures aggravated by last year’s zero-percent fee increase and capped 8% increase this year, Mabizela has described the wage offer as a “bitter pill to swallow”, but warned that any additional hike would jeopardise the viability of the university.
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