Message from the Vice-Chancellor

MESSAGE FROM

THE VICE-CHANCELLOR

Warm greetings to all our alumni, partners, donors, friends and the DUT community at large.

With this being the first edition of DUT Connect for the year 2022, may I wish you well in the rest of the year. It is my hope that the challenges and problems that face us from year to year help to refocus and energise us to work even harder and innovate our collective future and prosperity.

In my last message in this medium, I focused on deconstructing our strategy-on-a-page, ENVISION2030, so that we could all have a common understanding and interpretation. Towards the end of the first quarter, we will share with the DUT community a document outlining the state of DUT. Thus, given constraints of space and time, let me just focus on a few critical matters.

COVID-19 Update

We are still reeling from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as a country generally, and more specifically as a sector. We must be encouraged, though, that at the time of writing this message, the total number of vaccinated individuals in South Africa was sitting at about 19 million according to the National Health Department Online Resource and News Portal1. With a total adult (18 years and older) population of almost 40 million, this means about 48% of the adult population has now been vaccinated; which is just below half of our population. Whilst there is still some way to go, this is a significant improvement considering the initial inertia and hesitancy that characterised initial vaccination up-take. The country, including its various sectors, is now in a better position to return, albeit slowly, to some ‘new normal’ – consisting of the old and the new we could no longer divorce - as business operations and activity increase.

With the easing of restrictions, DUT has also been able to open up and allow a limited number of academic and other activities to take place on our campuses. The intention for 2022, sans any significant changes to the current COVID-19 trends, is to return more and more to regular operations. Of course, it would be foolhardy to suggest that the last two years have not upended our old ‘normal’; hence my reference above to a ‘new normal’.

At its meeting of 4 December 2021, DUT’s Council approved our “Policy choices on vaccination of staff and students” to take effect from 1 January 2022. The approach of providing choices as opposed to insisting on mandatory vaccination is an attempt to balance individual and collective rights, responsibilities, and consequences of those choices. The summary of the policy is as follows:

1. One must either be fully vaccinated and produce a valid vaccination certificate to enter any DUT campus or; 2. If one chooses not to vaccinate, they must, at their own expense, undertake a COVID-19 PCR test 48 hours prior

to being on campus, which test must be negative and proof thereof must be produced, or; 3. If one chooses to neither vaccinate nor produce a negative

COVID-19 PCR test, then they may not be granted access onto DUT campuses. In the case of students and staff, if they opt for this option, they will have to study and work online respectively and contend with the consequences and implications of such a decision, especially when circumstances that require physical attendance on campus arise. This policy

1 Latest Vaccine Statistics - SA Corona Virus Online Portal

allows some latitude and individual freedom of choice, while at the same time ensuring that the University plays its role and takes the responsibility and accountability of doing all in its power to safeguard its people on our campuses.

I have argued elsewhere that we have a much more important reason for us to seriously consider return to face-to-face teaching and learning in whatever upended format. Imagine a student who enrolled since 2020 as a first year student who has hardly ever seen a lecture hall, an examination hall and has no idea of academic engagement with the lecturers and fellow students. University education is not only about its mechanical aspects, but socialisation, too, so that mindsets and behaviours are moulded accordingly. These are certainly some of the contributors we need to produce ‘Adaptive Graduates’ as envisioned by ENVISION2030.

This policy allows some latitude and individual freedom of choice, while at the same time ensuring that the University plays its role and takes the responsibility and accountability of doing all in its power to safeguard its people on our campuses.

The demon of violent protests

You must have read and/or heard about sporadic violent (student) protests at DUT, at our sister KZN-based universities and some other universities in the country. Not so long ago, I admitted that DUT was the protest capital of the South African higher education. Obviously that is not a title to be proud of.

I thought we had made strides in minimising protests and ensuring stability in our campuses. Little did we know that protests would return with increased violence that results in destruction of public and private property. We have had university and staff cars - about 10 in Durban and 3 in Pietermaritzburg - torched. We had had destruction of University property.

Lectures were originally scheduled to start on 14 February 2022, but the start had to be postponed to 28 February 2022. The reasons include the difficulties we experienced during the weeks of 14 and 21 February 2022 that involved invasions by walk-ins and students, general disruptions, slower registration and a campaign to flood the university with accommodation requests for all and sundry. Ostensibly, on account of some of the above-mentioned reasons, students and many other young people invited through fraudulent social media channels, engaged in these violent protests, as if there is no need for education facilities now and in the future. I have consistently challenged all members of the DUT community to live by our values and principles. This means that we must account for tasks we are responsible for, amongst other things. To this end, we acknowledge some glitches associated with our online registration system. We did not only take responsibility; we also moved with speed to address the problems experienced. This explains why we were sitting at over 95% of our 2022 enrolment target by mid-March, a much higher number than we had in 2021 around the same time.

The NSFAS system is, unfortunately, an integral part of the soft underbelly of higher education. Confirmation of funding for NSFAS qualifying students – at DUT constituting about 70% of our student enrolment – was slow and thus affected the pace of registration. As if to add salt to injury, even as some students got confirmed and registered, NSFAS informed us they do not have funds to pay allowances for February and March until April 2022. They asked universities to advance student allowances from their coffers, with a commitment that they would reimburse institutional funds. For March, we advanced about R31 million to registered NSFAS-funded students. It’s unfortunate that even though concessions like these are made in a difficult financial environment, they are simply not appreciated. You give a hand and an arm is demanded.

I need not overemphasise the impact of destruction of property. This behaviour sets us back, particularly at a university with a long history of under-investment in maintenance of existing infrastructure, let alone new capital developments. We set out to build state-of-the-art infrastructure by 2030, with many projects already completed and some underway in our many campuses. However, it seems some sections of our community are hellbent on countering and reversing the progress we are making. Should we really spend millions on infrastructure that appears destined to destruction by arson and other violent means?

I wish to appeal to yourselves, having walked the same path before the current cohort of students, to provide advice and coaching. Perhaps, accounts of your own harsh experiences could help to change the attitudes of our current students? Some of you may have been taught in shabby lecture halls with broken chairs and windows. You may have studied in libraries that did not have adequate air conmditioning. You understand how important it is for another African child not to experience what you went through. If the rate and depth of violence continues this way, sooner than later, we will hardly have operatonal infrastructure, let alone state-of-the-art. And, sadly, billions of rand focused on improving the environment in which the African child must learn will have been wasted.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship taking root

Let me end this edition with some good news from last year. You may have realised that DUT has been registering a number of what we call ‘transient impacts’ as we continue to fly our rocket towards 2030. ‘Innovation and entrepreneurial’ is one of our DNA strands. It is one area in which we are beginning to cement our leadership in our sector.

2 Economic Development; Tourism and Environmental Affairs 3 Agribusiness Development Agency

To mention just a few achievements, in 2021 our innovation and entrepreneurial efforts led to the establishment of 52 SMMEs; 160 start-ups in total were supported, which created 173 direct and indirect jobs. We witnessed successful launches of the AgriHub (which is in partnership with the KZN EDTEA2 and the ADA3) on 24 February 2021 and Innobiz Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on 19 November 2021. Both of these entities are indicative of our commitment to be intentional about developing ‘innovative and entrepreneurial’ students, by design and not by default. In addition, our very own Deputy Vice Chancellor (DVC) of Research Innovation and Engagement, Prof Moyo, was awarded the Entrepreneurial Development in Higher Education (EDHE) DVC Award at the 2021 EDHE Awards ceremony. This award is in recognition of her exceptional facilitation of institutional support for entrepreneurship development. Further, DHET announced that the DUT model on innovation and entrepreneurship will now be used in about 10 other public universities to support their own students.

As I conclude my message, I would be remiss not to acknowledge and express appreciation and gratitude to our generous donors and other strategic partners with whom we collaborate to ensure that we build a better tomorrow for our students and our broader society through our ‘innovative curricular and research’ and ‘distinctive education’, amongst many other initiatives. Your ongoing support is invaluable.

Stay safe. Best wishes. Our innovation and entrepreneurial efforts led to the establishment of 52 SMMEs; 160 start-ups in total were supported, which created 173 direct and indirect jobs.