Abstract
Inaugural lecture--University of Johannesburg, 2006
So what should be the role, contribution and a vision of a modern university in a country that is in transition like South Africa is with challenges of poverty, poor education and unemployment, to become a global player with a competitive mindset? In a province with the 4th largest economy after South Africa, Algeria and Egypt? According to a recent study of universities by Newsweek, “Universities have become instruments of national competition to respond to the challenges of the 21st century as well as instruments of peace in their ability to deepen mutual cultural understanding, tolerance and global integration. For example, on the night after the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, Jewish students at Yale, mostly American came together with Muslim students mostly foreign, to organise a vigil for the lives that were sacrificed. Similarly universities have become the locus of the scientific discoveries that move economies forward, and the primary means of educating the talent required to obtain and maintain both a competitive advantage and a competitive mindset. But at the same time, the opening of national borders to the flow of goods, services, information and people, has made universities a powerful force for global integration, mutual understanding and geo political stability.