That South African universities are top notch is in no doubt at all. In fact, a few of them are the best in Africa and among the best internationally. This hasn’t gone unnoticed, with some proudly South African dons having been appointed to prestigious positions at equally prestigious foreign institutions of higher learning in recent times.
The latest academician to join what I reckon is bound to become a trek soon is University of Johannesburg (UJ) vice chancellor Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, who has been appointed rector of the Japan-based United Nations (UN) University. Unless one is a recent arrival from outer space, one should know who Marwala is, given the wonders he has performed at UJ. For years, UJ, the result of a consolidation process that brought together the Rand Afrikaans University, Technikon Witwatersrand and the Soweto and East Rand campuses of Vista University in 2005, was in the shadow of its more famous across-town rival, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). Not anymore. In the latest QS University Rankings, released in June, UJ is in second position in South Africa and on the continent. Topping the list is the University of Cape Town (UCT), with Wits in third position.
On Marwala’s watch, UJ has established a business school and become a top Fourth Industrial Revolution institution of higher learning. This is unsurprising, given his expertise in the rather esoteric fields of artificial intelligence and finite element model updating.
Marwala’s talent is to be showcased on a global stage when he assumes his new role at the UN University in March 2023. The rector position at the institution – a global think-tank with 13 institutes in 12 countries that support efforts to resolve the global challenges of human development and welfare – has the same level of seniority as a UN under-secretary-general.
Other top-level academicians and administrators who have been snapped up by prestigious overseas institutions include former Wits vice chancellor Professor Adam Habib, who has been the director of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies since January 2021. He has held academic, research and administration positions at five universities and multiple local and international institutions.
Then there is psychologist Cheryl de la Rey, who served as deputy vice chancellor of UCT, before being appointed vice chancellor of the University of Pretoria (UP) in November 2009. Currently, she is the vice chancellor of the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand, a position she has held since 2019. Like the University of London, Habib’s new ‘home’, the University of Canterbury is no Mickey Mouse institution, having been placed 258th worldwide in the QS University Rankings. To put this into perspective, UCT, the top-ranked university in South Africa and the African continent as a whole, came in at Number 237 this year, while UJ came in at Number 412.
Year after year, the rankings are dominated by American and British universities, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the US, topping the QS’s 2022 list, followed by the UK’s Cambridge University.
It’s not only overseas universities that have shown a propensity for snatching brilliant South African university administrators. Nongovernmental organisations are getting in on the act too. Among the latest to do so is the World Council of Churches (WCC), a Switzerland-based global fellowship of churches that was established in 1948 to advance the cause of ecumenism.
The WCC’s latest South African recruit is UP Faculty of Theology and Religion dean Jerry Pillay, who was elected the body’s new general secretary at its conference in June.
He assumes his new role in January.
Clearly, Mzansi’s got talent and the world’s top institutions are circling, ready to pounce.