For a reluctant leader, professor Tshilidzi Marwala has served the University of Johannesburg (UJ) with distinction for the 13 years he has been with the varsity. In six months, he will leave UJ after serving as vice-chancellor for four years to take up the position of rector at the United Nations University (UNU), which has 13 institutes in 12 countries around the world.
He will also hold the rank of general-under-secretary as rector of global UN think tank, a role that comes with diplomatic status.
Coincidentally, UJ’s incoming chancellor, Dr Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, was the under-secretary-general and executive director of UN Women until August last year after serving two terms. She will be inaugurated as chancellor on September 29.
Meanwhile, the university is in the process of finding Marwala’s successor.
“It is exciting,” said Marwala about his job that starts on March 1, “but the excitement is about what we can do with the position. The sustainable development goals … which talk to increasing inclusion … are very important because they talk about reduction of poverty – whether it is hunger or poverty itself; good well-being, whether it is quality education or good health …
“One of the things that ought to be done is how do we ensure that all these noble goals become the culture of the world. How does the UNU use its sphere of influence to promote them?”
“I have taken note of the fact that there’s not a single institute in the south of the equator, which is part of the UNU,” he said.
“We also need to showcase the work of the UNU so that people know about it.”
Marwala would like to see the UNU being the link between universities around the world in order to co-solve global challenges.
“Illiteracy in the 21st century is no longer the inability to read and write, it is also the inability to access and operate digital platforms, and Africa is lagging behind.
“How then does the UNU do its work to assist the UN to craft a strategy to ensure that technology is accessible and affordable? The same goes with data. We have the International Telecommunications Union in the UN stable. How do we position UNU so that the UN can work with tech companies to ensure data is affordable, especially for education?
“How do we raise the financial muscle of the UNU? I have done that as vice-chancellor of UJ.”
He has done wonders for UJ for someone who was not planning to leave his full-time academic job at Wits to become a university administrator. “I never thought of being a leader of a university. I was quite happy to be a professor,” he said, recalling the telephone call from UJ asking him if he would consider the position of executive dean at the facility of engineering and built environment.
“I so loved education that after my PhD [in engineering at the university of Cambridge, UK], I stayed in London for a post-doctoral degree. I was driven by teaching and learning, by research and innovation, and rising all the way to be a professor,” he says.
He accepted the position at UJ, and after four years he was appointed deputy vice-chancellor, and in just another four years he was vice-chancellor and principal.
When he took over the faculty of engineering, it was the worst-performing faculty at UJ in terms of research output. “It is currently the faculty of engineering that produces the most research of all the universities in South Africa.
“We introduced visiting appointments as a strategy for expanding our ability to do our work. We introduced the staff academic programme that ended the idea of being a lecturer without at least a master’s degree …
When he took over as vice-chancellor, he said his vision was simple: “Position UJ as the university of the 4IR.”
“In the latest rankings, we are the second-best university in Africa … [The top universities are] UCT, UJ, the American University of Cairo and Wits,” he said.
“We have become a much wealthier university having bought the Media 24 complex in Auckland Park, which is now the Johannesburg Business School.
“We bought the former head office of Auto & General near Milpark hospital, it houses our finance and human resources [administration departments] so that we can release spaces for academic purposes in all our campuses. We built three new residences all cash. We have built an innovation campus in Soweto at Devland, which is valued at almost R200-million.
“Our endowment has increased from R1-billion to R3-5 billion over a period of four years,” he said.
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