Our transformation journey

The journey with Covid-19, the academe and students

The Covid-19 pandemic exposed inequalities in students’ access to technology. In response, we adjusted and refined our internal platforms to make the online environment more accessible to our students.

The lifting of the state of disaster and Covid-19 restrictions brought relief as students returned to campus and accessed our libraries, laboratories and learning centres.

Monitoring transformation

We are getting better and better at monitoring the progress of transformation across the NWU, using tools such as the transformation dashboard.

Reporting on transformation continues to become more comprehensive and coherent.

Overseeing transformation

Three Council subcommittees keep us on track with our transformation targets: the Transformation Oversight Committee, the People and Culture and Employment Equity Committee and the Student Life Oversight Committee.

We also have two transformation advisory bodies. These are the Institutional Forum, a statutory committee, and the Student Diversity and Transformation Committee (SDTC). The SDTC was established in 2022 to advise the University Management Committee on how to bring about a unified, diverse and integrated student culture and population.

We strengthened the critical role of student leaders in driving sustainable transformation at grassroots level in 2022 when student transformation portfolios began functioning.

We hosted a workshop, “Understanding African Traditional Beliefs”, to build awareness and understanding of these beliefs among the NWU population.

Adding value

Multilingualism is part of our transformation programme. In 2022, we launched the interactive NWU Language Portrait App, which will be a critical enabler in realising the multilingual dimension of our NWU Language Policy in the student community.

Student Life collaborated with People and Culture to implement the NWU values through campaigns and programmes such as the NWU Management Cook-off and the NWU Purple Race.

Senior management participated in various sectoral transformation initiatives in 2022. The executive director for student life and assigned function: transformation, Dr Sibusiso Chalufu, is a member of the Universities South Africa (USAf) Transformation Strategy Group, the Transformation Managers’ Forum and the Advisory Board of the USAf project on student-centred higher education.

Pursuing and enabling equity

The Employment Equity Plan for 2021 to 2023 directs our Employment Equity Policy, which is about creating equal opportunities for employees, addressing barriers to access and equity and accelerating the pace of transformation.

According to the Employment Equity Plan, black people must account for at least 70% of appointments and people living with disabilities for 2% of the workforce.

All individual performance agreements for line managers incorporate key performance areas (KPAs) for managing employment equity and diversity and promoting the preferred NWU culture. A KPA for ethics has been added to the performance agreements of senior managers.

A new requirement is that the appointments of people from non-designated groups must be approved by the vice-chancellor.

Academic transformation

The NWU is pursuing strategies to transform the curriculum and align the student experience. This is in line with Strategic Goal 1, which requires systematic curriculum transformation and renewal to equip graduates for the world of work and to decolonise and Africanise the curriculum.

Our strategies include giving students an in-depth orientation to their fields of study and a broader understanding of contemporary societal challenges. Work-integrated learning (WIL) and service learning (SL) opportunities foster an ethic of care and social responsibility.

All NWU curricula provide an orientation to various thought paradigms and explanatory systems, including, where appropriate, indigenous knowledge systems.

Our programmes support the learning needs of a diverse student body, and we involve students in a range of individual and collaborative learning and assessment activities so that they can progressively assume responsibility for their own learning.

In June 2022, Council approved an amended version of the NWU Language Policy, which deepens multilingualism in the NWU’s languages of choice. The Language Directorate translated materials and offered online and in-person interpreting of contact sessions.

We held three awareness weeks on aspects of transformation.

Gender Awareness Week was presented from 8 to 12 August 2022, highlighting the theme “Gender as expressed through the Arts”. Staff and students were encouraged to use music, the visual arts, literature,architecture and philosophy to engage with gender in their own fields.

Facing Race Week 2022 took place between 11 and 14 April. The event included a themed art exhibition on all three campuses, performances by acclaimed artist Oupa Sibeko and 12 formal roundtable sessions.

Language Awareness Week was viewed and approached through the lens of the NWU Multilingual Language Policy. Activities were presented on all three campuses, including drama plays, language portraits, online language classes, movie nights and food fests.

Transformation of the procurement space

We have taken the following steps to transform procurement by involving local small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) in the procurement of the NWU:

• Council approved the amended Preferential Procurement Strategy at its November 2022 meeting.
• We achieved the target set by Council for procuring 50% of all spend from suppliers with black ownership of 51% or more.
• Provision was made for contractors on large construction projects to appoint community liaison officers to liaise with communities about appointing local SMMEs as subcontractors and using local labour on construction projects.
• We implemented tender requirements for a part of construction projects/service contracts to be subcontracted to local contractors.
• A database for SMME registration has been developed and made available to contractors for the subcontracting arrangements referred to above and for quotations for minor works.

• We facilitated the formation of community project committees in Mahikeng, Potchefstroom and Vanderbijlpark to liaise between infrastructure projects/service contracts and the local community stakeholders (based on Construction Industry Development Board guidelines).
• A staff member in Facilities has been formally delegated to act as local participation officer.
• We have formed a task team with representatives from Facilities, Finance, Community Engagement, Stakeholder Relations and the vice-chancellor’s office to implement the framework for local participation and community engagement.
• The threshold for closed tenders was raised from R750 000 to R1,5 million to target local SMMEs.

Looking ahead

In June 2022, the Transformation Oversight Committee tasked the executive director for student life and assigned function: transformation, working with the executive director for people and culture, to put together a plan to take the transformation journey at the NWU forward.

The project was proposed with the understanding and acknowledgment that in some areas we are doing reasonably well on transformation, while in other areas progress is either slow or non-existent. The starting point was to map the journey travelled so far, highlight the current state of play and milestones reached and look at how to take the transformation journey to the next level.

Council approved the Transformation Journey Report in November 2022.

MR BERT SORGDRAGER

CHAIRPERSON OF COUNCIL

DR BISMARK TYOBEKA

VICE-CHANCELLOR