Read the interview:
I'm absolutely optimistic. I think of my personal journey of finding myself in an apartheid police cell several times and one occasion, 11 months in solitary confinement and undergoing quite a hammering. Right. And when you're in a situation like that, you can opt out.
By opting out. Meaning you can commit suicide, right? Or you can simply give in. And when you do those, when you select those two options, you've thrown in the towel, right? I've learned that it is only when you sustain what is in that instance, what was in that instance, a commitment, a deep commitment to freedom, democracy, equality and an inclusive society.
Right. That when, when your ambition, when that which drives you is honorable is values driven. Then you will succeed, right? I think the example for us as Africans of Nelson Mandela is a very powerful one of having spent 27 years in prison or facing death row, potentially in 1963, and even being willing to say that, it's your choice to the judge.
But for me, as Nelson Mandela had put it, it was a case of freedom or death. Right. And so I think if we have the same approach. Yeah. Or a similar approach that says this journey over the next 3 or 4 decades is a journey which is a part creating the possibility for nations and for a continent to become far more than what it is today; far, far more able in responding more effectively to its challenges. Then I think the possibilities are endless. And therefore our universities sit at a critical point. And if they can pivot in the manner that we have been reflecting on in the next two to 3 to 5 years, then the next three decades will be a different story.
And so I end by, I guess, again referencing Nelson Mandela, who writes in his book Long Walk to Freedom, amongst others. After a long journey. In fact, before the long journey, he speaks of looking at this incredible journey ahead, this mountain that has to be this three, 4000, meter mountain that he has to cross.
And, and this speaks about this idea that it seems impossible until it's done. And then he speaks of having summited this mountain.
He can only rest for a moment because you look ahead and you see another one lying ahead. And so for me, that's the idea of horizons again coming into play. But the idea that it seems impossible until it is done. 27 years in prison for Mandela at the beginning, nobody would have imagined that he would emerge from there.
And so this journey for Africa's universities is a similar journey for me. It is a journey of immense possibilities and opportunities, but it almost looks impossible, and it's therefore going to require us to power ourselves up, and to sustain that power, that energy as university leaders and as partners and friends over the next 2 to 3 decades.
But it all begins in the first 3 to 5 years.