Her appointment as Council Chair in October 2017 was momentous, as she was the University’s first black African woman to take up the position.
A trio of women, namely herself, Chancellor Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi and Vice-Chancellor Professor Sibongile Muthwa, are at the helm of Nelson Mandela University.
“I've enjoyed being one of a team of three women who have led Mandela with a deep commitment to its purpose and vision. It has been a privilege and an honour.
"By sheer coincidence we have all served as good and honest public servants and we understand the meaning of the university’s ambition to be a university in service of society.
“We also came with experience of working with Tata Mandela in the first democratic government of national unity and had made important contributions to the transformation of the public service.
“Councils are as effective as the people who are on them, and I leave the university feeling confident that the colleagues I have served with are solid professionals with solid values, and a deep understanding of corporate governance, responsible leadership and accountable management.
“It has been a pleasure for us to work with Vice Chancellor Sibongile Muthwa and her executive team notwithstanding any of the normal differences of opinion or perceptions that occur in board-executive relationships.”
Judge Nambitha Dambuza, a Council member until now, will become the new Chair on 1 September 2024.
“I wish my successor, Judge Nambitha Dambuza, all the best as she takes over leading the Council,” said Ambassador January-Bardill.
Ethical leadership and governance, social justice and sustainable development are central to Ambassador January-Bardill’s life and work. In addition to her corporate board experience, she was the director of two NGOs, Tshwaranang Legal Services, for women who are victims of gender-based violence (GBV), and Phenduka Literacy for under-educated primary school pupils in Alexander Township. She currently also serves on the board of the GBV Response Fund.
She was South Africa’s Ambassador to Switzerland, Lichtenstein and the Holy See, and was interim Chief of Staff and special advisor to UN Women and the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) respectively. Her company, Bardill and Associates advises institutions in the public and private sector on integrating race, gender and sustainable development into their business strategies and building cultures to end racism, sexual harassment, bullying and GBV.
‘Campaign in poetry, govern in prose’
Universities, she says are “very, very different” from what she has been accustomed to in her career.
“The position of a chair of Council is complex because the institution has three centres of power, Council, Senate and the Administration and a diverse community of students, academic staff ranging from professors to junior lecturers, non-academic staff and the communities which share the geographies in which the university lives.
“The complexity of Mandela University includes our seven different campuses each with its own character. To be a university in service of society becomes quite a challenge in the context of one of the poorest provinces in our country.
“I have learned a lot about leadership, and how we manage representation and inclusivity, and democratising the governance of the institution. It is easier said than done.
“At a recent seminar at the university, one of the invited speakers cited the former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, who said: ‘you campaign in poetry. You govern in prose’. I could so relate to this because it resonated with many experiences in the business of leading institutions.”
Guided by her strong sense of social justice, Council has publicly condemned the 2023 assassinations at the University of Fort Hare, and also spoken against the ongoing actions of Israel in Gaza.
Ambassador January-Bardill also has been outspoken on GBV, rife on campuses across the country. If she could suggest one action that universities can take to help tackle gender-based violence: “We have to get the men involved in ending the anger and shame that GBV causes us all to feel. ”
“There are probably quite a number of men who feel offended by this suggestion but, for me, the main thing is to see how many of our male students can address their own sense of responsibility towards challenging misogyny and behaviours that cause women and some men so many dignity harms on our campuses and in our communities.
“I often ask, do they really understand the politics and negative societal effects of patriarchy and how it advantages and dehumanises them?”
Tackling violence in South Africa
She is only too aware that South Africa has a violent, complex history.
“There are no simple solutions to this but if men and women tackled it equally, and we become more creative about how we address its it together as a political and not just a social issue, I think we will get further.”
She cited the University’s series of webinars which started in June. The first looked at the impact of the political economy on universities, and the second, in August, focused on the pervasive problem of GBV on campuses.
“The idea is to contribute to thought leadership by having these seminars, which are organised by Council, for Council, the rest of the University community, and the higher education sector.”
Funding challenges across the sector
Funding is perhaps the biggest ongoing challenge facing a university Council today, she believes.
“All universities face funding challenges but Nelson Mandela University even more so because it takes its students from the poorer segment of our society,” says January-Bardill. “Around 70% of the students are local and the Eastern Cape is one of the poorest provinces in the country.
“The whole funding model needs to be reviewed because universities have become dependent on numbers of students and government subsidies. Many of the ‘transformed universities’ have not really matured fundraising skills and getting extra resources into their institutional coffers.”
Although the Nelson Mandela University Trust has funded many students, she says, “it is not enough and it is not sustainable”.
Despite an updated and innovative Giving Campaign platform at Mandela, she sees the need for a more robust and far-reaching strategy to address this structural problem – and she places the responsibility for this squarely in the hands of the State, and the creativity of the management.
“Does everybody really have to go to university? We need more access, and access has been achieved, but there are other options. If you look at the number who start a degree and the number who finish it, there's a huge discrepancy.
“Our education problems go very deep. More children to go to school than before 1994 but the quality of the education they are getting has deteriorated. The numbers look good, but the quality is not so good.”
‘The personal is political’
January-Bardill draws a distinction between party politics and the political process, believing no one can escape politics. “The personal is political is my mantra. Choose how you want to intervene at a micro level, wherever you are, because that is your primary sphere of influence,” she says.
Overtly party-political student bodies sadden her, however. “Their agendas and their cultures and modus operandi become the agenda of their affiliated political parties and are not necessarily in the interests of the students. This culture is also not always conducive to academic institutions where the need to listen, be open minded and accommodating of diverse views is critical to learning and growing.
“While I understand and empathise with the many genuine challenges that many of our students face, there is a misfit between building citizens who are responsible and conscious and want to participate in building this society, and students who are learning that protesting through the use of offensive and dehumanising language is part of the way it should be.”
Focusing on solutions
January-Bardill sees herself as a solution-driven Chairperson. “Conflict is inevitable, but we have always found solutions. There has also been so much mutual respect amongst us as members of Council.”
And, despite the challenges facing the sector, there have been many highlights, such as the opening of the University’s Medical School in 2021. “It confirmed again that it is possible to have a dream, and to execute it well.”
She also thought the university was “brilliant” in how it dealt with the COVID-19 challenge. She remembers visiting the Nelson Mandela Bay sports stadium, built ahead of the soccer world cup of 2010, and seeing how the space was reconfigured to enable students to write their exams in safety.
“It really felt like the University was in society and had found a solution using a facility that had made South Africa very proud in 2010. There was also the willingness of the students to go along with what had been planned. I thought that was a stroke of genius, really.”
She also has a message for students of 2024: “be bolder – definitely be bolder in your contributions to making SA a better country for everybody. Young people contributed to our freedom and we don’t forget this. Don’t be afraid. Make mistakes but learn from them. Don’t muzzle yourself but contribute to the debate. Share your ideas with respect and with the intention to be positive role models to those who come after you.”