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Human Sciences Research Council CEO Professor Sarah Mosoetsa
Prof Mosoetsa, CEO of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), said universities were operating “in a time of converging emergencies” – from deepening unemployment and poverty to anti-science agendas, attacks on higher education, global conflict and shrinking resources.
“The social licence that our communities have given us to exist as universities is about to expire, if it has not already,” she cautioned in her address, From Research to Social Transformation: Aligning Knowledge with Policy and Praxis, on Monday 8 September.
“There are two questions that we need to answer: what is the purpose of knowledge in such times?
“Can research remain confined to academic journals and conference halls, or must it be mobilised to shape policy, transform communities, defend human dignity?”
Turning to unemployment, she relayed the most recent Statistics South Africa Quarterly Labour Force Survey, which reported an official unemployment rate of 32.9% and, among young people between 15 and 24 years old, 45.5%. For young women, particularly black women, the figures were even higher.
Unemployment, she warned, had become “a permanent life condition” for many young people. It eroded dignity, fuelled inequality and destabilised democracy, driving protest, migration and disillusionment – and universities could not ignore its impact.
On other pressures facing higher education in South Africa, Prof Mosoetsa said universities worldwide faced declining state subsidies, and the legacy of the #feesmustfall movement. National Student Financial Aid Scheme issues, bureaucratic regulation and growing public mistrust begged the question of whether universities were accessible, relevant and socially engaged.
She further suggested that when universities prioritised global rankings over local needs, and reproduced elitism or treated communities as extractive sites for data rather than partners in knowledge, “we erode our legitimacy”.
Prof Mosoetsa placed South Africa’s challenges in a wider context, including the rise of anti-science agendas, climate-change denialism in the face of overwhelming evidence, and vaccine scepticism undermining public health.
“It’s ongoing; misinformation spreading rapidly, eroding trust in institutions and this intersects with structural crises,” she said.
These included the fact that every three hours in South Africa, a woman was killed, often by a partner, in an expression of systemic gendered violence that some call slow genocide. Ongoing racial inequality and land injustice reflected colonialism’s afterlives. Further afield, yet no less pressing, in Gaza, families were being obliterated, schools and universities reduced to rubble.
“As South Africans, with our own history of apartheid and resistance, silence is not an option. “We need to start thinking about the bigger questions that confront our communities, issues that address unemployment, gender violence and inequality, and defend our universities.”
Her address resonated with the theme chosen for Research Week: “transformative knowledge for a just, sustainable and innovative Africa”, where research across all disciplines was aimed in service of society.
Prof Mosoetsa urged a reset of research priorities, to choose projects which most directly aligned with national priorities and needs as Africans, in Africa.
This echoed Nelson Mandela University’s own commitment to using research as a tool for social justice, a theme running through the week’s programme.
Her concluding message was clear: “If we align our research with praxis, with what we know needs to happen, the social transformation agenda is not optional. It is imperative.”