Dynamics of building a better society: Reflections on ten years of development cooperation and capacity building
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Date
2014
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SUN Media
Abstract
The modern world is an environment of rapid change. Per Dalin points
out that we are experiencing an unprecedented ten revolutions occurring
simultaneously. There are revolutions prompted by globalisation and the
population explosion, revolutions in knowledge and information, in the
economy, technology, ecology, culture, politics, aesthetics, and values.
Dealing with change on this scale requires a paradigm shift of the kind last
experienced when science began to deepen its challenge to other forms of
knowing in the 17th century. We have to learn to know and see differently.
That is not easy. With this in mind, the philosopher Manuel Castells points
us to a combination of global knowledge, networks and communication as
our fundamental means of dealing with the challenges of the 21st century.
We need to work in partnerships. There can be no going it alone.
Learning to see and understand differently is still the primary
challenge in South Africa’s ongoing transition to democracy. 20 years ago,
emerging from the apartheid past with a mission to engage with apartheid’s
terrible ongoing legacy, UWC knew that it needed partners to face Dalin’s
ten revolutions in their local incarnations. Transformation of the kind
that enables people to move beyond apartheid’s authoritarian certainties
requires a profound paradigm shift from both oppressor and oppressed.
This shift is inseparable from a global challenge. New perspectives and
new knowledge are required to respond to the non-linear, persistent and
ubiquitous changes, both social and natural, that are now beginning to
impact on humans across the world. It is in partnerships across cultures
and nationalities that we are most likely to gain these perspectives and find
this knowledge. And it is in partnerships that we find the assurance and the
social conviction necessary to make the new knowledge and perspectives
available and ultimately unavoidable.
This understanding lay behind our response in 2002 to the panel
interviewing us as shortlisted candidates for the VLIR-UOS institutional
university cooperation programme. The panellists expressed profound doubts about our choice of the Humanities and the Social Sciences above the
Natural Sciences as the main thrust of the programme. We explained that
our vision and mission led us to believe that we must try to create a sense
of co-responsibility amongst all humans if we are to confront successfully
the already threatening changes to our physical and social environment. We
argued that our future as a species would depend essentially on the success
of our collaborative relationships with other humans globally. This called
for a caring and open perspective. Clearly, our vision was convincing. We
were selected.
A decade of partnership with Flemish universities has been a major
factor in the rapid advances that UWC has made in that period. The
programme, co-created by UWC , VLIR-UOS and four Flemish universities,
has focused on “The Dynamics of Building a Better Society”. In caring about
how change takes place and being open to its complexity, we strove together,
with signal success, to build capacity, stimulate research, and on the strength
of actual achievements to create Research Centres in 5 strategic areas:
The African Centre for Citizenship and Democracy
The Interdisciplinary Centre of Excellence for Sports Sciences and
Development
The Centre for Research in HIV and AIDS
The Institute for Water Studies
The Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research
This book tells the story of how we did so. It is a celebration of people
from two cultures learning to work together in the interests of humankind,
and doing so successfully.
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Keywords
Higher education, South Africa, University of the Western Cape, Democracy, Citizenship, Governance, Sustainability, Multilingualism, Leadership, HIV, Wellness, Digital divide
Citation
Tapscott, C. (2014). Dynamics of building a better society: Reflections on ten years of development cooperation and capacity building. SUN Media: Stellenbosch