Wits University Integrated Report 2020

66 Wits has a number of cooperation agreements with various levels of government in South Africa, which has an impact on policy developments. Most notable of these are our agreements with the City of Johannesburg and the Gauteng Province. We work very closely with the City of Johannesburg to conduct research for them in a number of areas. For the Gauteng government, we host the Gauteng City Region Observatory on campus and are partners in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site.

A number of fruitful engagements with the embassies of China, European Union, Germany and Palestine took place in 2020. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, we were unable to host as many embassy delegations as we had done in previous years.

Our involvement in the Erasmus+ were restricted by the pandemic, but our involvement in Horizon 2020 programmes of the European Union continued as usual, but on a restricted basis. Wits continues to be an active member of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA). We have renewed our involvement in the consortium of South African and Swedish Universities (SASUF) for another ten years. Wits is actively taking part in the areas of digital technologies, big data and cybersecurity, climate change, natural resources and sustainability. We are also active members of the Nairobi Alliance, which currently links the universities of Nairobi, Rwanda, Malawi, Witwatersrand and Leicester. Wits is also a member of the BRICS Network of Universities, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Association of African Universities, the European Association for International Education and NAFSA (Association of International Educators) which enhances our collaboration opportunities.

Our involvement with the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory have continued in 2020, but at a remote level. Samples were sent via courier to the two facilities for analysis and the data was then sent back to the University via the internet.

4.8.3. Engagement with Society In the White Paper for the Transformation of Higher Education (1997), “responsiveness to societal interests and needs,’’ is considered as one of the three roles of a university, and one which should be fully integrated with mainstream teaching and research. The University fulfils this public mandate through a variety of activities. A key component of this range of activities are the academic and research activities that are geared towards community engagement and community beneficiation.

Wits has embraced a holistic approach to engagement with society. Instead of “community service” being practiced in a narrow and parochial manner, with connotations of a “self-actualised” and self-sufficient University ‘serving’, being “responsive to” and giving something of value to a community, and often doing extractive research that has no tangible benefit to the communities being researched, Wits tries to pursue a mutually beneficial and proactive approach, which seems to be described better by the term “engagement,” than the phrase “community service”.

The word “community” also has different meanings in Higher Education circles. It is a very broad term used to define groups of people; whether they are stakeholders, interest groups, citizen groups, etc. How, then, does Wits define its community? Wits understands communities as groupings of people who share similar values and patterns of living. They manifest themselves as groupings of people within the public sector (such as local, provincial and national tiers of government, agencies, parastatals and councils), within the private sector (such as business and industry) and within the civil sector (such as non-profit organisations, community-based organisations and social movements) and stratifications of society itself. Wits also understands that, as a University, we have to interact with various agencies outside of our national borders (such as foreign governments, international agencies and higher education institutions in other countries).

The current Wits Strategic Plan aims to position the University as a leading centre of intellectual activity in the developing world and in the world at large. Part of this will be achieved by engaging with many sectors of society (domestic and international) and developing strategic partnerships which will make Wits an active, committed, creative, and innovative force that advances the public good.