Bold thinking and open hearts needed for transformation

University of Cape Town (UCT) Vice-Chancellor Professor Mosa Moshabela outlines the role of universities in South Africa’s future.

UCT vice-chancellor Prof Mosa Moshabela recently returned from China where he was speaking about the interconnected health of people, animals and the environment at a World Economic Forum (WEF) new champions meeting. During the Covid pandemic he advised South Africans on TV about how to protect against infection and served as a public health specialist on the ministerial advisory committee.

Moshabela,45, prefers to keep a low profile, but agreed to an interview at the VC’s residence on a frigid Cape Town night before he flew to Tianjin. In January, he attended the WEF meeting in Davos, where AI was high on the agenda.

“How do we breach the [AI] divide that is happening around the globe and make sure Africa is not left behind? AI innovation is not just about the technology and tools, but also the infrastructure. This requires a big collaborative effort and, being UCT, we are expected to play a leadership role,” he said.

UCT will launch a multidisciplinary AI institute with an African focus, building on its successful Centre for AI Research, said Moshabela. “Applied research and developing new tools for Africa will be among its priorities.”

For a quietly-spoken leader, Moshabela has an exuberant laugh, which erupts when he talks about being appointed to the top post at UCT some 30 years after the university rejected his application to study medicine, a fact he mentioned at his installation on November 25.

We must look at what we can do to improve the employability of graduates and what they can do to improve the employability of citizens by creating jobs for others

Prof Mosa Moshabela, UCT vice-chancellor

In 1995 UCT privileged well-educated, largely white, students above talented rural applicants such as Moshabela, who herded goats and cattle after school in Limpopo. By 2014, UCT still only had 20% students of colour.

Now it has about 70% students of colour, he said, commending the way UCT achieved this. “Instead of taking places away from white students, UCT created places by increasing the number of students to about 29,000.”

The scarcity of places and funds for tertiary education, and of jobs for young South Africans is “an indictment on all of us” said Moshabela.

“When you get a bulge in the population of people in their 20s you must have opportunities for them so they can become an asset to the country, a demographic dividend. What we have is a demographic disaster.”

Universities are vital to society’s transformation he said. “We must look at what we can do to improve the employability of graduates and what they can do to improve the employability of citizens by creating jobs for others.

“But our students, our graduates and alumni are not going to be able to impact society if we don’t create an ecosystem for them to tap into because an entrepreneur still needs support... Building different pipelines that can be anchored by our infrastructure can go a long way.”

Unifying a fractured UCT

Despite its exemplary academic track record, UCT has been fractured by disputes over the past decades. Like many universities in South Africa, UCT has an exclusionary history and the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements challenged this legacy.

Accelerated transformation was promised by Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng when she took over as VC in 2018. However an independent investigation into UCT’s institutional culture and governance failures under her tenure found that she “bullied and intimidated colleagues” and in 2023 she took early retirement.

Through openness and conversations, Moshabela is striving to create a safe culture for students, staff and management at UCT. Acknowledging this feels like “an impossible task” at times, he said that shifting a culture is hard.

“At the heart of what we do at UCT is bringing talent together, people from diverse backgrounds with diverse views and we need that pot to melt!” he said. Talented people are highly marketable and high functioning he said. “They put pressure on themselves and it does not make sense to put additional pressure by locating them in an environment that can be experienced as ‘toxic and polarised’.

“If you want to get the best out of talented people as individuals and as teams you have to create a safe space ... psychologically safe, culturally safe, religiously safe and economically safe.

“One of the things that underlies the polarisation at UCT is pain — pain from many years of trauma that has not been resolved. We need to diagnose that pain and why it is lingering, and that is why we started the campus conversations.”

UCT appointed two experts in conflict resolution to facilitate campus conversations, which launched in December. Initially, people met them individually in confidence, and then as groups.

“When some people who disagree came together to have a facilitated dialogue, I thought this is amazing ... We are also having faculty assemblies [on current issues] to bring people together. They say they haven’t had the space to talk about life and challenges at UCT,” he said.

Moshabela hopes UCT will reflect the African values of ubuntu. “We have to get everyone to be kind to one another and there is no place for bullying,” he said. “We are trying to do this while dealing with student protests, a budget deficit and [US] funding cuts.”

UCT hit hardest by funding cuts

UCT got the most US National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for health and medical research of any institution outside North America before President Donald Trump slashed funding to aid, science and international projects, he said. “We are not a big university but we punch above our weight.”

A fifth of UCT’s projects received stop orders and 94 have not had their funding renewed. In total, UCT has about 600 staff working on 170 projects with NIH funding worth about R2.75bn, Moshabela said.

The university quickly started to look for alternative funding. “UCT must protect its staff and its highly-competitive research & development ecosystem,” said Moshabela, warning the cuts have the potential to erode UCT’s research and ultimately its ranking.

This month UCT was ranked 150th in the QS World University Ranking 2026, its highest position in a decade.

To try to limit the damage, UCT’s lead investigators are looking at where and how they can redistribute tasks and resources across projects, units, centres, institutes, faculties and departments he said.

The government needs to invest more domestically in research & development than its current 0.6% of GDP — it used to invest 0.76% and was aiming for 1.6% — said Moshabela, as there is “no other partner in South Africa that can replace NIH funding.”

Universities South Africa (representing 26 public universities) has written to the government and has proposals to present to parliament and entities such as the National Research Foundation (NRF) said the vice-chancellor. He is chair of the NRF board.

Shooting for the moon

At the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Moshabela’ support for the Aerospace Systems Research Institute (ASRI) demonstrated how the innovation and intellectual property of universities can unleash opportunities beyond campus.

ASRI arose around the development of an engine to launch a vehicle into space, an initiative that led to a national space launch programme with partners including Denel. ASRI projects became a magnet for aerospace talent and created a manufacturing pipeline around the components needed for the engine, said Moshabela.

I have found Prof Moshabela to be thoughtful and future-focused leader. His vision of a more engaged and collaborative university sector is not only refreshing, it is necessary for the times we live in. Transformation requires bold thinking and open hearts.

Prof Deresh Ramjugernath, rector and vice-chancellor of Stellenbosch University

“ASRI has the African record for the highest vehicle into space launched by a university,” he said. At the interview he was wearing socks with astronauts on them, a Father’s Day gift from his daughter who is studying medicine at UCT. He and his wife, Dr Nosipho Makhakhe, also have twins of three.

The deputy VC for research and innovation at UKZN before he moved to UCT, Moshabela is committed to collaboration with other universities. “As a top university, we are under no pressure to collaborate but I know the success of collaborations internationally.”

He leads a collaboration with the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University known as QUEST (Quality Health Systems and Transformation) in South Africa and is a member of prestigious global groups such as the Lancet Healthy Longevity international advisory board.

Prof Deresh Ramjugernath, the vice-chancellor of Stellenbosch University, said Moshabela’s emphasis on collaboration resonated strongly with him.

“I have found Prof Moshabela to be thoughtful and future-focused leader. His vision of a more engaged and collaborative university sector is not only refreshing, it is necessary for the times we live in. Transformation requires bold thinking and open hearts. he said.

“As vice-chancellors, we have a shared responsibility not just to lead our institutions, but to actively shape the future of higher education in South Africa and on the continent.

“We believe in a model of higher education that is not competitive but co-operative, not extractive but co-creative. African universities must see one another not as rivals for ranking or recognition but as partners in driving sustainable, inclusive development.”

Moshabela is on the commission for the US National Academies for Science, Engineering and Medicine on the Global Roadmap to Healthy Longevity and he chairs the standing committee on health in the Academy of Science of South Africa.

Stellar example of transformation

His trajectory from Tubake Senior Secondary School in Limpopo to vice-chancellor at UCT reflects his love of learning, inspired by his grandmother, who never went to university.

The VC has a doctorate in public health from Wits University, an MSc in demography and health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and he did his MBChB at UKZN’s Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine.

“When I finished matric, I already knew I wanted to do medicine,” said Moshabela, who locked onto UCT after a school bus trip to Cape Town. When I was rejected by UCT, I thought it made sense. I was from a village and my marks were not good enough,” he said. 

At that time however UCT narrowly selected students based only on marks, with no regard for the quality of their schooling. UKZN was already implementing a more equitable system by giving the top students from each quintile opportunities. (Schools are classified into five quintiles based on their poverty levels).

Moshabela said: “At the time I did not fully grasp this, but I was a product of transformation.”

His Stellenbosch University counterpart, Ramjugernath said: “I deeply admire Prof Moshabela’s spirit of servant leadership, grounded in empathy, values, and collective upliftment.”