 We are very fortunate to have with us today Professor Hettie Paqueng, a celebrated mathematics scholar and educational philanthropist. She's won numerous awards for her research and community work, including the Order of the Bayoubab Silver, conferred on her by the President of South Africa in April 2016. She features in Forbes's inaugural list of the 50 most powerful women in Africa and in September 2022 she was awarded the inaugural Africa Education Medal awarded by T4 Education 2 and this is the quote, an outstanding individual who has demonstrated impact leadership and advocacy in the field of education. You can read more detailed biography on the event page but for now I will pass over to Pramoghati. Thank you very much Sally. Good morning everyone. I think it's morning where you are at even though it's afternoon where I am. I have entitled my talk today as follows, the ecology of inclusive knowledge collections rests on the pillars of excellence, transformation and sustainability. Libraries are the custodians, they are the custodians of knowledge in my view and so if they focus only on knowledge from a particular cultural bias, a historical frame of reference then libraries are saving only that part of the population that shares those perspectives. A library that does not seek to include diverse sources of knowledge as well as inclusive perspectives on the use of knowledge will only reinforce the divide between the global north and the global south. There I say that it will not only reinforce the divide from the global north and the global south but it may also reinforce the divide between the haves and the have-nots so the marginalized people will remain on the fringes. This at a time when we are more aware of the ecology of knowledge and humanity's need to explore different perspectives and different sources of knowledge to address the challenges of global magnitude that humanity is facing. In this sense every library no matter where it's located in the world is an essential part of a global knowledge network by understanding and promoting the relationship between excellence and transformation in the collection and curation of knowledge libraries are in a powerful position to build a universal knowledge archive that can serve all humanity. In South Africa we refer to transformation as the social economic process that we follow to address historic inequalities caused by apartheid and the marginalization of people according to their race, gender, culture or other superficial factors. Transformation takes many different forms and is understood in different ways. UCT libraries seek to make a positive impact by saving African scholars and helping to disseminate their research and analysis as a way to promote transformation in the knowledge sector. Tragically as you may know in April 2021 we lost a significant portion of our historical African archives when a wildfire on Table Mountain spread onto the UCT campus and destroyed the Jager reading room and all its contents. Materials that were archived underground or in the basement were damaged or destroyed by the exposure to water during the firefighting process. Since that terrible day we have received many different messages and practical forms of support for which we will always be grateful and we are in the process of restoring the damaged archives and rethinking the space that has been burnt to the ground. Meanwhile the work of UCT libraries to promote African knowledge across the continent and to the world is carrying on and that is what I'm focusing on today beginning with the underlying motivation for all UCT departments and faculties. Excellence, transformation, sustainability are the three pillars of our vision 2030 for unleashing human potential to create a fair and just society. UCT in South Africa has made an active commitment to build on the relationship between excellence and transformation to really to strengthen sustainability across the institution and I can put it the other way to say not just a simple relationship but the interdependent relationship between excellence and transformation to strengthen sustainability across the institution. In our view you cannot have sustainability whether it's in your collections or anything in the institution without bringing excellence and transformation together. These three pillars form the basis of UCT's institutional ecology as well as our call to South South Africa in the wider world. This focus on the ecology of the institution is expressed in our vision 2030 strategic plan which can be summed up in what we call a massive transformative purpose unleash human potential to create a fair and just society and the concept of the three pillars and their importance for unleashing human potential arose out of a period of crisis at UCT. Not only at UCT but at other institutions beginning 2015. UCT's vision 2030 is a strategic strategic response to the realization that the world is in crisis and is entering a season of rapid change led by the fourth industrial revolution combined with climate change rising poverty and inequality sexual and gender-based violence warfare shortages of energy and water and economic uncertainty just to name a few. Building a global ecology of inclusive knowledge collections is an important part of building humanity's resources to respond to crisis. People need to identify with knowledge and knowledge needs to identify with people. The issues that spark the series of student protests in South Africa in 2015 across all institutions in South Africa and of course they spilled over for countries such as the Netherlands the UK the USA. Those protests were complex but the primary underlying issue could be defined as a feeling among students that universities did not reflect their culture their economic needs or their aspirations to work with African knowledge to solve African problems. We had the roads must fall protests that led to the removal of the situation of the colonial leader Cecil John Rhodes from his prime position on our campus and included calls for decolonization of the university curriculum and pedagogy. That movement captured the hearts and minds of young people overseas with similar protests in the UK and the US especially. We had the fees must fall outsourcing must fall patriarchy must fall Africans must fall and so on. The fees must fall address the high cost of of tuition residence fees and study materials as well as the suspension of students with fee debts. The outsourcing must fall protest called for all the workers at UCT and other universities in South Africa to be direct staff members of the university eligible for all the packs enjoyed by the UCT staff and patriarchy must fall addressed sexual and gender based violence in all its forms including discrimination in the classroom and workplace against anyone of a different gender or sexual orientation. And then Africans must fall became prominent on South African campuses where Africans was a common medium of instruction. This followed decades of protests against the apartheid government's policy that elementary and secondary education in African township townships must take place in Africans. By 2015 most South African students represented previously marginalized people from poor communities and so there was a critical mass across campuses. They protested because they wanted to identify with the university in terms of cultural representation in terms of economic need and freedom from racial sexual and language discrimination. Universities around the world are facing similar expectations of the millennial generation or what I like to call Generation C and I describe Generation C as a mindset that is characterized as putting people and the planet before profits along with a widespread of erosion of trust in leadership processes whether in government big businesses or institutions of higher learning. So when I took office as UCT's Vice Chancellor in July 2018 I had to think about where UCT was going because I took office in the middle of protests and shutdown of the university. The university had not enjoyed a full academic year without disturbance since 2015 and this was 2018 and every year they were shut down. So I had to think about where UCT was going as an institution of higher learning as a microcosm of South African society and as a key stakeholder in developing solutions to global problems like climate change and inequality. That thinking developed into the three pillars of excellence transformation and sustainability and in my view these three pillars were important because I took office at a time when the narrative was that transformation and excellence are at odds. If you prioritize excellence you're not interested in transformation if you prioritize transformation you're not interested in excellence and in a way that kind of narrative still is present in some spaces in higher education that talking about decolonization is actually lowering the standards or undervaluing excellence and so I encourage colleagues to look particularly at what are we talking about when we talk about excellence. Excellence is not about a specific standard set by a worldview limited by the lens of privilege rather we need to recognize it as showing up in many different ways or showing up in its diversity and it can be achieved by people no matter who they are and that's because excellence doesn't happen on its own excellence is enabled so if you're enabled in the way apartheid works it will show up in the way apartheid worked and so we have to enable excellence in its diversity and therefore it will show up differently and transformation involves not just meeting a quota for admission or employment equity but rather creating conditions for everyone to express excellence regardless of where they come from and this requires students to bring not only intellectual capacity to the academic project but also to gain the cultural capital and allow them to thrive that allows them to thrive in a university environment and in many ways their presence transforming the institutional culture and not them being expected to assimilate in the in the institutional culture and in fact of course not just students but staff from different backgrounds or from backgrounds from communities that were previously marginalized creating conditions for these communities to succeed while enabling excellence is transformation with integrity together excellence and transformation when they work together they produce and support and promote sustainability of the university's ecology including knowledge dissemination culture finance our contribution to society our impact on the environment and the people and the institutions around us recognizing that a higher education institution affects the wider society if we focus on excellence without transformation or transformation without excellence the university ecology will not be sustainable every department and faculty at UCT is working on the basis of these three pillars and our massive transformative purpose to unleash human potential to create a fair and just society sustainability of course is the long-term goal of every human being to build resilience and thrive in the face of our global challenges inclusive knowledge collections that are based on excellence in terms of curation archiving and other processes and on transformation in terms of sourcing and making available knowledge from as many sources as possible can help build sustainability and so UCT library collections sit at the heart of knowledge creation and dissemination within the community that uses those collections in short the transformation of knowledge leads to the transformation of society even during apartheid our library collections at UCT were receiving material that was legally banned by the apartheid government we created an archive that provided a glimpse into the kinds of battles for freedom and expression that were were taking place under apartheid rule UCT libraries puts into practice the belief that historically advantaged institutions should have a moral obligation to share scholarly content for the advancement of research in the country as a whole and for greater good of the public to bridge decades of colonialism as well as South Africa's racial divide and lingering systemic inequalities UCT libraries is developing mechanisms for the sharing of African research free of charge and copyright barriers for example UCT library started its publishing program at the end of 2016 as part of its open access service with with the deliberate goal of transforming access and distribution of scholarship for the growth and development of Africa's research agenda and the liberation of previously repressed African scholarly content in just the five months after UCT libraries launched the first open access book in Sesoto in November 2020 authored by one of our staff members the book was downloaded 1,078 times a testimony to the value of open access publishing and its wide reach the library as a publisher open access service provides an alternative model that can contribute to the production and dissemination of African knowledge and can thus accelerate diversity equity and inclusivity in the publication of research UCT libraries publishes five journals and her sofa published 23 monographs one in Sesoto one of South Africa's indigenous languages neither the authors nor their institutions pay publication fees article processing charges or other fees associated with getting scholarship published African challenges such as the exorbitant cost of bandwidth and connectivity interruptions together with frequent blackouts had to be affected into the deliver in into deliver and access for all servers new features such as audio functions photo enlargement and download capability were developed in response to perceived needs of an African scholarly community and three example publications are Atlas of Pediatric HIV infection and illustrated guide for healthcare professionals this was authored by academics from five institutions in three countries Nigeria Kenya and South Africa the aim of the Atlas is to illustrate conditions recorded in pediatric patients presenting to HIV clinics and wards in an African setting the second one is open access Atlas of auto laryngeology head and neck operative surgery volume one head and neck as of 2019 64 percent of African countries had fewer than one auto laryngeologist per million people which is exacerbated by the lack of facilities while developed nations have around 13 000 auto laryngeologists per a thousand a hundred thousand people this textbook uses embedded audio and video clips to help students understand surgical procedures outside the classroom and to assist practicing doctors in Africa across the continent with the latest advances in the field the content can be downloaded onto cell phones to access in rural areas the third one is constitutional law for students which is a textbook for students written by students to help navigate one of the most challenging subjects in a South African law degree a large cohort of the student body comprises second language or later English speaking students who have challenges navigating dense legal content so embedded in the textbook are many workbooks to help students prepare for the constitutional law examination UCT aggregated institutional platform has been extended into a national South African platform that is available to any academic institutions in the country to publish their local journals and or more monographs the next phase which is currently in process is to extend this platform to other African countries across the continent currently the University of Namibia publishes five journals on the platform and Bindurah University of Science and Education in Zimbabwe has one journal the Association of African Universities acting on behalf of nearly 400 universities on the continent is in discussion with UCT about lending its weight to you to the use of the platform and so in conclusion as an integral resource in an institution that enjoyed advantages under apartheid UCT libraries is now making every attempt to advance a social justice driven library publishing program by advancing a publishing landscape that is molded around the principles of equity and inclusion working with the framework of excellence transformation and sustainability as as the work of UCT libraries demonstrates these three pillars of our vision are not mere theory but they provide the foundation for a practical and effective approach to making diverse knowledge more inclusive reaching a wider audience whose potential can now be unleashed to help create a more fair in just society thank you very much I look forward to a conversation with you thank you that was fantastic and I've taken a whole load of notes and we do have one question so far sitting in the Q&A if other people do have questions use the Q&A function at the bottom of the screen and your general thoughts can go into the chat so the question that we have so far is from Stuart Dencer at the University of Southampton and they are particularly keen to hear what practical or tactical steps UCT may have taken to recruit and retain underrepresented folks particularly in middle and senior management posts are there any transferable tips that UCT can offer yeah thanks very much for the question I can see comes from Stuart's from Southampton so you know we had to so in terms of staffing we have an employment equity fund which is managed from the vice chancellor's office but by the deputy vice chancellor for transformation who manages that and with the transformation employment equity fund it's really to recruit and we recruit black scholars even when we don't have a position and what we do is that in a normal course of work we would recruit an academic who would replace someone who will be retiring in three years or less so they would come into the department and they'll be paid they'll be hired on permanent conditions of service but the employment equity fund will fund them for three years in the three years they get they are part of the department and when the person retires then they take over the position but that creates an inflow of academics and when this fund started of course it started with my predecessor and when I took office I realized that when we started the the fund was recruiting at the lower level so it was recruiting lecturers and often the people who were retiring were full professors and and so we started being much more strategic about it so that we don't juniorize our departments and so we didn't look only at is there someone who's retiring we looked at in three years time there's someone who's retiring is there upward mobility possibilities for other people to ensure that the department will still have senior people I mean it's not only that the people who are retiring are professors but in case where it's a full professor we would look at that and if there's a stream of people then you know who would be professors or associate professors then we know that in the in the replacement even if we replace with the young academic who's a lecturer it is still okay because it's not generalized in the department but it's a deliberate aspect and that doesn't have to be a post but we also said with this fund what are we going to do we're going to deliberately also approach people who are in higher positions so we approach people who are in higher positions for example we had an academic who was at John Hopkins and wanted to come back to the country and doing global surgery and and I heard about that I called her she was professor material and she said she's available to come and often those kinds of people already have a have a offer somewhere and they have to to choose so it's important that we we approach them before a post is advertised we create a space for them and they came here they started local surgery and they are thriving and and this is fantastic so and and they started also on a three-year contract with full you know treated like a full staff time staff member of course you need heads of departments on board you need deans on board because they have to make sure that the person is is welcomed I think the clinic also asked a minute middle management and higher management level so when it comes to management level like at UCT right now we really right now we have a deputy vice-translator to who are black and only one is white and it's been a changing environment it wasn't like that when I took office and it's hard because when you recruit you've got to be deliberate about the fact that you're giving best preference to black scholars so we've got categories so we we we have an employment equity plan our department of labor wants us to submit that we look at the employment equity plan what what how where are we not transformed at which level what is the level of transformation that we want how many foreign nationals do you want to have how many black women and so on and so forth and so when we recruit we say what's the priority target group okay on the first meeting as we send the the we send the application the the advertisement we are clear as a selection committee this is a priority target group and of course I'm putting it as if it's simple often there are battles because as you can imagine you know transformation and decolonization sometimes often or all the time it means distribution of privilege and now here you are you are saying what's the target group and and so you might say we need a black African woman so which means in the first selection when we shortlist the top category would be if someone qualifies they've got to qualify in terms of the what what's needed okay if they qualify in terms of what needed and they are they are black South African women then we'll put them in that category if they qualify in the all the requirements but they're not qualifying in terms of the category demographically would put them in a category b so we don't discard them we we we have these categories and then there will be people who don't qualify at all whether they are black or whatever they don't qualify because we still need people who qualify if in category a we don't have anyone qualify we advertise again we go on a on a critical head hunting we start we really have now an aggressive head hunting we come again we sometimes we get there are times when we've had an agency we don't always hire an agency in first round because it's expensive but we depending on the position we will do that and and then we'll go that way and then we will go to our a preferred category of democracy if we get some if we don't in the third round we then consider the b categories but we will at all times after the first round we notify the people in the b category who don't fit the demography that we have kept to on this so that they know it's not a regret that we'll still come back to them and there's been situations where we've appointed someone in a category that doesn't meet the demographics but we we need to appoint people who qualify and they help us also meet our implement equity plans there's also positions like for example in our graduate school of business we were clear that in this case we need the priority is that we need someone who will take our business school somewhere irrespective of where they come from and of course we did the the you know the different levels and different rounds and by the third round we got someone from the US someone who's white someone but we've done we've satisfied ourselves that we we have we don't have someone who can meet our requirement in you know first round we did that we did that so that's not the only case so we do a thorough check search in terms of management positions and and often I mean in terms of the deans for example we all the deans when I took office we have eight deans there were only two deans in office the rest had resigned because there was so much chaos and of the two that were there on the 27th on my 27th day in office one of the two who was permanently appointed passed on and though and so I was left with one dean and I had to appoint seven and actually you know six out of seven of them came from within the institution they had been in different programs they were young they were diverse in terms of nationality race but the bottom line is that their majority black they don't all come from South Africa their majority women and but you get you get white women you get people foreign nationals you get you get a diverse group of deans and I think we have a strong deanship that exists and that's why for the first time this year for the first time last year we we have a CFO who's who's black that is top CA chair of the South African Institute of Charter content we've got a research executive director for the first time in the history of the university who's a black African woman first time in the history and she's a scientist she's got a doctorate in bio in the biosciences and we've got an currently an acting executive director of HR who's also a black African very experienced and so on but it takes time there's a lot of tools and frauds there's contestation it's not a smooth right and and there are bruises in the process but but one as a county officer has got to lead with purpose and keep moving forward and and some people will will be left behind but the majority of people will move on the important thing is that people must be able to deliver thanks again that's great i'm definitely thoroughly answered steward's question i'm commenting in the chat that sounds like succession planning on steroids from the first part of your answer there it's definitely a very interesting and thorough process having people kind of come through on that that three year period before they take the position and kate has asked if this approach that you take both for the succession planning i'm assuming and also the general recruitment does that extend to kind of professional and support services as well as the academic positions yeah good question so in 2021 i introduced the executive transformation initiative and it went through different processes and this of course it's controversial for some people because people see it as purging but it's not in my view it's transformation so what the executive transformation initiative does it's we say people in the professional spaces and professional staff who qualify for early retirement can take early retirement we can retain them for two years they vacate their position if there's someone who's in the succession planning in the department the person can be put in there to act for six months be mentored by the person who's retired who's taken early retirement and and then we we advertise within those six months and the person can compete but they have had a possibility of being mentored by someone in the position of course we don't force people we make the possibility available to people and it has to be worthwhile so so people can volunteer for it and we've had like the HR position the reason why we have an acting executive director of HR is because the executive director of HR was one of the first people to raise their hand for that for that it doesn't only focus on people inside we have a deputy registrar for example who also was in the same situation applied for an ETI and we advertised there was no one inside who could easily be a the successor and so we advertised and some people in faculties and across the country people applied we found a black African woman who could come in but the deputy registrar remains in the system for two years has got another task in the registrar's office but then it's available for for the new deputy registrar who's not acting in this case because they competed for the job but they are available for them to for mentoring for knowledge for you know historical memory to be to be shared so we do have that and and we have started implementing it we started implementing it this year it's not an easy right because sometimes is seen as purging why people but but people are not forced in fact there are some people who applied for it and and I didn't approve it because their departments did not have a problem with transformation and so the issue was what what why are we doing this okay and and people get upset and so they take an early retirement and and and and they leave anyway you know and whatever but but but it's a drastic measure you need funding for that we had to make funding available for that we've got other process other projects for transformation that are really radical that we have put in even for staff we've got a pipeline project where we recruit a group of black African students from masters PhDs postdoc they have to compete for the position when they win it they get placed in the department they are paid per month their fees are paid but they are meant to be academics and and they've got to show and some as I speak there's three one a PhD two postdocs who got positions because when positions get available firstly they get they they stand a chance a better chance because they have been in the department they know how the department works they've been teaching a module but also people know them you know it's unlike it's very difficult coming from outside to come into the court it's very difficult for people to to gain traction and and get flavour from selection committees excellent thank you and that actually leads into one of the other questions that's come up from Simon in the chat they say working in an organisation with explicit anti-racist and anti-abelist ambitions it is great to hear these steps for addressing historical privilege with these ambitions previously mentioned and they've already had backlash including personal attacks on colleagues online so they're asking if you are able to share your advice on building and resilience and acknowledging it will be racially minoritised staff will be on the receiving end of any backlash you know I'm not sure if I can any strategies for resilience I mean I choose to focus on the positive I focus on what's working and and and also accepting that you know transformation leadership is hard and there's going to be bruises and I'm going to be the first one who gets bruised and and and you know precisely because there are contestations about that and and I think one has got to accept that and and do the work and if it becomes impossible then bow out but you've done an impact you've made an impact you know I am I rest comfortably in the not I mean every morning someone said it's so hard what makes you wake up in the morning maybe perhaps that's could be one of the resilient strategies I mean there are other physical whatever things that you can do but what makes up makes me get up and go to work every morning is the idea of what if it works what if it works because I am convinced this is what we need we cannot separate excellence from transformation as if people from marginalized groups cannot achieve excellence we need to understand what produces it we need to have to be clear about what it means to deal with the inequalities of the past and feel comfortable having green fence funding to deal with those inequalities of the past to support people from so we have those ring fence when I came here those ring fence funding ring fence funding for example for a research we're not there but you've got to do that against against the brain against conversations that that say that this is a meritocracy how do you create how can you say it's a meritocracy when other people are starting way ahead it's not and I cannot expect people to fight the battles that I fought to get to where I am to be a rated scientist because I know how tough and impossible it is and I know how many people had to help me and I know those people who helped me are allies are white allies who helped me because it was at a time where there were no black people to mentor and so on and if people feel threatened by an advancement of a black person they're not gonna have so the allies are not so many so so I think it's for me is the knowledge that it's this idea the dream I talk about it as like building a cathedral you know when you build a cathedral you don't really know when is it going to be finished many people who built who were involved in building a cathedral any cathedral in the world when they started the people who started the building were not there when it got finished but those who there are those who built a cathedral with the pride that says it's hard it's difficult but I'm building a cathedral and one day it will be big it will be massive it will be done and the world will come and congregate here and for me that's my motivation I'm building a cathedral we are building a cathedral everyone who agrees with the vision it's not everyone it's not everyone in the leadership my leadership team but those who agree we are building a cathedral it's going to be hard and some people who don't subscribe to building this cathedral who find it difficult who can see the image you can visualize it will say what's the point of pushing these stones these rocks these bricks in this hard difficult situation let's just give it up because we don't know whether this thing is going to be finished whether the cathedral will ever come up but it is those who can see the vision who will come come with us so for me that's what keeps me up what if we succeed in building the cathedral then this model can be replicated we changed the narrative and in my view it's an inclusive model because it doesn't say people of a particular race are not allowed because our employment I think in the university we are probably the only university where our employment equity plan includes uh numbers for white people and foreign nationals because my view is that you can't build a globally competitive university if you don't have diversity you need diversity that's how you build a globally competitive university you need diversity in the students you need diversity in the leadership the issue is how do you make that diversity and that's where we we work the title and manage it to make sure that we have that diversity that comes together with with excellence fantastic and I think quite a few comments noting the building a cathedral being an excellent analogy and I think personally that that question of what if it works is so powerful like that's the question people need to keep in mind I think oftentimes we can worry about what happens if it fails but it it's much much more encouraging to consider well what happens if it works it's a much braver question um so we've got about 10 minutes left so I'm going to kind of squish together two of the other questions that are floating about I can see someone says how did you get the funding quick question we we submitted a proposal I went on a proposal first of all by the way I met with black South African academics I mean I did the most controversial thing and started with an apology I said to them I used a apartheid categorization of race and I started meeting with black African South African professors and associate professors and I said to them what got you here tell me because we want to replicate it I brought in and then after they gave me the ideas I met with the so-called colored South African group what got you here they gave me and then I met with the so-called it all started with an apology in some cases people were angry how dare you do this and I said that's fine if you don't want to be here you can in when I called the black African South Africans there was one white person who had only an HR thing wrote that they are white and my PSA should we involve we invite them I said yes if they cut if they call themselves black invite them you know anyone who calls themselves black and and the strategies that we had came from there we then submitted a proposal presented a proposal to council and then council made funding available and that's how so this special funding and that funding is available and then I allocated it to different vice deputy vice-chancellors who then manage different programs and then they have they had to implement those programs so the programs that we are implementing are really the ideas of professors and associate professors from much formerly marginalized groups because we asked them how did they get here excellent thank you so we do have a question about what global north libraries and universities can do to help democratize both knowledge creation and access to knowledge but that feeds into a question about open access I think those two things are quite related and the question about the open access is it feels very important to your transformation work and are there further plans to develop platforms and tools which were support inclusion excellence and transformation for UCT and beyond which you talked about so they're kind of a little bit related so extending your open access tools to kind of work with the inclusion excellence and transformation and also what libraries and universities can do around that democratization of knowledge yeah so so as I explained in my presentation I mean the next phase of what we're doing is that is extending our platform to all African countries to get African institutions to be able to publish their journals and their monographs on our platform I mean the big thing about transformation in this space is knowledge from the continent knowledge from Africa by Africans and and we make it available free of charge which is you know published open access free of charge which is not always the case and my view is that other libraries in the world can for example partner with us okay that's one model that we can partner in this endeavor and and make it enable more African institutions to publish on our platform one can say well do the platform yourself and and what we have then it's like okay so again this has to be done by the West you know you know what does it mean but I think partnering may may create something much more unique that says this is an an equal partnership or is a partnership that actually goes beyond equitable partnership because it recognizes that Africa might not have financial resources but it's got intellectual resources that the West need to engage with so how do we create a possibility for other institutions in the West to engage with these journals can we get those libraries subscribing to the journals that we have can we get those libraries perhaps getting access to those monographs or or or purchasing them or whatever so that there is the knowledge um knowledge flowing from here to the West unlike the normal way where you have the West knowledge from the West um flowing to the south so so there's I think there's different ways in which we can we can collaborate in this regard um and and I think in in cases where libraries are housing archives African archives whichever way they got to your space if there are no where on the African continent I think that that institution should be worried because um even if someone doesn't know where how they got there I mean it's like you know here at UCT when I took office you know we have skeletal remains in a Faculty of Health Sciences and um and we we we asked ourselves a question where do they come from whose are they and what you know we've been in apartheid could this be a result of apartheid and actually we found that yes as some of them were obtained legally and then we didn't wait for the communities to come and cry to us and say you are racist these were obtained legally from indigenous people we went to them and say we have done our research we have found these skeletal remains they they we've done research that includes these um scientists from different um disciplines and they come from this space these are the people the names we found you know and then we say to the communities how can we make right you know and it's a long tiring process at this moment we are still we we have got to a certain point we've got to do the official burial of the skeletal remains but it's worthwhile because it says to the communities we care about transformation we're not just doing it for the sake of it I think it's the same with archives in the west and with any institution in the west that's having any archives or collections that come from the continent that we don't have to wait for politicians to make a decision that they should come back to Africa it should be any institution that is actually serious about decolonizing or transformation to say we've got this and we are doing research to say where did they come from how do we get them back let's have a program and and have a a proper way of getting them back that's the best we can do and we might not be able to pay reparations like we can't be able to pay reparations to those families but the best we can do is to to respect what belongs to them and return it to them thank you that's actually touches on the final question that we've got sitting in the Q&A which is that some museums are moving towards the repatriation of objects and what efforts would you like RLUK members to focus on to build greater equity and I think you've touched on that in your answer just now so yeah really really interesting and just checking back through the chat to make sure that there's nothing that I've missed here there's quite a few links being posted in there related to the open access conversation that's really good and there's a comment about metadata being applicable and it's never finished and must reflect the diversity of our communities and we need more catalogers from diverse communities I think that's definitely a fair point especially with a lot of us not having large cataloging departments within the libraries the records tend to be sourced from quite similar places and so yeah building more diversity into that into that work would help I'm sure thank you for people who are putting links who put links of you know the organizations that I talked about they thank you very much yeah that's that's great and so I think that's all of the questions that we've got you're not necessarily someone the person who said succession planning on steroids I have to say in the South African context we have seen as soft our transformation agenda is a radical within UCT it makes people uncomfortable within UCT but in the country it's not seen as radical I think it's radical but but just to say to you you see it as on steroids and the reason why it's not seen as radical is is that we bring some people don't want us to bring excellence and transformation together you know so the criticism that I am soft on transformation would come mainly from black communities and black scholars saying she's soft on transformation and the criticism from white scholars would say she wants to get rid of white people or Indian people she wants to get rid of them and she's just focusing on black people or whatever it is so and I've talked about the the position of the transformational leader as walking the tightrope between the picket line and the boardroom because there's never a time when any group is happy and so you you have to be aware that you're working in the tightrope and it is possible that someday you might fall off the tightrope so you better do it do it as proper as you believe I think is the responsible way to do transformation because you want that kind of transformation that will produce us inability if you do it carelessly it will be transformation without integrity if you just pursue excellence on its own without transformation that excellence will be challenged it will be rubbish just like uct's excellence was was challenged in 2015 up to 2018 protest day and night as if you know uct is doesn't do excellent scholarship just challenge even though we do excellent scholarship we have the best student financial aid and so on and so forth and that's why it's important to have that it's really to ensure that there's sustainability but either way you're making any of the one of the two communities unhappy and so nobody says it's on steroids within you are the prophets appreciated in a in a foreign land not in your own home net