Why do authoritarian leaders set their sights on universities? For a very simple reason. It is a place where people think, or are supposed to think, for themselves. You can’t have that in a dictatorship where thinking is done for you and dissent has consequences from exile to imprisonment or death. But there are other ways to bring about the demise of universities and that is to cut them off financially at the knees.
Donald Trump has just done that through a freeze on foreign aid which includes direct funding for health research in general and HIV/Aids treatment in particular. To be sure, there is uncertainty about when and how these cuts will apply and the extent of their impact. But some of our senior scientists with university links are deeply concerned not only about the human toll on patients and preventive care, but on research collaborations that keep countries ahead of the curve when it comes to infectious diseases and especially future pandemics.
Make no mistake, research is not only about competition for grand awards in the context of limited funding. It is also a powerful instrument for building solidarity among researchers from very different worlds. It is about lifelong friendships formed across cultures in pursuit of truth. And it is in those partnerships that joint solutions are found to intractable problems from climate change to world hunger to artificial intelligence. Partnerships built over decades were what made it possible to tackle Covid-19 within such a short time for example, the partnership between Salim Karim of Caprisa at UKZN and his friend Anthony Fauci in the US.
Surely our leaders should have recognised that a radical change of government in a donor country could easily lead to the demise of such vital resources for HIV/Aids?
In Trump’s simple mind “America First” means cutting off aid to foreign countries. There is no sense, with him, of the value of aid in exercising what is called soft power across the globe — that is, to align a nation’s foreign policy ideals with gaining influence in faraway countries. George Bush understood that kind of power for good when he introduced The President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) that provided about R400m last year for treatment and research in South Africa alone.
Trump is not only undermining health research in our universities, it is almost certain that across Africa and Asia, the cutting of such vital funding will lead to many deaths in vulnerable populations including children and women. The American president does not care of course and that is why this instant withdrawal of life-saving drugs and treatments is quite simply cruel.
But I did have a question for our top scientists: how did South Africa come to be so dependent on foreign aid in the first place? Surely our leaders should have recognised that a radical change of government in a donor country could easily lead to the demise of such vital resources for HIV/Aids? We know from the politics of development aid that most of that money given goes back to the country of origin through health consultants, in this case, and the redistribution of funds to non-governmental organisations in the country of origin. Still, why did we not wean ourselves off from such a critical resource?
Regardless, here is one more pressure point on university finances — the loss of millions of rand in health sciences research and development. The other pressure point, of course, is a corrupt and inefficient NSFAS that continues to make the lives of students miserable at what should have been a joyous entry or re-entry into higher education. Money for registration, accommodation, travel, and food. Students at Wits are on a hunger strike. Those at CPUT took the usual violent options. UCT students disrupted classes. Year in and year out.
Where do students go to apply pressure? To university leaders as if they have the billions to resolve a problem whose roots lie in NSFAS and the government’s refusal to localise the allocation and distribution of funds within universities and/or privatise the entire operation. It must be the most unpleasant job at the moment, running a university on razor-thin budgets and being routinely insulted and accused by students as if you as a vice-chancellor can solve this problem.
The point is that the threat to the academic project is now not only internal but also external. Unless we resolve what is within our power — the effective and efficient distribution of student funding — at some point this dam is going to burst. We could end up with universities simply running through registration and graduation cycles when what should be at the heart of a good university experience is a solid education, inspiring research, career-ready graduates and the positive human impacts they make in the communities we serve.
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