Following the circular I issued yesterday regarding the racial abuse of Prof. Fackson Banda, I am enormously heartened by the positive response I have received from concerned members of the Rhodes community.

Four years ago when I became Vice-Chancellor I committed myself to making Rhodes a home for all – a place where all people are treated with respect, dignity, compassion, and enjoy safety and security.

Intellectuals, public officials, business and civil-society leaders and political commentators have complained about South African universities' lack of "visibility". For some, universities have not addressed the myriad economic and social-development challenges the country faces.

An outstanding graduate has observed that at Rhodes University we need "a critical appreciation of where we come from, (and) a dialogical and analytic engagement with where we are now".

In a communication to the Rhodes community yesterday (Friday) it was reported that three students who appeared before the University Proctor were, on Wednesday 10 March 2010, found guilty on disciplinary charges of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm to an off-duty CPU Officer, and attempted malicious damage to property.

There is a death of intellectual spaces in South Africa for sustained scholarly debate on critical issues in higher education.

Rhodes University welcomes the changes agreed upon by the ANC on June 24 in deliberations by an ad-hoc committee of Parliament regarding the Protection of Information Bill.

RHODES University Vice-Chancellor Dr Saleem Badat says people need to move away from the ‘big man’ syndrome and begin to question their leadership.

Dear Honourable Mr. Mzoleli Mrara, ANC member of the Eastern Cape legislature and chairperson of the Education Portfolio Committee.

I DEAL with grief, shame and anger in the quiet of my study, in solitude and with words. These are my words for Lelona Thembakazi Fufu. Born: Christmas Day, 1988. Died: April 12 2012. Age: 23. Usually, remembrance of a student is through the pleasure of supporting a scholarship or job application. In the case of Lelona, biography and achievements would have combined to make remembrance especially joyous, fulfilling and pleasurable.

RECENTLY, Reuel Khoza of Nedbank remarked on the “emergence of a strange breed of leaders” whose “moral quotient is degenerating”. He raised concern about whether we have an accountable democracy and said that we have a duty to call to book leaders who cannot lead. If this is so, the new Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics at Rhodes University, whose slogan is “Where leaders learn”, is timely.

Recently Reuel Khoza of Nedbank remarked on the “emergence of a strange breed of leaders” whose “moral quotient is degenerating”. He voiced concern about whether we have an “accountable democracy”, and said that “we have a duty to call to book leaders who cannot lead”.

REUEL Khoza of Nedbank recently remarked on the "emergence of a strange breed of leaders" whose "moral quotient is degenerating". He raised the concern whether we have an "accountable democracy" and said that "we have a duty to call to book leaders who cannot lead".

It is more difficult now to organise students in politics than during apartheid, argues SALEEM BADAT

If Grassroots newspaper was an expression of citizen journalism, then it was ironical that many of those producing it were themselves non-citizens of apartheid South Africa, Dr Saleem Badat told the opening session of Highway Africa today.

WE INHERITED an education system powerfully shaped by race, class, gender, institutional, and geographical inequalities. Recognising this, our Constitution declared the right of all “to a basic education”. It also committed us to the values of human dignity, the achievement of equality, and the advancement of non- sexism and non-racialism and the human rights and freedoms that the Bill of Rights proclaims.

WE CONTINUE to be plagued by stubborn realities that prevent the achievement of constitutionally and legally enshrined educational imperatives and goals. We need to honestly and openly acknowledge failings and shortcomings and what accounts for these, and creatively and courageously confront them.

In both scholarly and popular literature, black students in South Africa have tended to be treated in two ways: simply as victims of apartheid in appalling education conditions, or as catalysts of educational and political struggle through their campaigns. Yet their role as activists has seldom been analysed.

If we are our race before our nationality we create a new apartheid. And if we chain ourselves to materialism and others to poverty we are all slaves of a kind, writes Saleem Badat.

THE year 1994 was a revolutionary breakthrough. Racial oligarchy, brutal oppression and repression finally gave way to a democracy in which all South Africans were accorded full citizenship rights. Critical to this development was the imagination and courage we displayed to rid ourselves of tyranny and to forge a constitution and Bill of Rights that held out the promise of far-reaching political, economic and social reform. We looked forward to the promise of the progressive realisation of hard-won citizenship rights so we could live productive, rich, rewarding and secure lives.

“It is our intention to focus on growing the proportion of our postgraduate students from 27% to 30% in the coming years. The Sandisa Imbewu Fund supports this intention.” - Vice-Chancellor, Rhodes University, Dr Saleem Badat Judged in terms of key performance indicators, Rhodes University is one of South Africa and Africa’s outstanding universities with a proud reputation as a ‘Scholarly University’.

At the forefront is the first Rhodes-based SARChI SKA Chair radio astronomer, Professor Oleg Smirnov, who has dominated the international development of novel software for radio astronomy over several years.

Professor Oleg Smirnov is the first SKA Chair in Radio Astronomy Techniques and Technologies, which is hosted by Rhodes University.

Over the next couple of decades the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) has the potential to propel science and South Africa into the universal age.

In 2001, in Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid and Truth, Dumisa Ntsebeza and Terry Bell complained that ‘like so much of South Africa’s recent brutal history, we shall probably never know exactly how many people were banished and what happened to all of them’.

When Rhodes University vice-chancellor Dr Saleem Badat promised veteran struggle stalwart Helen Joseph he would write a book about 160 “forgotten” South Africans banished by the apartheid government to remote parts of the country he never realised it would take 30 years to complete, writes Daily Dispatch Port Alfred bureau head David MacGregor.

Rhodes University’s Eden Grove complex played host to the launch of Vice-Chancellor Dr Saleem Badat’s book, entitled The Forgotten People: Political Banishment under Apartheid on Tuesday 16 September.

“For the long years of meticulous research and finally the superb telling of the story of banishment under apartheid, we owe a great debt to the author,” writes renowned advocate George Bizos on Dr Saleem Badat’s latest book.

Dr Saleem Badat, Rhodes University Vice-Chancellor, is to address the South African youth during the second session of the FrankTalk Radio Dialogue series organised jointly by the Steve Biko Foundation (SBF) and YFM radio station.

Anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele has slammed the ANC for its backing of the Traditional Courts Bill, sky-high unemployment and the appalling standard of education.

In the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Dumisa Ntsebeza and Terry Bell complained that 'like so much of South Africa's recent brutal history, we shall probably never know exactly how many people were banished and what happened to all of them'.

Rhodes University mourns and lowers its flag on the passing of its Chancellor, Prof Gert Johannes (Jakes) Gerwel.