Enver Motala, Chairperson, Nelson Mandela Institute Board of Trustees

In the time of its relatively brief existence the Nelson Mandela Institute for Education and Rural Development has both conceptualised and developed its work in education and rural development significantly.

Largely through its engagements with schools and communities in rural settings and with the university community in which it is located, it has demonstrated both the importance of its approach to the challenges faced by those concerned with education and rural development and the practices necessary to respond to these.

There can be no doubt that schools and communities located in rural contexts in South Africa face seemingly intractable difficulties. The record of successive interventions in this domain testifies to the many failed attempts at making meaningful interventions useful for such schools and communities. This is both because of the failure to understand some of the complexities of the relationship between education and rural development and the lack of detailed, thoughtful and sustained plans and strategies to address these issues. Often such plans and strategies have been based on inadequate conceptualisations leading to facile “solutions”.

The Institute is able to demonstrate the efficacy of its approach to these issues. Although these are early days I have little doubt that the impact of its work will be realised more fully over time. Indeed there is already strong evidence of the usefulness of its work and this can be exemplified by the changes brought about in the teaching and learning that is taking place in the schools where the Nelson Mandela Institute is active.

Indeed, the Institute has made a decisive contribution to the curriculum transformation efforts at the university where the Institute is based, and promises to contribute in important ways to the national process now under way to rethink and retool teacher development strategies in the future.

Support for the important work undertaken by the Institute remains critical so that it can continue its pioneering and instructive work and deepen the practices associated with it in the coming years.

Enver Motala
Chairperson, Board of Trustees, NMI