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A research professor in the Department of History within the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of the Free State (UFS), was awarded this year’s prestigious Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) Science-for-Society Gold Medal.

Prof Saleem Badat, a former Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University, accepted the award during the ASSAf gala event in Pretoria on 23 October, indicating that he will donate his R20 000 prize money to the South African BDS Coalition for solidarity work with Palestinian universities.

Two other distinguished UFS academics; Prof Pieter Meintjes, Professor in the UFS Department of Physics and an astrophysics pioneer in South Africa, and Prof John Carranza, Professor in the UFS Department of Geology and a NRF B1 rated researcher, have also been inaugurated as newly elected ASSAf members at the same event.

Dr Andronicus Akinyelu, a lecturer of Computer Science and Informatics and a NRF Y2 rated researchers, was inaugurated as member of the South African Young Academy of Science. Dr Akinyelu specialises in machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, medical diagnosis, sustainable agriculture and ethical artificial intelligence.

“Recognition, small or large, is always appreciated. It is a powerful stimulus for reinforcing commitment, continuing a chosen path and invigorating contribution to scholarship and society, especially under challenging conditions.

“I accept the prestigious award, deeply appreciative of the honour that my academic peers and the Academy bestow on me, and of the Academy’s important contribution to the scientific life and development of our universities and country,” Prof Badat said in his acceptance speech.

According to the ASSAf website, the Science-for-Society Gold Medals are the apex awards of the Academy and the South African science system and are awarded in recognition of outstanding achievements by individuals. Up to two gold medals are awarded per annum for outstanding achievement in scientific thinking for the benefit of society.

Previous awardees include professors Salim Abdool Karim, Achille Mbembe, Jonathan Jansen, Quarraisha Abdool Karim, Shabir Mahdi, Lee Berger, Leila Patel, Glenda Gray and Jerry Coovadia.

Building South African universities

According to Prof Badat, his concern throughout has been questions of difference, equity, redress, diversity and inclusion, social justice in and through universities and their decolonisation and transformation. A quest to build South African universities, as opposed to universities in South Africa that are replicas and imitations of Eurocentric universities in the colonial metropole.

“Those intellectual, and, for me, always practical, questions, arose organically out of my political, student and educational activism in the 1970s and 1980s. They have driven me throughout my various institutional adventures at and connected to universities.

“Regarding ‘service of society’, I spent half my life in a hostile, racist, patriarchal and brutally exploitative apartheid society and at segregated universities. Which ‘society’ was I to serve through my scholarship? Dilemma of choice is not the absence of choice.

“As a black South African, I had to navigate the indignities and tyranny of apartheid. It profoundly shaped my values, scientific thinking, practice and pursuits. There was only one society that I could serve: that society struggling to be born through the courageous and united actions of black workers, professionals, students, youth and women and white democrats. That which held the only hope for a just, secure and peaceful South Africa,” he said.

In awarding him the gold medal, ASSAf recognises him for leadership, scholarship, philanthropic grant making, and activism intimately connected with realising prosperous, equitable, vibrant, intellectually and socially diverse and inclusive societies and democratic and sovereign states.

Prof Badat believes South African universities, Universities South Africa (USAf) and the Academy should be at the forefront of solidarity work with devastated Palestinian universities, scholars and students. “Unlike in the ‘great democracies’ of the US, UK and especially Germany, we are free to speak and act. Yet, solidarity efforts are left to largely unsupported, dedicated individual academics, support staff and students and the South African BDS Coalition, a network of Palestine solidarity formations.”

University leader, critical sociologist, scholar, and activist

In his citations for the award, Prof Vasu Reddy, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research & Internationalisation at the UFS, said Prof Badat is a university leader, critical sociologist, scholar, higher education policy specialist and activist. He uses scientific knowledge and activity – his own and that of others – as a common ground to inform his research on social reproduction and transformation, structure and human agency, domination and liberation, and the decolonisation and transformation of universities and society.

“Prof Badat’s embrace of the early 1970s radical ‘Revisionist’ school, critical theory and critical university studies shaped his commitment to ensuring that university education is an ennobling adventure and a formative intellectual and social experience that is available to all with the necessary talent.

“His scholarly understanding combined with anti-apartheid political activism underpin his profound commitment to knowledge and universities, equity, diversity and inclusion, non-racialism and non-sexism, social justice and the transformation of universities.

Hence his books on exceptional but forgotten persons who were banished under apartheid and on neglected non-racial tennis players, his passionate promotion of effective support for promising early career scholars, and his mentoring of many Humanities scholars.”

“Prof Badat,” continued Prof Reddy, “is hugely protective of basic research and scholarship that is not concerned with immediate and practical issues. For him, research undertaken with no concern about application, policy and practice can sometimes be far more useful than ‘policy research’. He is clear about the value of science and research for informing interventions in the world but poses service to what kind of society, predicated on what values and notions of public good.”