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UFS looking to establish an academic programme focusing on coalition governments

29 June 2023 | Story Kekeletso Takang

UFS EMS Faculty hosts Coalition Governance Leadership workshop

In light of the rise of local governments being run by coalitions in South Africa, the upcoming national elections in 2024 might present the country with its first multi-party governments. However, with recent events in some of these coalition governments, questions regarding the stability of this form of government are mounting.

Through its Vision 130, the University of the Free State (UFS) seeks to positively impact society by using empirical knowledge to make a real difference. It is to this end that the UFS Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences recently hosted a workshop with the theme Coalition Governance Leadership: a social innovation approach with inspiring ideas, inclusive institutionalisation, and impactful implementation, aimed at deliberating the need for an academic programme focusing on the governance and public management of coalition governments.

This comes after Prof Erwin Schwella, emeritus professor of Public Leadership from Stellenbosch University (SU), and currently Dean at Hugenote College – also well-known for his work in public management and public policy – approached Dr Maréve Biljohn, Head of the Department of Public Administration and Management, and the Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, Prof Philippe Burger, to discuss such an academic programme.

Coalition governance part and parcel of South Africa’s landscape

The workshop was attended by Prof Schwella, Prof Francis Petersen, UFS Vice-Chancellor and Principal, and academics from the faculties of Economic and Management Sciences and The Humanities, especially the Department of Governance and Political Transformation.

Speaking at the workshop, Prof Petersen highlighted that coalition governance seems to have become part and parcel of South Africa’s landscape. “It is highly likely that we will see a significant increase in coalitions during the national elections next year. Coalition governments enable small parties to participate in government and even hold important positions of leadership. As a higher education sector, our role is to draw on the insights and expertise of specialists in public management and public policy to develop academic programmes that guide the governance and public management of coalition governments.”

As a responsible global citizen, the UFS is not only working towards developing an academic programme that addresses both governance and management pillars but is also committed to addressing the needs of the country.

Functionality and stability of coalitions are critical

Dr Biljohn believes that the current political landscape in South Africa predicts that political party coalitions will have a seat at the governance table across the three spheres of government.

“Since the last local government elections, we have seen the formation of political party coalitions across several municipal councils. The functionality and stability of these coalitions are critical for, among others, decision-making related to sustainable service delivery, the adoption of a council’s budget, as well as by-laws and policies.”

“Where these coalitions fail, the consequences are detrimental to the municipality from an operational as well as a governance perspective, and this could affect communities adversely. The current state of local governance in some South African municipalities requires an administration that is skilled to provide a stable environment for service delivery, while managing and navigating the dynamics of coalition governance,” said Dr Biljohn.

Moreover, she continued, after the 2024 elections, national and provincial administrations should be equipped to deliver on their mandate in a governance environment that could be subject to the demands of political party coalitions. With the new norm of coalition governance, it is incumbent upon political and administrative office-bearers to have the professional skills and knowledge to lead and manage coalition governance from a political, executive, and administrative level.

Fostering more cohesion among coalition partners

“Therefore, the Department of Public Administration and Management, in collaboration with the Department of Political Studies and Governance, aims to contribute to the professional development of political and administrative office-bearers in the three government spheres to navigate this new governance environment. In this regard, the development of short learning programmes that will be targeted at these office-bearers is currently under discussion,” concluded Dr Biljohn.

Prof Burger said as an institution of higher learning, “we want to focus on the creation of programmes that can assist in fostering more cohesion among coalition partners, while also training officials on how to handle coalitions”.

For more information on the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences’ offerings, click here: https://www.ufs.ac.za/econ

News Archive

Postgraduate School opens at UFS

2011-05-19

Prof. Maresi Nerad, from Washington university in Seattle, USA
Photo: Stephen Collett

We are celebrating the launch of our new Postgraduate School (PGS) on our Main Campus in Bloemfontein from 16 - 20 May 2011.

In line with national priorities for research-based postgraduate education and the focus of the UFS Academic Turnaround Strategy, the aims of the Postgraduate School are to:

improve the quality of postgraduate student research;
produce graduates who are global citizens, research literate and able to reflect ethically on the purpose, process and product of research;
improve throughput rates of postgraduate students; and
make the experience of being a postgraduate at the UFS one which is stimulating, enjoyable and which contributes to the development of the person beyond the limits of her or his discipline(s).

“We hope that the school will be a pleasant place to pursue research scholarship, discuss ideas and relax, and we look forward to welcoming postgraduates and other scholars to the school,” Prof. Neil Roos, Director of the UFS Postgraduate School said.

This significant event in the academic transformation of the university goes hand in hand with the inaugural lecture of Prof. Maresi Nerad. Prof. Nerad’s impressive CV reads amongst others that she has a M.A. (Political Science) at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany and a Ph.D. (Higher Education) at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also the founding director of the national Center for Innovation and Research Graduate Education (CIRGE).

As Professor Extraordinary in the UFS’s Postgraduate School, she is bringing more to the table than a world of wisdom and her passion for the postgraduate education. “I can contribute lessons learned from four distinct professional experiences, including 17 years of administrative and scholarly leadership in undertaking the conceptual and practical transformational work of organisational change at two US postgraduate schools, where I worked amongst others to improve the quality of mentoring, shorten the time to doctoral degree, and improve doctoral completion rates.”

She also brings to the UFS her experience as founding and current director of the first research center for studies on graduate education in the world. “It is our mission to discover how best to prepare Ph.D. students to be effective leaders in research and society,” she said.

Prof. Nerad says that she is committed to support and consult with the UFS Postgraduate School. She would particularly encourage the use of research to understand postgraduate education in all its dimensions at the UFS better and to use the evidence-based findings as a base for policy-making and resource allocation.

In reflecting on her vision for the UFS Postgraduate School, Prof. Nerad says that five years from now she hopes to see the UFS having strengthened its position as a major driving force in the national South African postgraduate-education community for internationalising postgraduate education. She is also confident that the UFS will supply increased numbers of skilled postgraduates who are “intellectual entrepreneurs and risk takers with a social consciousness, who have sustainability of the systems of the planet as a core value”.

“Five years from now the PSG will have taken the lead in preparing graduate students who are world citizens,” Prof. Nerad concluded.

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