Professor Brian O’Connell: Visionary vice-chancellor hailed

Professor Brian O’Connell, the respected former vice-chancellor of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa, who died on 25 August, was hailed by South Africa’s Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr Blade Nzimande, as a visionary leader with an unwavering commitment to an agenda promoting progressive education as a public good and for equality and social justice.

He described O’Connell as an illustrious educationist and a higher education leader who has played a seminal role in both basic and higher education since South Africa became a democracy in 1994.

O’Connell, who was 77, is remembered by the UWC community for his humility – from picking up litter on campus when he was the rector, to set an example, to ensuring he remembered staff members’ names – even, at times, their families.

“The roots of his passion for social justice, equality and freedom must have been planted during his experiences as a student activist at UWC in the mid-1960s and resonated throughout his extraordinary life,” said Nzimande.

He praised O’Connell, who led UWC from 2001 until 2014 during a period of turmoil characterised by financial hurdles and at a time when several universities merged as part of a government-driven restructuring process.

The minister said O’Connell steered UWC through turbulent times to become one of the few historically black universities in South Africa that significantly overcame its history of marginalisation and stagnation.

According to Nzimande, his success in deliberately positioning UWC to become one of South Africa’s leading teaching and research universities was at the core of his transformational leadership role.

A legacy of engaged leadership

UWC’s outgoing Vice-Chancellor Professor Tyrone Pretorius confirmed the news of O’Connell’s death on Monday, 26 August, saying his legacy is one of passionate conviction, intellectual clarity and engaged leadership. He added that O’Connell had a lasting impact on the university and society.

Pretorius said O’Connell assumed leadership when the university faced the aftermath of staff retrenchments, financial vulnerability, the significant loss of academic leadership, evolving enrolment trends, and a despondent campus community.

Early in his tenure, O’Connell was confronted with another imminent crisis: an institutional merger and the potential loss of UWC’s identity when the report of the government’s National Working Group (NWG) on the restructuring of the higher education landscape in South Africa recommended a merger between UWC and the former Peninsula Technikon.

However, the recommendation was met with resistance from the broader UWC community.

O’Connell spearheaded a campaign to resist the merger, calling for sacrifices to address the financial realities and discipline in responding to the NWG report.

Pretorius recalled how O’Connell made the case that UWC’s ongoing commitment to providing an intellectual home for all – with particular attention to working-class students who showed potential – should not be penalised because of decades of underfunding by the state. In the end, UWC retained its autonomous identity and status.

Creating a space for growth and hope

In his inaugural address in 2002, O’Connell argued that a university hardly deserves the name if it does not provide a space to grow in hope, create and share knowledge, and inform agency.

Through this approach, he emphasised the strength of using UWC’s distinctive academic role to rebuild the institution as an inspirational community of hope, to be a premier site of knowledge production, and to draw on the agency of its people to use and produce knowledge as agents of change.

“Professor O’Connell also believed that the key to strengthening the academic core of the university was its physical reimagining and transformation.

“This had begun in the era of his predecessor, Professor Jakes Gerwel, and O’Connell continued this approach. However, in contrast with his predecessors’ centripetal focus, he pursued a centrifugal approach to develop new infrastructure along the campus edges to increase UWC’s visibility. He put a ‘face to the place’,” said Pretorius.

O’Connell frequently used the story of UWC’s engagement as a metaphor for South Africa through a PowerPoint slide that popularly became known as ‘the two worlds’.

The top of the slide depicted a ‘picture postcard’ aerial image of Cape Town with its central business district, the sea, and the mountains. The bottom of the slide showed an image of a township with shacks and children playing near stagnant pools of water.

O’Connell firmly believed that, through its teaching, research and engagement activities, UWC was not opting to choose or position itself in either of these two worlds, but to embrace their inherent paradoxes and critically engage with the complex realities of both.

‘A good man for our times’

Although O’Connell’s term as rector and vice-chancellor ended in December 2014, Pretorius said he was always welcomed on campus.

“Even in his later years, despite facing health challenges, UWC remained close to his heart – a place where he found joy and inspiration and shaped into what it is today. His belief in UWC and his unwavering commitment to its mission have left an indelible mark on all of us,” he added.

The UWC flag will be flown at half-mast this week in honour and remembrance of O’Connell.

Tributes to the former vice-chancellor filled social media, too, while Professor Jonathan Jansen wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “RIP Brian O’Connell. A good man for our times.” Jansen is a distinguished professor in the faculty of education, Stellenbosch University, and a former vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State, South Africa.

Brian Schreuder, the retired former superintendent general of the Western Cape Education Department, responsible for basic education, wrote on LinkedIn that O’Connell was a great thinker, leader, and strategist.

“[He was] the first superintendent general of the Western Cape Education Department. He played a huge role in shaping post-apartheid education in the Western Cape and South Africa. An exceptional man.”

Jamala Safari, the chief executive officer of the HCI Foundation, a trust that aims to bring change in marginalised communities, remembered O’Connell as a man of the people and a student-centred vice-chancellor. He recalled how O’Connell once strolled around the campus, greeting and chatting with students, including him.

“During our conversation, he learned that I write poetry, and I was deeply flattered when he asked where he could buy a copy of my poetry collection. A few days later, when I brought a copy as a gift, he refused to accept it for free and insisted on paying double the price. Years later, I heard from others how he had read some of my poems at public events. What an honour it was to know that.”

O’Connell is survived by his wife, Judith, and children, Amanda-Leigh and Bryan.

Funeral details had not been confirmed at the time of writing.