​​​​​​I love working in our Responsibility Centre Operations and Finance. It is a group that is filled with talented, passionate, and fascinating people. My day is never dull.

This past month I had to personally dig deep, revealing one of my hidden talents (so to speak) that is cooking. By challenging you to take part in Prof Stan's Big Cook-off, it meant that I had to buy the ingredients, ask the family to leave the kitchen and start what ended in a weekend of lamb, lamb, and lamb. At the same time, I knew that the amazing Mari-Louis Guy, our guest chef, was also cooking the same food at her end. I had my work cut out for me, but the guests around the dinner table did not complain as the recipes were outstanding.

The starter then made way for the main course: celebrating the winners of this year's excellence awards. Our ten winners were not only worthy of every compliment and accolade, but they've put their own personal stamp of excellence on the work they have done in very uncertain and difficult times.

We do not strive for what I call operational excellence without context: we strive for operational excellence to achieve Stellenbosch University's Vision 2040. Let me repeat that vision:

Stellenbosch University will be Africa's leading research-intensive University, globally recognised as excellent, inclusive, and innovative, where we advance knowledge in service of society.

We do not strive to be just excellent, but to lead, to become the leading research-intensive University on our continent - and as a University we do this to advance knowledge in the service of society.

A place connected to the world

And in our University's Mission statement, we find our RC is right in the core of SU's Mission: in our Finance Division, in Maties Sport, at Innovus, at our IT Division and at Facilities Management we provide a world-class environment; a place connected to the world.

A place connected to the world, so says our mission. But what happens when our connection to the world is cut? What happens when our connection with each other is cut on a scale that has never happened before? What happens when we close our campuses in the middle of the academic year for the first time in our university's history?

That is what happened last year, a crisis of a magnitude I could never have foreseen. We faced risks on so many operational fronts.

The most significant risk of a pandemic to us as a University and our Responsibility Centre is always at the human level: the risk that our people, our staff and our students will suffer actual personal harm. And I pause to think for a moment about our colleagues, friends and family who fell ill with COVID-19, as well as our colleague, friends and family members who passed away this last year.

But it is also at the human level that we first came to grips with this pandemic. In the five divisions of our RC our division heads showed determined leadership to maintain morale, to switch much of what we used to do on campus to remote work, while maintaining critical services on our campus. We avoided disaster and turned crisis into success through your dedicated, skilful, and hard work. Thank you, colleagues, each one of you.