Universities have a ‘quiet power’ that shapes our future, says justice Madlanga

Retired Constitutional Court justice Mbuyiseni Madlanga has called on South Africans to stop speaking as though historically disadvantaged universities lack talent, saying the real problem is the conditions in which that talent is expected to grow.

Madlanga was speaking on Friday after the University of Fort Hare conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree on him at its spring graduation. It is his third honorary doctorate, after those from Walter Sisulu University and Rhodes University.

In a speech that steered away from the law, he said he wanted to talk about what he called the “quiet power” of universities.

“Today I have decided not to be predictable and talk about law. I wish to reflect on what I choose to call the quiet power of universities,” he said.

Madlanga said much of a university’s most important work happens out of sight, in lecture halls, laboratories and the offices of academics, and may only show years later in the lives of its graduates.

“A university’s influence is thus measured not only by what happens within its walls, but also by what its graduates go on to imagine, create and contribute beyond the university itself,” he said.

He said a university was more than a place to collect a qualification. “It is an institution that serves an even greater public good.”

Madlanga, who taught constitutional law at Fort Hare as a visiting professor in 2018, said he arrived expecting to share what he had learnt in practice and on the bench. He left having learnt just as much.

“What I did not anticipate was how much I would learn in return,” he said. “When my teaching stint came to an end, I left Fort Hare deeply inspired and profoundly hopeful.”

He said the students did not simply memorise legal principles for exams. They wanted to understand where the principles came from and why they mattered.

Madlanga used the moment to raise what he described as the difference between getting into university and truly being able to succeed there.

“A student may have formal access to a university and yet struggle to obtain meaningful access to the knowledge, resources and opportunities that the university is intended to provide.

“The question, therefore, cannot simply be how many young people have been allowed into our universities. We must also ask: what have we enabled them to do once they are there?”

He reminded the audience that South Africa’s universities did not start from the same place, because the higher education system was deliberately built along racial lines.

“The democratic constitution changed the legal order. It did not by itself erase the material consequences of the order that preceded it,” he said.

Madlanga said Fort Hare had shown that talent was never the missing ingredient. He pointed to two of its law students who won the public interest law moot court competition at the Constitutional Court in 2025 and went on to represent Africa at Oxford University.

“Talent has never been confined to particular institutions, provinces, or communities. What has too often been unevenly distributed is opportunity,” he said.

He also spoke of Fort Hare graduates who served as law clerks in his chambers at the Constitutional Court. He said he had pushed for the court to recruit beyond the universities it had traditionally used, so that talented young lawyers were not shut out because they lacked the right networks.

One of them was among the best he had ever worked with.

“Without any hesitation, I rank her in the top 1% of all law clerks with whom I had the privilege of working,” he said.

His message to critics was blunt.

“I caution those who do not know, and those who choose not to know, not to speak as though historically disadvantaged universities are deficient of talent. They are not. Often what is deficient is not talent, but the conditions in which talent is expected to develop,” he said.

While he praised Fort Hare’s proud history, he said it could not be the only thing the university was known for.

“A university cannot live on history alone,” he said.

“And that is why institutions such as Fort Hare deserve not only our admiration, but our sustained investment.”

Madlanga ended by turning to the graduates, borrowing words Nelson Mandela used in 1992 when he received his own honorary law degree.

“You have acquired skills that can either be used purely to enrich yourselves, or they can be put at the service of our community,” he said, quoting Mandela.

“I want to appeal to you to acknowledge that the community has a claim on your skills.”

Madlanga retired from the Constitutional Court on July 31, 2025, while serving as acting deputy chief justice. He now chairs the judicial commission of inquiry into criminality, political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system, which was set up after allegations made by Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.

In August, Fort Hare’s law faculty launched the Justice Mbuyiseni Madlanga International Moot Court competition in his honour.

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