It is an ordinary weekday afternoon in central Johannesburg. Suddenly throngs of young men and women start filing through the city from a building downtown.
Even in this part of the CBD, which houses government buildings and the mining houses, these young people are particularly peculiar in their appearance. Most of the men are wearing shirts and ties, the women in dresses, skirts and high heels.
They cannot be working people because they are carrying what look like bags similar to those toted by students at schools and tertiary institutions around Johannesburg. But they are not wearing jeans and takkies.
The building on the corner of Kort and Commissioner streets in Johannesburg has become the intersection between the worlds of ideas and ideals. Here, business theory and practice coalesce.
This is the address of the Community and Individual Development Association (Cida) city campus.
It may sound to sceptics like a marketing gimmick but it is no exaggeration that, as the Cida website puts it: ‘Cida is the only ‘free’, open-access, holistic, higher-educational facility in the world that is operated and managed by its students, from administration duties to facilities management. In addition every student is required to return to their rural schools and communities during holidays to teach [others] what they have learnt.”
Opened to its first students in January 2000, Cida is provisionally registered as a private higher-education institution with the ability to award a degree. The number of students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds has increased from about 100 in 2000 to more than 1 500 this year.
Investec Bank says it decided to support Cida because it ‘is directly in line with Investec’s corporate social investment policy of supporting projects that are educational, entrepreneurial and/or community development-oriented; sustainable; collaborative; relevant to current national priorities; and aligned with the company’s own talents and resources.”
The Cida campus building was originally the head office of Investec, which donated it to the college. Investec says the building is valued at about R89-million, ‘with an opportunity cost of R5,3-million per annum”.
Investec maintains the building, which includes paying rates, taxes and telephone accounts, all to the tune of about R1,8-million a year.
When Cida was officially launched in November 2002 Investec forked out R600 000 to co-fund the event. The bank has continued to sponsor several campus projects including a choir, soccer team and individual students. It also administers a private trust fund to facilitate fund-raising that will ensure Cida’s sustainability.
‘Cida offers world-class, holistic tertiary education designed to develop the future leaders of the country and the economy,” says Cida City Campus CEO Teddy Blacher. ‘In this way it is focused on creating a meaningful financial and economic democracy in South Africa. The intention is to replicate its model for the developing nations of the world.”
Blacher won the World Economic Forum’s Global Leader for Tomorrow Award this year, in recognition of his innovative and selfless endeavours at Cida. He is an actuary and former management consultant.
Blacher says he realised that a country’s economic development usually reflects the number of people who have a higher education.
‘In the United States, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, 80% of the population go on to study after high school. For South Africa to enhance its globally competitive position, it would need at least 12% to 15% of our population to have some type of tertiary education.”
Since Cida is primarily a business school, students study courses such as accountancy, auditing, business communication, business mathematics, human resource management, information technology, investments and asset management, African leadership and marketing.
Subjects are not confined to classic business courses. Skills taught and developed include teamwork, public speaking, writing skills, learning skills, Internet skills, research skills and problem-solving.
Cida has attracted a fair share of media coverage, all of it for good reasons. It has been called the ‘miracle university”, ‘ubuntu university” and ‘the university of hope”.
In an editorial The Saturday Star described it as a uniquely South African and African solution ‘to a problem that besets many African countries — a lack of affordable tertiary education”.
The college currently has more than 1 500 students enrolled on scholarships valued at R64-million, most of which are paid for by businesses. Students are chosen for a combination of academic ability, good manners and social skills.
Cida Campus spokesperson Michelle Blumenau says school principals across the country recommend their five best students. ‘We look for strong maths, English and commercial subjects like accounting and business economics. We want strong leadership and the will to transform South Africa [in our students] — not just someone who wants a big car and a big house,” she says.
Students are required to share the skills they learn with their communities.’We have a programme called ‘entrepreneurs anonymous’, where our students teach Johannesburg hawkers financial literacy,” says Blumenau.
The scholarships are a key to the success of Cida, because the students could not otherwise afford to be there. In their first year, students pay a registration fee of R350, which includes all tuition and books. Thereafter they pay R150 a month.
Cida City Campus is able to offer education at a fraction of the cost of any other tertiary education institution in South Africa, through extensive innovation — the ability to get business to help fund the process, and the government to lend its support wherever possible.