TEBOGO KHAAS | Kimberley is writing its next chapter to economic power

PULL QUOTE = “The value created here must remain here, to build, to uplift, and to endure.” — Tebogo Khaas

There is something singular about Kimberley. It’s not the diamonds, nor its distinction as SA’s first electrified city, that define it, but the remarkable tradition of thought leadership and nation-building it has produced.

From Aggrey Klaaste — the influential Sowetan editor who helped shape a nation-in-transition’s moral imagination, to Sol Plaatje, one of SA’s earliest and most formidable intellectuals, Kimberley has consistently generated minds whose influence extends far beyond geographic boundaries.

It is within this lineage that Thebe Ikalafeng, the newly installed chancellor of Sol Plaatje University, must be understood.

His appointment is the continuation of a tradition that now carries the weight of reimagining the future of the university and also the socioeconomic trajectory of a province, a country, and, increasingly, a continent.

Ikalafeng’s childhood friend and university council deputy chairperson, Cox Mokgoro, sketches a portrait of Ikalafeng as “everything Kimberley nurtured: resilient, bold and real like a diamond”.

From an early age, Ikalafeng paired academic excellence with leadership and service — tutoring peers, assisting teachers, and shouldering responsibility beyond his years. These were early expressions of a defining belief: success is incomplete unless it is shared.

Ikalafeng’s chancellorship is anchored in the bold proposition that the university must serve as more than an academic institution but must function as an engine of economic and social transformation — an anchor institution embedded in the life and future of Kimberley and the Northern Cape.

The value created here must remain here, to build, to uplift, and to endure.

—  Tebogo Khaas

The province is among SA’s most resource-rich regions — home to minerals and rare earth elements vital to the global economy. Yet, despite this abundance, it remains marginal to the value it generates.

Extraction is local, but value is realised elsewhere, skills are developed outside, and benefits flow outward — leaving communities with little of the wealth beneath their feet.

Ikalafeng’s intervention challenges this model at its core.

He calls for Kimberley to be re-established as a centre of mining excellence — not just in extraction, but in research, beneficiation, and innovation — anchored by a university producing the engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs to drive the sector locally.

Or, as he puts it, the shift is from mining the earth to “mining the minds and talent that this province has always produced in abundance”.

This is a practical framework for development that requires partnership between the university, industry, and government — backed by investment in research and skills and grounded in local realities.

Importantly, it also speaks to a broader national challenge.

Since 1994, SA’s manufacturing base has steadily eroded, marked by exporting raw materials while importing finished goods, weakening industrial capacity and job creation.

Ikalafeng’s vision is about rethinking SA’s economic model. It is about linking resource wealth to industrial development, education to economic participation, and local potential to national growth.

Pertinently, Ikalafeng’s vision does not stop at the borders of SA.

Like Plaatje — whose African renaissance outlook aligned with global struggles for liberation — Ikalafeng’s Pan-Africanism is central to his thinking.

He recognises that, despite its vast mineral wealth, Africa remains at the bottom of global value chains — supplying raw materials that power the modern world, yet deriving limited benefit from them.

His argument that this must change is clear.

Africa must build its own intellectual and industrial capacity — producing knowledge, not just resources, and converting its wealth into development for its people.

In this, universities are pivotal: not merely sites of learning, but hubs of innovation, collaboration, and continental integration. Through research partnerships and aligned curricula, institutions like Sol Plaatje University can help reposition Africa in the global economy.

This reflects a clear continuity with Sol Plaatje, who understood that power lies not only in politics but also in ideas — in the ability to define and shape the future.

Ikalafeng’s task is to translate that intellectual legacy into institutional impact.

The challenge is not his alone.

The government has to support and fund such a vision, industry has to invest beyond extraction and society has to demand outcomes that are tangible and inclusive.

Kimberley has long given this country its conscience and its thinkers. Now it must claim its future.

The time has come to turn a legacy of ideas into a legacy of industry — to ensure that the same soil that produced moral leadership now produces economic power. This is not a passive hope; it is a collective mandate for government, industry, institutions, and citizens alike.

If the first chapter of Kimberley was written in diamonds, then let this next chapter be forged in minds — deliberately, unapologetically, and with purpose.

And this time, we must insist: the value created here must remain here, to build, to uplift, and to endure.

• Khaas is founder and chairperson of Public Interest SA

Sowetan