Mr Mandela, Trustees of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, colleagues from Oxford University Press (OUP), members of the Press, Ladies and Gentlemen.

It is a great honour for me to join you for this celebration. When the Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment legislation was enacted in 2004, it was clear that Oxford University Press—because of its unique nature as an enterprise—would find it particularly challenging to find the right partner for its activities in the Republic of South Africa. Challenging, but not, I am pleased to say, impossible. That is why, three years on, we are here today to celebrate this shareholding partnership between Oxford University Press and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation.

OUP’s unique nature arises because it is a department of the University of Oxford, itself a charitable corporation. Hence it shares the University of Oxford’s objectives of excellence in research, in scholarship and in education. Like the rest of the University, OUP is deeply committed to the promotion of educational and scholarly values in all of its activities. For that reason, OUP was seeking a partner that shared those objectives and values. And that is why we have been so fortunate that the trustees of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation agreed to the Foundation’s participation as a 25.1 per cent shareholder in Oxford University Press Southern Africa. For the scholarships that the Foundation so invaluably provides have the stated aims of promoting academic excellence, leadership, education, reconciliation and entrepreneurship. It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate partner organisation in this Republic for OUP.

For all of us at OUP, it is an enormous privilege to welcome the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, with its illustrious patron, Mr Mandela, to its shareholding in Oxford University Press Southern Africa. I do want to thank Mr Mandela and the trustees, as well as the Chief Executive of the Foundation Shaun Johnson, who is himself an eminent Rhodes Scholar and old member of the University of Oxford, for their decision. Many of you here today may not yet be familiar with OUP, or the Press as we affectionately know it. So I shall say a little about its history in general and its history in South Africa. The Press has been publishing books since 1478. Not surprisingly, that makes it one of the oldest publishers in the world. Over the past 500 years and more the Press has built up an enormous range of publishing activity across all disciplines. At the same time it has extended its presence to many countries throughout the world. It publishes in the scholarly, professional, dictionary, college, ELT and schoolbook markets, and maintains offices in 51 different countries.

Although the Press’s publishing includes many titles and series that are commercially successful, it is the quality of the content that is of principal concern to us. Quality is always evaluated rigorously to ensure that any publication bearing the Oxford imprint meets Oxford’s high standards and contributes to the furtherance of scholarship and education. Just one example of this is the world’s leading authority on the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary.

I should add that the Press does combine its educational mission with strong business disciplines. So it does generate surpluses. These are either reinvested in the business or they are transferred to the rest of the University to help it to fulfil its mission. Two examples may help to illustrate the benefits that accrue to the University from the Press’s transfers. The Press funds both the Clarendon Scholarships and the John Fell OUP Research Fund. The Clarendon Scholarships allow the best international students to undertake their postgraduate study at Oxford. The John Fell OUP Research Fund seeds the creative new research and scholarship ideas of my academic colleagues. I hope you are beginning to gain some sense of why it is that the Press is so different to other major publishers throughout the world.

Here in South Africa OUP books have been available since the nineteenth century. The Southern African branch was created in 1915 when an office was opened in Cape Town. However it was not until 1947 that OUP Southern Africa published its first local title, South African Short Stories. Since then local publishing has gone from strength to strength. Now, almost 100 years after its establishment, OUP Southern Africa publishes a wide range of local schoolbooks, from Grade R to Grade 12, as well as higher education textbooks, general literature titles, atlases, and of course dictionaries. In all, our list contains more than 1,500 locally published books, variously written in eleven languages, and authored by more than 700 South Africans.

It is not just OUP that has long-standing links with South Africa. The University itself has long enjoyed very close links with this country. Those links have included scholarly interchanges, the Rhodes Scholarship programme, the conferment of Honorary Degrees—given, amongst others, to Bishop Desmond Tutu, to Nadine Gordimer, to J M Coetzee, and of course in 1996 to Mr Mandela himself—and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation. Indeed, the Rhodes Trust was instrumental in the establishment of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation and continues to nominate some of the trustees. Incidentally, a South African Rhodes Scholar, Professor Elleke Boehmer, recently returned to Oxford as Professor of World Literature in English. In July, the Press published her biography of Mr Mandela, to considerable acclaim.

A little earlier I mentioned the Clarendon Scholarships. That scheme is currently funding 259 scholars to attend Oxford University. They come from 43 different countries, including South Africa. Next month nine new Clarendon Scholars from South Africa will join them. This group includes a young woman from Grahamstown North, who plans to study for an MSc in African Studies, a man from Noordhoek, who will study for a DPhil in Archaeology, and another young woman from Cape Town, who will study for a DPhil at our Systems Biology Doctoral Training Centre. Each year the University’s links with your great country are deepened as the result of the students from South Africa who study with us.

In that context I should observe that the University regards the Press not only as furthering education across the world, but also as upholding the fundamental values of the University, paramount among them academic freedom and freedom of speech. We remain proud of our record of staunchly supporting and upholding those values in South Africa, especially throughout the Apartheid period. At that time, senior members of the Press came here specifically to consult prominent South African educationalists and anti-Apartheid figures about our continuing presence in the country, and about the nature of OUP’s role. Today the University and OUP remain equally committed to the transformation process in South Africa. The BBBEE arrangement we are celebrating is, we believe, a further illustration of that support.

We hope this agreement will, on its own modest scale, be transformational. In the first five years at least eighteen scholarships, as well as the first stage of an enduring endowment, will be funded from the dividend stream the Foundation will receive from its shareholding.

In conclusion, on behalf of my Oxford colleagues, I wish the Mandela Rhodes Foundation and OUP Southern Africa every success with their future activities. And finally, I would like to offer our special gratitude to you, Mr Mandela, for so graciously hosting this historic event.