The Founder’s Annual Lecture 2026

An evening lecture in honour of our founder,
Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi

 

About the lecture

In 1979, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi opened MUT’s doors to fifteen students with a single mandate: transform the lives of the disenfranchised.

Nearly five decades later, that mandate still shapes the institution he built in Umlazi. The Founder’s Annual Lecture was established to carry his example of civic leadership forward, bringing government, business and civil society together for one evening of honest reflection about the country he helped shape.

Each year, the lecture takes on one of South Africa’s defining questions. It is MUT’s contribution to a national conversation that cannot be left to any single sector alone.

This year’s theme: Building a Shared Vision for South Africa’s Future

South Africa stands at a critical crossroads. This address brings the country’s major socio-economic, governance and human rights challenges into one clear line of sight and points to practical ways forward.

Five pillars of the address:

  • Social compacting — Agreements that hold across government, business and communities.
  • Innovation — New thinking applied to old, entrenched problems.
  • Responsible leadership — Accountability at every level, not only at the top.
  • Economic inclusion — Growth that reaches the people currently locked out of it.
  • Citizen participation — A country shaped by its people, not only its institutions.

The throughline is simple: sustainable change is a shared responsibility. Government alone cannot carry it and nor can anyone else, alone.

A theme that mirrors our own roadmap: IGNITE 2030

This year’s question where to from here? is one MUT has been asking of itself. Our Strategic Plan 2026–2030, IGNITE 2030 From Vision to Delivery, was shaped through months of consultation with our own staff, students, alumni and industry partners, and it points the university toward the same destination this lecture asks the country to consider.

IGNITE 2030 aligns MUT’s work with South Africa’s National Development Plan 2030, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 placing the university’s growth inside the same national and continental story with which this lecture engages. Two of its five strategic goals speak directly to this year’s theme, the lecture calls for

  • Research, Innovation & Digital Transformation — building the innovation this lecture calls for, from the inside out.
  • Strategic Partnerships & Visibility — the social compacting the address makes its case for, practiced across MUT’s own collaborations.

The Founder’s Annual Lecture and IGNITE 2030 are, in effect, one conversation: a national one and an institutional one, both asking what shared responsibility looks like in practice.