College of Business and Economics | Annual Report 2021 2 Prof Daneel van Lill, Executive Dean College of Business and Economics Executive Summary OVERVIEW The year 2021 provided many opportunities to deepen knowledge and practice of the art of agility – in short, to respond to CBE stakeholders’ changing expectations while maintaining a solid good governance and operations backbone. President Cyril Ramaphosa announced lockdown in South Africa for 21 days on 23 March 2020, aiming to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Some 700 days later, we continue to implement innovations counteracting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first vaccines, administered in February 2021, functioned to a greater or lesser extent. Consequently, the development of new vaccines raced against the coronavirus, which had mutated speedily towards the more contagious Delta variant by July 2021. By December 2021, Omicron was making headlines in the world of viruses, again halting the staggering local economy, notably the tourism sector, in its tracks. On the bright side, this most recent mutant is associated with fewer deaths and hospitalisations, flagging South Africans’ hope towards recovery. Retrospectively, the pandemic has changed every facet of our society, not least how universities responded rapidly and innovatively in the face of threats looming large. The detail of UJ’s response to the pandemic was narrated by the Deputy Vice-Chancellors, Professors Saurabh Sinha and Angina Parekh (https://www.uj.ac.za/news/ujs-top-executivesexplains-how-the-institution-steered-the-2020academic-year). On the dark side, statistics became real regarding the names of family members, friends, colleagues, and students who did not survive the pandemic. We still feel the high impact of disrupted supply and food chains, as we adapt to demands of a new world of work, cyber-security attacks, economic downturn, and social unrest. On the bright side, the UJ community has evolved our virtual teaching, learning, research, and outreach capacity. Notably, wisdom has been gained through a series of thought-provoking virtual events to answer how we reimagine the post-pandemic world. Because of the impact of the pandemic on the global economy, this daunting task seems ceaseless, and we assimilate what we have learnt into UJ’s organisational memory. February 2022 saw staff and students returning to campus, complying with COVID-19 protocols and UJ’s mandatory vaccination policy. Our campuses are alive with the sound and motion of people in search of a better future. Zooming into the CBE progress, 2021 may well be considered as the best of the five years since the CBE was established, when two legacy UJ faculties dedicated to the field of economics and business were merged.
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