The University of Cape Town (UCT) has a dedicated senior lead for transformation — Professor Elelwani Ramugondo, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Transformation, Student Affairs & Social Responsiveness — and an institutional unit, the Office for Inclusivity & Change (OIC), which together provide strategic and operational leadership for diversity, inclusion and institutional transformation. The DVC provides executive leadership and accountability for transformation across the academic project, while the OIC coordinates evidence-based inclusion initiatives, anti-racism programming, disability-inclusive planning and institutional responses to matters such as sexual and gender-based violence. These functions directly support UCT’s Vision 2030 priorities of excellence, transformation and social responsiveness and demonstrate that diversity and inclusion are embedded at senior institutional level.

The Office for Inclusivity and Change (OIC) was established to build, develop and foster an environment where everyone feels included and change is respected, encouraged and celebrated. The OIC includes sections that deal with disability services; cultural change, prevention and education; and sexual assault, sexual harassment and client management.

1. Senior institutional lead for transformation / diversity — Prof Elelwani Ramugondo

Professor Elelwani Ramugondo is UCT’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC) for Transformation, Student Affairs and Social Responsiveness — a senior executive role that carries responsibility for the university’s transformation agenda. As DVC for Transformation, Prof Ramugondo provides executive leadership for institutional transformation and social responsiveness, represents transformation priorities at the highest level of university governance, and champions policies and programmes that advance inclusion, equity and student/staff wellbeing across UCT.

2. The institution’s diversity office — Office for Inclusivity & Change (OIC)

UCT maintains a dedicated unit called the Office for Inclusivity & Change (OIC). The OIC runs strategic programmes for transformation, inclusion, diversity and disability support.

The OIC is led by director Dr Sianne Alves and is identified in UCT communications as the office that designs and implements institution-level inclusion and transformation programmes. The OIC’s remit includes: designing and running strategic transformation and inclusion programmes; coordinating capacity-building (e.g., Agents for Change / peer programmes); disability support services; and partnering with faculties, governance structures and student bodies to translate high-level transformation policy into practical initiatives and institutional change.

UCT’s Vision 2030 and related strategy foreground transformation, excellence and sustainability and commit the university to “unleash human potential to create a fair and just society” — explicitly linking institutional strategy to goals of equity, inclusion and social responsiveness.  By having an executive DVC responsible for transformation and a formal OIC, UCT signals that transformation and inclusion are not peripheral projects but institutional priorities that must be led at senior level, coordinated centrally, and embedded in policy and practice (from curriculum reform and hiring to campus accessibility and responses to sexual and gender-based violence). This institutional architecture supports UCT’s stated commitment to non-racialism, inclusivity and social responsiveness.

In practice: the DVC provides executive mandate and governance linkage (policy, resource prioritisation, institutional accountability), while the OIC translates that mandate into concrete programmes, student and staff support, and capacity building across faculties and professional services — together enabling the university to operationalise its Vision 2030 transformation commitments.