But Asmal’s drastic intervention this week in Unisa’s governance crisis has delighted academics at the troubled university
David Macfarlane
Nearly R200 000 in less than two years: that’s the cash Unisa council chairperson McCaps Motimele has milked from the university in contravention of Unisa policies, says the auditor general. But scarcely anyone on the controversy-ridden council escapes censure: about R800 000 of taxpayers’ money has been lavished on external members of the council, on highly questionable grounds, since March last year.
And the ball is now squarely in the sullied council’s court: Minister of Education Kader Asmal announced this week that the council has until December 7 to decide “how it intends to implement the recommendations of the auditor general” recommendations that include recovering excessive payments from council members.
The auditor general’s report, which is in the Mail & Guardian’s possession, was released in a week in which Unisa plunged into managerial chaos. The two top managers of the huge university tried to oust each other, the council heightened its open defiance of Asmal by refusing to meet him as scheduled on Wednesday, and vice-chancellor-elect Barney Pityana suddenly took office on the same day more than a month before expected.
But Asmal has now struck back: he is dissolving the council, by January 31 at the latest. Senior Unisa academics are delighted by the minister’s drastic intervention. “There’s a mood of excitement,” said one lecturer. “It’s a long-overdue move by the government, and we welcome it.”
This week’s shattering of the ivory tower began on Tuesday, when the then acting vice-chancellor, Professor Simon Maimela, announced that he was closing the offices of the council and had instructed the university’s administration “to evacuate the chairperson of council and his supporters … with immediate effect”. Maimela cited legal opinion that judged the council’s recent appointment of seven senior managers to be ultra vires (beyond its powers).
In this Maimela was backing the university’s highest executive body, the senate, in its condemnation of these appointments. The senate and Maimela noted that the appointments flew in the face of Asmal’s request that Unisa, Technikon SA and Vista University’s Distance Education Centre (Vudec) refrain from making long-term senior appointments pending the merger among the three institutions. The merger is a crucial element in the national higher education plan, which Asmal unveiled in February and which aims to redress decades of apartheid-era damage to the tertiary sector.
Motimele’s retribution against Maimela was swift: on the same day, he dismissed him from his post of acting vice-chancellor. Maimela’s riposte was equally speedy and scathing. “I should not be needing to point out to a chairperson of council,” he wrote to Motimele on Tuesday, “that, in terms of the delegation of powers of the university council, only the council itself has the power to dismiss me. In your case, however, it apparently needs pointing out that you have once again, in a manner that has marked your rule as chairperson, acted unprocedurally and autocratically and have also, once again, besmirched and sullied the reputation of this great institution.
“I therefore reject your unilateral, unprocedural and undemocratic decision to dismiss me with the contempt it deserves. I remain acting principal and vice-chancellor of the University of South Africa.”
But a day later Maimela was clearing out his office, following Motimele’s announcement on Wednesday that Pityana had “officially assumed duty as the vice-chancellor and principal” the day before. Pityana’s own appointment had itself heightened tensions between the council and Asmal: defying the minister yet again, the council in October confirmed Pityana for a five-year term.
In a further twist, Unisa insiders are stunned by Pityana’s about-turn on the timing of his availability. He originally claimed that his need to give three months’ notice of his resignation from his post as chairperson of the Human Rights Commission meant he could assume his Unisa position only on January 1. Informed sources say that, despite this, Pityana had begun holding his own management meetings excluding Maimela creating a bizarre situation in which two parallel management teams were attempting to govern Unisa.
Senior academics also allege Pityana has negotiated a golden handshake if he fails to become vice-chancellor of the new mega-institution to be formed by the merging of Unisa, Technikon SA and Vudec. He will apparently be paid out for the balance of his five-year contract exactly the wastage of taxpayers’ money Asmal has repeatedly said he was attempting to avoid in requesting that the three institutions refrain from appointing long-term senior managers until the merger is in place. Pityana could not be reached for comment.
Asmal’s decisive intervention comes after months of turmoil at Unisa, centred on the council in general and Motimele in particular. The auditor general has now found that council members claimed, and received, payments for “meetings that did not qualify as council meetings, committee meetings or meetings convened by committee services”, that “double payments were made to members of council”, and that in some cases members claimed and received payment for meetings they had not attended.
Motimele himself on occasion claimed and received payments for chairing meetings when he had not in fact done so, the report says. It recommends that members of council should not themselves be “involved in the approval process of the remuneration of members of council”.
But the payment of council members for duties that councillors at most other tertiary institutions perform in the public interest for free is only one of the controversies that have tarnished Motimele’s council. Motimele himself has been repeatedly accused of running the university as his own fiefdom, and constantly interfering in matters of executive management that are properly the concern of the senate.
Academic and administrative staff began rebelling against the council two months ago, circulating two petitions calling for the dissolution of the council and for Asmal’s urgent intervention to “normalise” governance at Unisa. Hundreds of staff members signed these petitions. The senate last week resolved to oppose the council’s recent appointments of senior management, and heads of academic and administrative departments this week voted to ask for Asmal to appoint interim leadership “to steer through the mess”, one senior academic said.
Although Motimele might well be out of a job shortly, his troubles are unlikely to disappear. Legal action against him is imminent in a case of sexual harassment brought by former Unisa professor Margaret Orr, and in another case brought by senior lecturer Dr McGlory Speckman alleging the council exceeded its powers in overturning his appointment as deputy dean of theology. Motimele is also under investigation by the Scorpions: he is one of 12 defendants in a case involving alleged fraud perpetrated against North West province, centring on the award of a tender for supplying wall charts to all schools in the province.
Motimele declined to comment.