Gaye Davis
A BID to democratise the selection of a new rector for the University of the Western Cape appears to have backfired. While a decision is expected next week, the process has sharply divided the campus community.
UWC’s founding statute was specially amended to throw open the selection process to include workers, students, academics as well as Senate and Council through creating a 25-member Rectorate Selection Committee (RSC).
The RSC, after prolonged disputes over representation, has shortlisted two candidates for the post vacated by Professor Jakes Gerwel last July when he became director-general in the office of President Nelson
Both South African-born academics, they will be interviewed by the RSC next week in hearings to be broadcast campus-wide on closed-circuit television.
They are Professor Mapule Ramashala, formerly of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, now with the Medical Research Council and Professor Cecil Abrahams, a literary scholar and provost of Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. UWC’s council will endorse the final decision next Thursday.
But senior academics say they are deeply concerned about the process. Citing a lack of a shared understanding on the RSC of what is required in a rector, political schisms and divisions within the UWC community and a lack of proper consultation, they say the process has been subverted into a political game.
Said one: “The process has made it possible for alliances so that people can vote en bloc and swing the vote. The notion of equal representation is a sham.”
Another senior academic said: “A very serious problem is that people involved in the process have no idea about what is required. People seem to think choosing a rector is like a political election. Those taking the decisions do not properly understand that it is a very difficult job.”
Sources said historian Professor Colin Bundy, favoured by academics as a prime candidate, had been sidelined on the basis of his colour. Bundy, currently acting vice-rector, is one of eight short-listed candidates for a deputy rectorship.
“Bundy was very much a part of UWC’s transition. He’s a brilliant academic and has the required vision to steer UWC into the future. As acting vice-rector he’s handled difficult disputes very well. But he doesn’t stand a chance,” a senior academic said.
Some academics are understood to be so disillusioned that they are considering leaving. “If good academics feel the university’s leadership is going to be decided in a political gamble then they are going to leave,” one said.
“Students come and go — academics are permanent members of the community and they should have more say. UWC needs someone with academic and political vision. It is not a popularity contest,” another academic said. “A lot of people feel impotent. Nobody dares confront or challenge the students or, to a lesser extent, the
Academics are also concerned that no external advisors will be involved in the decision — standard procedure with any professorial appointment. There is also no final decision on whether UWC will have two or three deputy rectors. An RSC source said debate over this was reduced to the level of “workers wanting less managers”, and that the real issues were being
RSC members comprise five representatives each of workers (through the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union), students (through the SRC), UWC’s Council and academics (through Senate and an academic lobby group which objected to Senate representing them).
Apart from Bundy, the candidates short-listed for posts of deputy rector, to be interviewed the week after the rectorship hearings, are: management studies specialist Mzamo Mangaliso, assistant professor at the Amherst School of Management in Massachusetts; Azapo leader Professor Itumeleng Mosala of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town; Barney Pityana (Religious Studies, UCT); Dr Stephen Hendricks, UWC-educated, now studying at Harvard’s dental school; Professor Aubrey Redlinghuis, UWC’s dean of arts; Professor Ramashala and Professor Thandabanthu Nhlapo, head of the department of private law at UCT.