Thandi Lewin
PROFESSOR Njabulo Ndebele is set to become the next vice-chancellor at the University of the Witwatersrand.
As one of three on the shortlist, Ndebele has the support of many of the most powerful academics on campus, several of whom signed his nomination letter.
Wits is a troubled campus, and the appointment of a new vice-chancellor is an emotionally-charged issue. Academics at Wits believe the new vice-chancellor will have to be able to unify the campus and provide vision and leadership for a stalling and fumbled transformation process.
There is a strong feeling on campus that Ndebele would be able to provide this leadership. Noam Pines of the politics department said that there was a ”profound feeling that Ndebele was the person for the job” and there had been ”grave anxiety that Professor Ndebele would not accept the nomination”.
Ndebele is known and respected on many levels. He is, at present, head of the University of the North. Staff and students there say he proved himself as a team worker, who takes accountability and transparency seriously. He is respected as a writer and academic and has extensive experience in university administration
The other two short-listed candidates are Professor June Sinclair, present deputy vice-chancellor at Wits, and Professor Sam Nolutshungu, a South African political scientist based at the Frederick Douglas Institute for African and African-American Studies at the University of Rochester, in the United States.
Sinclair said she would not stay on as deputy vice-chancellor after the appointment of a new vice-chancellor as her contract was due to expire at the end of the year, so she would ”no longer be in senior administration after that”.
Nolutshungu has a reputation as a brilliant academic, but has less administrative experience than the other two candidates.
The lobby for Sinclair within the university’s academic community is also strong. She has extensive managerial experience and is well known as a legal academic. However, she faces a great deal of opposition from certain sectors of the university, who have clashed with her in the past. Sinclair said: ”We have to cultivate our nascent democracy. The way to enrich it is to stimulate debate about controversial issues. At the moment this does not happen. As soon as there are diverse opinions, somebody is labelled as conservative.”
Although there seems to be some support for Ndebele’s move at the University of the North, there are grave concerns there will be no one to replace him. Besterlord Mathedula, a member of the Students Representative Council (SRC), said Ndebele ”acted like a gentleman: he called us to a meeting and told us that he had accepted the nomination. There is some support for his move, but we are seriously concerned about who will replace him.”
So far no alternatives have been suggested.
Although Ndebele himself could not be contacted because he is on leave, John Wiltshire, the University of the North’s publicity officer said: ”After much soul- searching we came to the conclusion that his appointment to Wits would not only be in the national interest, but would serve as a much-needed bridge between the largest historically-black university and a major historically-white university.”
But there are some niggling signs at Wits that the process may not be as smooth as everyone had hoped for. Two meetings have been held up because the SRC had to resolve an internal dispute about student representation on the selection committee. The meeting which decided on the short-list eventually went ahead without the two SRC representatives.
Student leaders say the atmosphere at Wits is so charged with tension that rumours are flying around that certain members of the SRC are being pressured by academic staff to back individual nominees for the vice- chancellor position.
The final selection of the vice-chancellor will take some time. The candidates are still to give public lectures and will be interviewed by the selection committee on closed-circuit television, to be seen by the university community. Submissions will then be made to the committee, and its decision will have to be forwarded to the Senate and Council for approval.