Ann Eveleth
THE “mysterious” exclusion of a prominent Nigerian from the search for a new English department head has divided academic staff at the University of Zululand.
African literature specialist Professor Ramanas Egudu is lauded by his supporters at Unizulu as a “world-renowned scholar and expert on African poetry and oral traditions”.
He was one of three candidates shortlisted for the post but was not interviewed by the selection panel this month amid conflicting reports that he was either unable to attend on the interview dates or could not be contacted at his current post at the University of Benin in Nigeria.
The selection committee rejected a bid by some of its members to delay the proceedings to accommodate Egudu and “voted that it was able to make a decision based on the available candidates and the information from Egudu’s CV,” said university spokesman Carl de Villiers.
The Mail & Guardian has established that the other candidates were acting department head Professor Myrtle Hooper and a Swaziland academic. The selection committee, it is expected, will recommend Hooper for the post at a university council meeting on Friday, despite growing pressure to delay making the appointment.
Art faculty dean Professor Herbert Vilikazi said he was disappointed that his arguments in favour of interviewing Egudu “did not win”: “Our English department needs to incorporate the literary works and colours of the African continent. We don’t need an Oxford English department, but an African one and I think the leading posts should be occupied by highly qualified Africans. Egudu is one,” he said.
Earlier this week a group of concerned English academics petitioned rector Charles Dlamini to reconsider the decision of the committee he headed, warning that Egudu’s exclusion from the process could foster the impression that academic posts are filled “in accordance with merely parochial or xenophobic considerations”.
Dlamini could not be reached for comment but academic affairs vice- rector Alex Thembela said the committee would make its recommendation based on the two candidates interviewed, adding the committee would “mention the appeal made by members of the English department”.
“The matter is actually closed, but we are told Egudu is such an outstanding academic he should be interviewed. Unfortunately he missed the interview. Our personnel department reported he could not be contacted in time. You will understand how difficult it is to contact Nigeria these days,” he said.
Human Resources manager Anna-Marie Olivier denied Egudu had not been contacted: “He was definitely contacted. He informed us at a late stage of the process that he couldn’t make it on the dates provided,” she said. De Villiers confirmed this view and said it was “Egudu’s problem, not ours”.
Some academics disagree. Vilikazi said efforts to attract high-quality academics should not be “bound” by the same local preferences as other posts and “we should make every effort to interview high-quality people even if we have to go there to interview them”.
English lecturer Colin Jackson, who signed this week’s petition, said he had contacted Egudu in Nigeria via a common acquaintance in Lagos and was informed that “the university did not contact him, although he is available and willing to be interviewed”.
Jackson and other arts faculty academics say they fear Egudu’s exclusion has “not only robbed the university of a great opportunity, but does not bode well for attempts to integrate South African students with a wider world and particularly a wider continental perspective”.
Fellow English lecturer Bergard Roberts – described by colleagues as the only academic in the department with a grounding in African literature – said the fracas surrounding Egudu’s exclusion pointed to “a new tribalist xenophobia rearing its head in South Africa”.
Roberts said an arts festival held on the campus earlier this year had forbidden the use of English “even though there were guests from Nigeria. African literature can provide a bulwark against this kind of tribalism and isolationism and Egudu can help us do that. He is known for his unhesitating appropriation of English as a lingua franca of Africa, yet he is also an Africanist.”
Egudu’s recent publications include Modern African Poetry and the African Predicament and several articles in the leading African literary journal African Literature Today.