Joshua Amupadhi
WITS University Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Student Affairs June Sinclair is to leave the administration at the end of this month, after failing in her bid to win the most powerful office on the campus.
Sinclair, defeated in October in the contest to be Wits’ next vice-chancellor, said this week she would not ask the university council for another 3-year term when her current tenure expires. She said she had not yet decided what she would do next.
The university is already advertising for her replacement and is also seeking two other new deputy vice-chancellors. The position of deputy vice-chancellor for academic affairs has been vacant for most of the year since the colourful exit of Professor William Makgoba, who is now doing medical research on the campus. Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research Friedel Sellschop is due to retire next year.
Wits representative David Williams said applicants would be subjected to the same kind of public scrutiny candidates endured in the race to succeed Vice-Chancellor Robert Charlton.
Sinclair’s departure has been on the cards from the moment she lost that race to political scientist Sam Nolutshungu. She hinted prior to the contest that defeat would prompt her to look for a new job.
She is widely viewed to have a firm grasp on the financial realities facing Wits, and during the contest for Charlton’s position she was frequently quoted about the business plan she would seek to put in place on the campus. Her relations with the student body and workers, however, have been strained since the decision in 1993 to bring police on to the campus to quell rowdy demonstrators.
She is also not popular among many Wits academics, some of whom questioned her academic record when she went after Charlton’s post.
Veteran former MP Helen Suzman, a member of the university’s council and one of Sinclair’s strongest allies, said her departure was a ‘great loss’ because of her ‘experience as well as academic and basic intelligence’.
‘Those (Sinclair’s) are personal decisions about which there is not much an outsider can do,’ Suzman said.
Makgoba, meanwhile, said he had not ‘given it a thought’ to re-apply, but said the filling of the vacancies was a trivial story compared to changes following the debacle of his ousting.
‘You will be doing a better story to analyse what I have achieved. Even if I were to resign today I’d be satisfied that I have done something (substantial) towards the transformation of Wits,’ he said.
He said it would be interesting to examine how the ‘Makgoba affair’ had influenced the selection process of Charlton’s successor.