Mungo Soggot
COLLEAGUES of Professor Sam Nolutshungu, the United States-based academic who turned down the vice-chancellorship at Wits University, say he used the Wits offer to land himself a better job with his current employer.
They also say Nolutshungu, who rejected the Wits post at the 11th hour for “health reasons”, is not ill and acknowledged this to them at a staff meeting earlier this year. When asked if he was ill he replied “of course not”, adding he had to find some explanation for the South Africans.
Nolutshungu has now quit as acting director of the University of Rochester’s Frederick Douglass Institute to take up a full-time post with the university’s political science department. In negotiating his new position, he secured a package that includes generous research funding and leave arrangements.
The Frederick Douglass Institute – named for an escaped slave, abolitionist, orator and newspaper founder in Rochester – specialises in African American studies.
Colleagues in Rochester expressed outrage this week at Nolutshungu’s actions, saying he used the Wits offer as a bargaining chip to secure the post at the political science faculty, leaving the institute in the lurch. “They [Wits] got jilted. We got divorced,” said a colleague.
Nolutshungu won Wits over last October with a smooth public presentation, beating rival candidates June Sinclair, a Wits law professor, and Njabulo Ndebele of the University of the North.
But colleagues say Nolutshungu was vague about the Wits offer, leaving them to track his progress by reading the local press which on January 15 reported Nolutshungu had turned down the offer. That was two days after Nolutshungu shocked Wits with his faxed note regretting that he could not take up the position.
Nolutshungu’s decision means Wits will have to undergo yet another lengthy selection process to find a successor to Robert Charlton, who steps down at the end of the year.
One colleague, who declined to be named, said Nolutshungu had done a “grave disservice” to the institute by secretly negotiating a better package with the university without considering the institute’s interests.
Another colleague said Nolutshungu’s move now threatens to undermine the institute. He apparently looked out exclusively for his own interests when negotiating with the dean, and did not broach the issue of the institute’s budget. Colleagues say that he could have pushed to have the institute’s budget kept at a level that would allow it to replace him with someone of equal stature.
One colleague said that when Nolutshungu was confronted about his failure to lobby for the institute in his negotitations, he replied he had not mentioned it as this would have weakened his chances of getting the new package.
Another said his approach was particularly inappropriate because Nolutshungu’s primary responsibility as the institute’s acting director for the past two years, was to negotiate on its behalf with the university in a “tough environment with inadequate finances”.
Meanwhile, the Mail & Guardian has learned that Wits never contacted the institute to inquire about Nolutshungu’s skill at administration which, according to colleagues, is not his forte. “He is uninterested in administration, and nobody ever contacted us to ask about it,” said one.
Nolutshungu again failed to respond to the M&G.