Marion Edmunds
THE paper trail stemming from secret six- figure payouts to senior staff at Stellenbosch University led to the rector’s office this week.
Professor Andreas van Wyk, who until now has kept silent on the payouts, is being challenged on his campus to confirm or deny whether he handed himself a windfall of R160000. To date, he has declined to take up the offer.
Academics and staff claim Van Wyk received the payment last June, the same month he bought a R400 000 holiday home in Hermanus.
Van Wyk’s failure to respond to the charge has done little to assuage anger on the campus, particularly as the administration has warned that lower subsidies will force a 10% cut in the university’s staff.
The Mail & Guardian revealed in December that five senior administrative staff members, including the two vice-rectors Professors Christo Viljoen and Walter Claassen, received secret payouts of between R127 000 and R200000 last year. Van Wyk personally authorised the cheques.
The university’s council has defended the payouts on the grounds that they were paid to administrative staff in lieu of sabbatical leave that they were unable to take, such were their duties at the university.
The council also said the payments had been endorsed by its remuneration committee and declared them legitimate.
However, the payouts saddled Stellenbosch with the prospect of a hefty fine from the Receiver of Revenue, after the administration allegedly failed to deduct tax, and enraged students and academics.
Van Wyk failed to contain staff dissatisfaction over the payments last month at an emergency meeting. The council has been forced to place the matter on its agenda for a second time for discussion this Monday.
Lobbying ahead of the meeting has already started, with one faction pressing for an independent inquiry into the payments and the other arguing that sinister forces on the campus are attempting to frame Van Wyk in a bid to destroy the institution. Academics have been giving the M&G quotes and then withdrawing them, while savaging each other’s reputations in personal correspondence.
Stellenbosch had still to respond to queries from the M&G at the time of going to press. The questions were put to the university last week.
Academics and students also feel that the secrecy of the university’s executive is blocking the much-needed transformation process on the campus.
The M&G understands that a new report to be handed to Van Wyk on its transformation will paint a disturbing picture of where the university has gone wrong.
The report, by John Swanepoel who took over the university’s academic development programme earlier this year, is expected to argue that Stellenbosch has succeeded only in maintaining the separation of former disadvantaged communities from the university.
The programme was instituted to provide bridging education for students who could not make initial entrance qualifications at the university, mainly black students who were not proficient in Afrikaans.
However, little more than 1% of the 15 000- strong Stellenbosch student body is black. Many black students told the M&G this week that they felt they were being deliberately marginalised, particularly by the university’s policy of mainly teaching in Afrikaans.