Gaye Davis
A hoax letter “signed” by Professor Cecil Abrahams, rector of the University of the Western Cape (UWC), nearly put a spoke in the wheels of the selection of a new vice- chancellor for Witwatersrand University this week.
The letter, received by chair of the Wits council, Judge Fikile Bam, and circulated by him among members of the selection committee, looked authentic: it was written on a UWC letterhead and carried what seemed to be Abrahams’s signature.
But the letter was less than flattering about Abrahams’s colleague, the UWC vice- rector in charge of student affairs, Professor Colin Bundy, who is vying with the University of Cape Town’s Professor Frances Wilson for Wits’s top post.
Judge Bam said he had presumed the letter was genuine and so circulated it. “News of the letter, however, leaked back to Professor Abrahams and he contacted me early this week to say it was a fraud,” Judge Bam said.
He would not divulge details of the letter, which is understood to have cast aspersions on Bundy’s abilities as an academic. The matter would not be taken further, Bam said.
Abrahams said: “I couldn’t believe it – I was very shocked. I don’t participate in other people’s processes unless I am invited to.”
He had no idea who could have written the letter but said he would not be launching an internal investigation. “I just want the whole matter to disappear as quickly as possible,” he said.
* The Wits Council is due to take its decision about the new vice-chancellor on August 19.