Andy Duffy
Nine of the 10 deans at the University of Cape Town (UCT) are to be replaced as part of an aggressive affirmative action drive and management shake-up.
The university is also putting all staff through rigorous performance checks, to weed out underachievers and free up posts for new black and female employees.
All departments have been ordered to draw up affirmative action plans and targets. Those who fail to meet UCT’s affirmative action goals will be starved of funds, and their managers penalised. The university will also block the appointment of white males unless selection committees can justify to an affirmative action watchdog their failure to employ black or female candidates.
Vice-chancellor Mamphela Ramphele says the plans are in line with government’s employment equity Bill. The Bill, due to be tabled in Parliament this year, will effectively force employers to hire more blacks, women and disabled people.
She also says UCT staff will go only if they fail to perform. “No one at UCT will be targeted merely because they are white and male,” she says in the latest issue of UCT’s campus newspaper, the Monday Paper. But the plans have nevertheless unnerved many UCT staff – nearly two-thirds of its academics are white males.
“We cannot go into the 21st century on the basis of our current demographic profile of deans, who are all white males,” Ramphele adds in the campus paper. “Failure to focus on employment equity will have costs and this will concentrate minds.”
The heated debate UCT’s plans have generated is likely to be repeated at universities and technikons across the country.
Ramphele’s focus on deans is partially driven by UCT’s decision to merge faculties, cutting the numbers from 10 to six, and to put more managerial and financial responsibility on faculty heads. The new structure comes into force from next January.
“Deans will have a critical role in the management and leadership of a restructured UCT,” Ramphele says.
Of the 10, only dean of commerce Brian Kantor will survive the shake-up. The university’s executive has asked dean of medicine, JP Van Niekerk, to step down, though he has four years of his contract to run. The contracts of dean of arts John Atkinson and Derek Japha from fine arts and architecture have also been cut short.
The contracts of education dean Michael Ashley, Ian Bunting at social sciences and humanities and dean of engineering Manfred Reineck have been extended until next January.
Dean of law Danie Visser’s contract expires in December, and science dean Cliff Moran has already indicated he plans to retire from his deanship at the end of this year.
Van Niekerk says his faculty is now deciding whether he should go. “We have been criticised in that we didn’t move rapidly enough in terms of staffing,” he adds. “I personally don’t think I was blocking [employment equity].”
But Ramphele says the deans had ignored her in 1994, when, as deputy vice-chancellor, she had called for affirmative action targets and timetables. “It was simply not seen as a strategic priority,” she adds.
The staff performance checks, which are already under way, cover both academic and administrative staff. Ramphele says the tests will be “an important starting point” in formulating retrenchment policy.
The departments’ affirmative action programmes have to be finalised by August. Their progress will be monitored by a newly created “employment equity review group”, staffed by deputy vice-chancellors Dan Ncayiyana and John Martin, human resources director Joy Fish, and equal opportunities officer Frank Molteno. The same group will have the power to veto appointments of white males.
“There has been a very natural tendency for like to select like,” Molteno adds. “It has been difficult for selection committees to be open to talent in other forms. This will help get people into a proactive frame of mind.”
The key obstacle facing UCT and other institutions is that business and the government have probably already snapped up the few senior black and female academics likely to meet their requirements – which could leave them reliant on white males once again. But UCT’s other strategies, Ramphele adds, should allow the university to grow “our own timber”.
These include advertising “targeted employment equity posts” and creating senior posts for senior affirmative-action candidates in areas such as research and lecturing. Managers will be judged on their success in attracting and keeping such employees.
The breakdown by race and sex of UCT staff shows that the representation of Indian and coloured academics is as low as the black component. Coloured employees account for more than half of the university’s 2 030 administrative staff.
Ramphele adds, however, that the black candidates from advantaged backgrounds will be favoured over coloured or white candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“Representivity is important. Symbolism is also important,” Ramphele says. “It matters that I am a vice-chancellor in a province that was a coloured labour preference area and that is still controlled by the National Party.”
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