Evidence wa ka Ngobeni
An independent mediator is to be appointed to intervene in the ongoing conflict at the troubled University of the Western Cape (UWC), amid fears that final examinations may not take place.
Final examinations have already been postponed for two weeks, and the administration has not yet set a new date for their commencement.
The academic staff association has raised fears that students may not sit their final examinations this year. The university administration has announced that an independent mediator would have to be called in to facilitate negotiations, if examinations were to start.
Meanwhile, UWC’s senate has suspended all academic programmes for what they call a “cooling-off period”. They hope this will bring a halt to student demonstrations and marches – and the intervention of police.
But academic staff association representative Sean Lewis said the administration had brushed off requests by the association and students to attempt to resolve the crisis.
“It is a sick, petty game management is playing when the university is under such a severe threat. With the rector in the United States, and the acting rector and entire senior management having fled, one has to ask: what is management committed to? Does management have the will or the ability to resolve the crisis? Even more pertinently, are we going to have exams?” he said.
The university rector, Professor Cecil Abrahams, has left on a fund-raising trip to the US and will only return on October 29.
The campus has been tense since the retrenchment of 41 academics two months ago. Conflict mounted when the retrenchment of 329 non-academics was proposed. The rector’s office also announced that in future it would refuse admission to students who couldn’t pay their fees. The situation came to a head this week when workers burned tyres on campus.
Police clashed with striking workers and students after a breakdown in wage negotiations between management and the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu).
The academic staff association claims the deterioration of the situation on campus could have been avoided. They say Nehawu was prepared to drop its wage increase demands from 12% to 5%. Management offered Nehawu 5%.
Last week the university senate censured Abrahams for the “short-sighted, inhuman and mechanical manner” in which he implemented the retrenchments. The academic staff association and students have called for his resignation.
The association has accused acting rector Aubrey Redelinghuys of dealing with the crisis by “locking himself and the rest of the senior management up in the administration building”.