The apparent “exposé” of “scandal” and “corruption” around the University of the North’s Edupark project on the front page of the Mail & Guardian (July 2 to 8), is difficult to comprehend.
The Memorandum of Association establishing Edupark as a Section 21 company (not a private company) describes its main business as follows:
“The development of the facility serving the historically deprived community where tertiary institutions could use the synergy of co-operation, while costs are driven down through elimination of duplication resulting in access to affordable tertiary education which impacts on the community directly.
In obtaining its objective, the members shall strive to attain the following aims:
- To accommodate several institutions on one campus.
- To eliminate the duplication of facilities.
- To address the educational challenges of the historically disadvantaged communities by offering large numbers of students career-specific, industry-directed and professional training.
- That each participating institution shall maintain its own individuality and culture, whilst free competition between participants shall prevail within narrow basic streams.
- To avoid the duplication of communal facilities.
- To procure accreditation between participating institutions in order to gain access to higher levels of education.
- To create a one-stop facility for tertiary education.”
Edupark was the University of the North’s unique and innovative response to the challenges presented by our country’s new democratic government in 1994. It was part of the university’s response to the National Education Policy Act, the South African Qualifications Authority Act, the national qualifications framework and the anticipated Higher Education Act of 1996.
In a path-breaking, historic co-operation between the University of the North and the City Council of Pietersburg, the latter generously donated land and the university council provided the start-up capital to build the first phase of the project. When the Pietersburg City Council and the Pietersburg Chamber of Business challenged tertiary institutions that wanted to operate in the region to find a way of pooling resources to enhance education opportunities in the Northern Province, the University of the North saw an opportunity and took the lead in engaging with this initiative.
The product was Edupark, through which the university definitively signaled its intention to break with the past and participate in a civic initiative for the benefit of the local community. It is a unique solution and possibly misunderstood because of this.
The enabling decision by the council was taken at its meeting of March 29 1996. It is reflected in minute 6,4: “Council approved phase one of the plan which will cost R15- million from the university funds. The other phases as council has clarified, will run concurrently depending on the commitment of other institutions.”
These minutes were approved at the council meeting of June 28 1996. I fail to understand why Benny Boshielo, the current chair of the university council, who ought to know better, was quoted as saying there was no council authorisation for the funding of phase one of Edupark. Phase one was to consist of three buildings. With escalation in building costs, the last building, a library, was omitted.
The R15- million was overshot by R3,4-million, which was made up of escalation, installation of the telephone system, computer cabling and costs to the Transitional Local Council for services. Expenditure on these services occurred during the construction and completion process and was not ratified by the council, although the Edupark steering committee was aware of them and authorised them.
The final figures were kept as close as possible to the original projected costs. In any case, it should be emphasized that no university monies were ever transferred to Edupark. All expenditure on Edupark was processed through the routine procedures of the finance and physical planning departments, as would any other university expenditure.
I confirm that in my capacity as vice- chancellor and principal of the University of the North, I was one of the directors of Edupark, so appointed to the steering committee to comply with the provisions of the Memorandum of Association.
Clearly, I would cease to be a director in that capacity in the event that I was no longer the chief executive officer of the University of the North.
The chair of the council at the time, Dr Joe Phaahla, was also a founding member by virtue of his position. Subsequently, in decision of the joint meeting of executive management committee of the university and the Edupark Company on June 17 1997, it was agreed that “the chair of the council of the University of the North be appointed to the Section 21 company ex-officio”.
It was the aim that both the vice- chancellor and the chair of the council would constitute an important link between the university and Edupark.
John Wiltshire, in his capacity as Executive Director for Development and Public Affairs, at the University of the North, was assigned the responsibility to drive the project. His involvement as a director in Edupark is related to the drive and expertise it was thought he would bring into the entire project.
I am baffled why it was thought that an institutional project whose establishment I oversaw in my capacity as chief executive officer should be deemed for my private benefit. I have in no way personally benefitted from Edupark. In terms of the Memorandum of Association, Edupark’s directors shall “not be entitled to any remuneration for their services as directors”.
Furthermore, profits cannot be passed out of a Section 21 company. It was known, when the council decided a Section 21 company should be established that even the University of the North was not going to benefit directly from the company’s financial profits. The benefits accrue in the spin-off effect — increased enrolments, the diversity of educational programmes, the University of the North as the anchor institution of Edupark, its good standing considerably enhanced. Spin-offs for the university have been phenomenal.
In 1997, there were less than 15 students enrolled for the masters degree. In 1999 there are more than 120 masters students enrolled at the university but who attend classes at Edupark. The University of the North receives full fees for these students as well as the full government subsidy. Many of them are enrolled in the Turfloop Graduate School of Business which opened in 1998 with 70 students in three new masters programmes.
Participating institutions at Edupark include Eskom and The School for Legal Practice — which was established in 1998 in association with the university’s law faculty for the training of candidate attorneys at Pietersburg.
The school’s first group of students sitting for the Association of Law Societies’ examinations had a 100% pass rate (the only school in the country, I am informed, to achieve this). There is also Technikon South Africa, the University of Pretoria – which provides some of its distance education programmes from Edupark — and the University of Stellenbosch which launched a satellite education development project in 1998 and uses Edupark as the site of its northern delivery point. Future possibilities are immense.
On what basis did Evidence wa ka Ngobeni discard Wiltshire’s correct testimony, regarding the council’s authorisation, in favour of Boshielo’s, which is not correct? Why did he fail to verify Wiltshire’s very specific item of information? Why did it not occur to him that further clarity on the financial management of Edupark could be provided by the company’s audited statements?
The answer is simple. If he had verified his information, there would have been no story for him last week. Wa ka Ngobeni was committed to writing this story after smelling the initial whiff of “scandal” blowing from a distant campus. Nothing was going to stop him from exposing “scandal” and “corruption”, whatever the merits of the facts before him.
Because I was found to be outside of the country, and was conveniently “unavailable for comment”, I must pay the price and be branded on the front page, and on street billboards and lamp-posts. The M&G has the resources to track down anyone they want, anywhere in the world. The lack of investigative rigour in Wa ka Ngobeni’s report goes beyond professional ineptitude, and approaches criminal negligence.
To crown it all, at the end of the journalistic process, the wise competence of an editor finally lets through a severely flawed article. Surely it is important that absolute care be exercised to ensure that in its zealousness to root out corruption, in the public interest, a newspaper does not begin to produce self-fulfilling prophecies. Once that happens, it is very easy for a newspaper to ennoble banality and, in a way, to pollute the atmosphere of public perceptions.
The M&G‘s tireless efforts to rid our country of corruption are a matter of record. But the quality of journalistic exposure must measure up to the complexities inherent (in our country today) in the pervasive tension between dream and reality. One lesson of Wa ka Ngobeni’s article is that editors and journalists need to be aware that they also work in imperfect editorial settings, from which they can inflict, sometimes unwittingly and in good faith, imperfect articles on the public. In that situation, they may easily resemble the working environment of institutions they have targeted for scrutiny.
Many institutions, particularly historically black ones, face a developmental road often covered with outstanding achievements, followed closely by distressing lapses, errors, setbacks and adjustments. And achievements yet again.
Newspapers are no different. They also make bad appointments. They face fast-tracking problems, which may result in having inexperienced journalists sent on assignments beyond their experience and expertise. They face racial tensions and may cut corners in dealing with them.
They constantly face the potentially damning choice between honesty and the easy attractions of sensationalism. They can make unfortunate judgment calls. But they can also present us, as they often do, with the most uplifting journalism.
It is not too much to expect that newspapers, covering a familiar set of institutional problems, cannot approach the task of social criticism as if they were angels.
They must demonstrate intimate knowledge, intelligence and expertise tempered with critical empathy. Otherwise it begins to look as if the public destruction of “corrupt” individuals and “mismanaged” black institutions, burnt at a modern stake, reveals a disturbing kind of journalistic gratification illustrative of yet another form of endemic social violence.
Finally, I do want it known that I am infinitely proud of Edupark. I want to pay tribute, also, to many of my colleagues, and numerous others in and outside of the university, who worked hard, and continue to do so, to make the dream of Edupark not only possible, but also that it endures. Edupark remains one of the University of the North’s great gifts to the people of the Northern Province.
Professor Njabulo Ndebele is the former vice-chancellor of the University of the North. The M&G will respond to Ndebele in full next week