David Robbins
At the last annual general meeting of the South African Universities Vice- Chancellors’ Association (Sauvca), outgoing chair Dr Mamphela Ramphele declared that the various transformations within the association added up to “an amazing achievement”.
Ramphele also remarked that CEO Piyushi Kotecha, a driving force behind much of the transformation processes, had inherited a 19th-century organisation when she was appointed in April 1998.
Not unduly harsh words, perhaps, for an organisation which had idled along in remarkably leisurely fashion for decades.
Only after 1994 did the need for transformation begin to be perceived.
The organisation, by then, comprised all 21 of South Africa’s universities and was riven by the historically disadvantaged universities/ historically white universities divide, and, equally seriously, was administered by a secretariat which had been left to its own devices for far too long.
It was in 1995 that thoughts turned actively towards finding an “authentic and reputable leadership role in the educational life of South Africa” for the organisation. The next step was to put these sentiments into action by engaging British educational academic John Fielden, whose report and recommendations appeared in 1996.
Fielden focused on the organisation’s secretariat, and how it could be restructured to further the sentiments expressed in the new mission. The existing secretariat was seen as having a poor reputation and a limited range of functions compared with its international counterparts.
These recommendations fed back into the transformation debate, ultimately resulting in the appointment of Kotecha as CEO. With the full involvement of the vice- chancellors, and through a series of important workshops and meetings in 1998 and early 1999, Sauvca finally came up with a strategic plan.
In this plan, the core functions for a restructured secretariat, namely policy analysis and research, academic affairs and internationalism, as well as leadership and management development, were spelled out.
In addition, the new strategy made provision for the agencies which had become attached to the secretariat – most notably the students’ sports union and the tertiary education sector’s purchasing consortium – to be unbundled.
Finally, because of proposed new legislation, the old Committee of University Principals (CUP) would lose its statutory functions. The new CUP/Sauvca body should therefore realign its secretariat in readiness for the formation of a Section 21 company with a CEO with wide powers.
Although the strategic plan was unanimously adopted, the divisions between the historically disadvantaged universities and historically white universities, illustrative of much wider systemic problems across the whole tertiary sector, didn’t disappear.
Nevertheless, significant strides have been made, at both the main-body level and secretariat level, to drag the organisation out of the past.