David Macfarlane and Glenda Daniels
The University of the Witwatersrand faces a massive showdown today as its council for the first time considers the most substantial objections by workers, the student movement and some academics to restructuring.
At the same time, the Mail & Guardian has been told by a senior academic, Wits management is seeking to oust Vusi Nhlapo, president of the National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu), from the Wits council.
Wits vice-chancellor Colin Bundy told the M&G this was the first he had heard of this.
After the M&G reported two weeks ago that restructuring was hitting morale among academics at Wits, responses suggested that there was in fact an upbeat sense of enthusiasm on campus. Subsequent developments suggest, how- ever, that the campus is more divided on transformation than Wits management has admitted.
Wits paid consultants more than R4- million for a restructuring plan – approved by the council in February – that would see nearly a quarter of its workers axed this year, in keeping with the council’s plan to cut costs by outsourcing “non-core” functions.
Central to the council’s meeting today will be a hard-hitting critique both of the consultants’ report and the university’s handling of transformation.
The critique, written by Wits academics Glenn Adler, Andries Bezuidenhout, Sakhela Buhlungu, Bridget Kenny, Rahmat Omar, Greg Ruiters and Lucien van der Walt, offers concrete alternatives to the current restructuring plans.
The M&G has been told that Wits senior management continues to disparage this critique, by representing it as having been commissioned by Nehawu.
“They [Wits management] are getting desperate and are calling in every possible pro-admin member of council to lobby for their vote at [today’s] special council meeting,” a senior academic said.
Nehawu’s Tebogo Phadu said the council had promised full consultation but this has not happened. Bundy rejects this, saying the review process has been “highly consultative”.
“Workers are angry – an axe is hanging over their necks,” says Phadu.
Nehawu is planning to report the council’s actions to the public protector and the Human Rights Commission. This is “entirely inappropriate”, says Bundy, who “urges Nehawu to follow the remedies available to it in the Labour Relations Act”.
In the meantime protest action will continue, in the form of go-slows and demonstrations, Phadu said.