David Macfarlane ‘This is a signal South African universities could have done without right now,” says a shocked senior academic in response to Tuesday’s unexpected announcement that University of the Witwatersrand vice-chancellor Professor Colin Bundy will leave the university less than halfway through his seven-year contract.
Bundy leaves not only Wits but the country as well: he becomes principal and director of the University of London’s School of African and Oriental Studies on May 1 next year.
The departure of one of the country’s most admired academics, from the top job at one of South Africa’s leading universities, long before his contract expires, spotlights both the dearth of competent tertiary leadership nationally and the unprecedented pressures that massive, and government-driven, education transformation is creating. Bundy presided over the most controversial and widespread restructuring process the university has ever experienced – and made plenty of enemies. “Bundy has lost both his Wits and his faculties” runs graffiti on campus. “When Bundy took over things turned for the worse,” says Thabiso Machaba, Wits representative of the African National Congress Youth League. “There may be people who want me to go,” Bundy said, “but that’s not why I’m going. There was no push, [but] lots of pull [from London]. I am not leaving because of frustration, disappointment, disaffection or disloyalty.” Stunned academics spoke about the “invidious” and unprecedented pressures under which all vice-chancellors now have to perform. “They are caught between two conflicting imperatives,” said one – government pressure to “marketise” universities, and intense staff and student opposition to this process. Bundy, speculated another, did not realise what compromises he’d have to make, and the personal cost of these. Bundy’s formidable academic reputation as an historian has been built on strongly Marxist work; yet as vice-chancellor he has presided over what some have seen as Thatcherite downsizing measures involving considerable job losses. “There has been a clear contradiction between his academic work and his managerial practice,” said one academic.
“I have been very conscious of living in such contradictions,” Bundy said. “It has been taxing, and has posed profound moral, political and psychological questions for me. At the same time I have been equally conscious of the impossibility that Wits could operate outside of facts such as those posed by economic realities, falling student numbers, and so on. “My decisions [as vice-chancellor] have had human and political consequences that one would never actively have sought,” he admitted.
Wits and the government spent this week putting the most positive possible spin on what by any measure is a damaging blow to the university. Bundy’s appointment in London reflects well on “Wits’s international stature”, says Wits council chair Judge Edwin Cameron; and it is “a remarkable achievement for our country”, according to Minister of Education Kader Asmal. And Bundy strongly denies that he went looking for a job elsewhere: “I was head-hunted,” he says. But it is with “a tremendous sense of shock, surprise, disbelief and loss” that this news is received, says Professor Piyushi Kotecha, CEO of the South African Universities Vice-Chancellors Association. “It is a huge blow, especially because he came to the Wits University helm at a critical time of its development and that of the higher education sector.”
Bundy concedes that he will be leaving at a time when “the task [of restructuring] is not completed”, but says he is “totally confident in the process of change at Wits”.
“Bundy’s departure is a real loss to the South African higher education community … There is a dearth of experienced senior managers in higher education,” Asmal said. “Absolutely fatally,” says Professor Jonathan Jansen, dean of education at Pretoria University, “there is simply no training for such leadership, even at the level of departmental heads. This is part of the crisis in higher education. And the government has no plan whatsoever to address this.” But while Asmal concedes “there are serious capacity problems in the management of higher education institutions”, he says “these are being addressed by way of a range of capacity-building programmes”. Bundy agrees that there is a need for a system of training academics in positions of management, equipping them with the formal skills that they currently have to learn on the job. Asmal comments that “current support and training mechanisms may not be adequate”. “Wits has gone through some trying times, and just as Bundy seemed to be sorting things out he leaves us,” says Wits student representative council vice-president John Kuhn. “There are questions around whether he has done enough about transformation, but you can’t please everyone.” Other student responses varied from the apathetic to the undecided. “Who is Colin Bundy?” asked Charlotte Willis, a first- year BA student majoring in international relations. An engineering student, Darren Gurovich, said: “I don’t really have an opinion on it.” Asked who might now succeed Bundy, a range of academics and students confessed to being stumped. With presumably unintended timeliness, Wits last week set about streamlining its procedures for electing a new vice-chancellor. Additional reporting by Nawaal Deane and Pule waga Mabe