The money paid to council members at Unisa could fund the studies of hundreds of students, reports David Macfarlane
Chair a meeting a month and rake in R240?000 to R360?000 a year. That’s the jaw-dropping deal some of Unisa’s council members are currently rejoicing in. This contrasts with the free service most universities and technikons receive from their councillors.
Occupying the plushest seat on the Unisa gravy train is council head Mc Caps Motimele, whose bank balance sings to the tune of about R30?000 a month for duties that should involve chairing at most a meeting or two a month. Bizarrely, Motimele, an advocate, also has his own office on Unisa’s campus in Pretoria, in addition to his chambers in Johannesburg.
But some other council members occupy gravy train seats that are scarcely less opulent. They each cream off about R20?000 of public money a month.
Motimele’s rich pickings alone would comfortably fund bursaries for about 200 first-year Unisa students, each doing two full courses. And the other high-earning councillors could each subsidise about 130 first-years.
All this is for duties that councillors at other universities describe as not particularly onerous, though certainly important. Councils are the highest decision-making bodies of universities and technikons, and by law at least 60% of council members must be outsiders usually high-profile business people and other professionals who perform their advisory roles as a freely given public service.
Sixteen of Unisa’s 26 councillors are external members.
The Unisa council practice is “improper and distasteful in the extreme”, says one Mail & Guardian source, especially considering the numbers of students excluded from higher education on financial grounds alone, and that Unisa traditionally serves “the poorest of the poor”.
All public higher institutions have been under severe financial stress for some years, partly because of declining student intakes. This makes Unisa’s “abuse of taxpayers’ money” (as one source terms it) all the more astonishing: it serves to “corrupt the university, not transform it”.
Accountability for financial resources and institutional assets is a major responsibility of councils. So too is ensuring good management. On both counts Unisa’s council is failing dismally. Sources complain that Motimele himself routinely uses university resources for non-council activities and although management is a senate function, not the business of the council he interferes constantly in the daily management of the university.
Late last year Minister of Education Kader Asmal requested information from all universities and technikons on their policies and practices regarding remuneration of council members. This information remains confidential, despite the fact that public funds are involved.
Asmal told the M&G he believes that members of councils should not be remunerated, except for travel and accommodation expenses. And many of South Africa’s tertiary institutions appear to agree.
Of 12 universities the M&G contacted, three (other than Unisa) pay council members: R1?000 a meeting at the University of Pretoria, R530 a day at Rand Afrikaans University and R500 a meeting at Vista. Nine pay council members’ costs of travel to meetings and four cover accommodation expenses.
Technikons follow suit, according to the head of the Committee of Technikon Principals, Professor Roy du Pr. “I am definitely not aware of any such practice [as paying council members for their attendance at meetings] within technikons,” he says.
Some councils return part of their remuneration to their institutions. Pretoria University’s councillors collectively earned R165?000 last year and returned R52?000 of this to the university.
Motimele refused either to confirm or deny that he is receiving R30?000 a month from Unisa.
Unisa vice-chancellor Professor AP Melck says Motimele is remunerated, but only to the tune of R2?250 a council meeting. Other external members, says Melck, receive R1?500 a meeting. Repeated attempts to contact Melck for further clarification failed.
The M&G has reliably learnt that “only one or two” external members of council have refused the gravy train riches and this tiny minority is incensed at the other external members’ behaviour.
“We strove,” wrote Motimele in Unisa’s 1999 annual report, “to ensure that … democratic decision-making and transparency ran like golden threads through the university’s activities.”
But Unisa’s distribution of its gold would appear to be far from democratically decided.
Additional reporting by Roshila Pillay