DAVID MACFARLANE and OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday
CHAIR a meeting a month and rake in R240_000 to R360_000 a year. That’s the jaw-dropping deal for some council members at Unisa, a university plagued by low staff morale and under severe financial stress from declining student intakes.
Occupying the plushest seat on the Unisa gravy train is council head McCaps 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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.