David Macfarlane and Glenda Daniels
The widely expected appointment of a woman as the next vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand was announced this week but it is not Professor Leila Patel, the current deputy vice-chancellor.
Instead, the selection committee this week recommended Irish candidate Professor Norma Reid. The university senate and the council still have to ratify the appointment.
A statistician, Reid says: “South Africa’s national priorities for education transformation, unveiled this week by the government, are the reasons I’m here. Wits will be firmly part of the national agenda for transformation.”
Reid was a student at Sussex University in the Sixties, shortly after President Thabo Mbeki was there. “Because of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement then, South Africa was part of my political maturing,” she says.
Patel says: “I accept the recommendations of the senior appointments selection committee. I wish her well and I look forward to working with her, and I will support her wherever she needs help.”
Reid’s background includes 15 years of senior management experience at three British universities Ulster, Coventry and Plymouth. This amounts to “an impressive array of experience across almost the entire compass of a university’s strategic, policy and operational dimension,” says Professor Gerrit Olivier, deputy chair of Wits’s senior appointments selection committee.
Judge Edwin Cameron, chair of the council, says the committee had “considered Reid’s outstanding track record in university leadership positions and her distinguished academic credentials, together with her strong vision for the university made her an excellent choice”.
Tshiamo Moela of the Wits Student Representative Council says: “Reid’s vision of education in the Wits context was a refreshing and new approach, which we believe can only further enhance the stature of the university. We are heartened by the confidence the broad student body has in Reid, including student political organisations from traditional left leanings.”
Suzan Chala reports that Wits held its ninth general assembly this week to launch its HIV/Aids policy.
This was the first assembly ever called to address issues that do not relate to apartheid. Previous assemblies were called to address the detention of students without trial in 1983, the State of Emergency in 1986 and the prohibition of all protest meetings by the apartheid government in 1975.
According to Student Representative Council president Muhammad Cajee, 12% of the students “have the disease. This means every 10th person you see may not live long enough to finish their degree,” he said.
The policy deals with the rights of students and staff living with HIV/Aids; integration of the epidemic into teaching, research and service and the provision of prevention, care and support on campus.
Thousands of students and staff members gathered in front of the Wits Great Hall to show their support for the fight against the Aids epidemic.
The academics looked resplendent in their regalia, providing a dignified backdrop to the six speakers who included the outgoing vice-chancellor Colin Bundy, Gauteng MEC for Health Dr Gwen Ramokgopa and convocation president John Shochot.
The chair of Wits council Justice Edwin Cameron, was infected with HIV more than 12 years ago, said he had been able to survive because of the love, support and understanding he got from friends and loved ones.
“Most importantly. I have managed to remain healthy, strong, vigorous and productive because I have access to medical care and anti-retroviral drugs. The overwhelming majority of South Africans living with Aids and HIV do not have the privileges that I do,” he said. “The starkest injustice in this epidemic is that wealth can buy you life and health. It is an injustice caused by the drug companies’ policies on drug pricing,” Judge Cameron said.