David Macfarlane
Former Rhodes University academic Dr Robert Shell has lost his appeal against
his summary dismissal in February on a disciplinary charge.
Academics are aghast at how Shell has been treated during the two-year saga, and
suggest the fallout from the conflict enshrouds not only Shell and Rhodes, but
every academic in the country.
The case raises “disturbing questions” about academic freedom, says Professor
Paul Maylam, Shell’s head of department for five years. “There has been a closing-down of critical dialogue between staff and university authorities a
silencing of academics,” he says.
Another senior Rhodes professor says that South Africa’s academics appear not to have noticed that the Labour Relations Act of 1999 rewrote all their contracts with dire implications for terms of dismissal, among other employment conditions. This poses “a great danger” to academic freedom, he says: “Universities are run like corporations, vice-chancellors are CEOs, academics
are human resources, students are customers.”
Dissent once encouraged and accommodated within the academy now renders academics very vulnerable, he says. What has happened to academic freedom is
“something that will end up in the Constitutional Court”.
Shell says he is willing to take his case to that forum. He alleges serious procedural irregularities in Rhodes’s handling of his disciplinary hearing and
appeal that, if proven, call into fundamental doubt the fairness of his treatment by the university.
Shell was head of Rhodes’s Population Research Unit (PRU), which had been conducting widely respected research into the spread of the HIV/ Aids pandemic
in the Grahamstown area. This research, now stalled, was being funded by the
National Research Foundation’s (NRF) most prestigious award: only 17 are made
countrywide, and they are held in perpetuity, subject to international peer review.
Shell’s conflict with Rhodes goes back to 1999 when he co-authored a report commissioned by the university into allegations of nepotism and appointment irregularities at its East London campus. The report found in favour of these
allegations; but an inquiry then found that not all the charges could be sustained.
In October 1999 a deal was struck: Shell would apologise for parts of the report; Rhodes would help repair relations between Shell and the East London
campus that the report had helped to damage.
The deal was still warm when, Shell says, he discovered that Rhodes was not sticking to its side of the agreement. Shell sent an e-mail to vice-chancellor
Dr David Woods on November 11 1999 to complain. But Woods’s testimony at Shell’s
disciplinary hearing does not acknowledge this crucial e-mail, and the appeal
judges seemingly either did not see it or failed to take it into account.
From November 1999 bad turned to worse, and Shell e-mailed the NRF late last
year with various allegations against Rhodes including that Rhodes had repeatedly obstructed the functioning of the PRU. The e-mail fell into Rhodes’s
hands, and became the basis of charges that Shell had brought the university
into disrepute.
Rhodes suspended Shell in December, held a disciplinary hearing early this year,
and summarily dismissed him on February 9. His appeal against his dismissal failed last month.
A crucial finding of the appeal is that Shell broke the October 1999 deal by
repeating allegations against Rhodes, and that Rhodes had no obligations in terms of that deal. The appeal judges base this finding on Woods’s evidence.
Asked to explain the apparent contradiction between this evidence and his receipt of Shell’s November 11 e-mail, Woods failed to answer the Mail & Guardian.
The written appeal judgement shows no awareness of the e-mail in question. Asked
whether the material Rhodes supplied to the judges was complete, Woods says it
was. Shell maintains it was incomplete. The chair of the appeal judges, advocate
Jannie Eksteen, says it would be improper for him to comment.
Shell intends to take his case to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and
Arbitration (CCMA). This has spawned a further extraordinary chapter in the bitter saga. Woods addressed the entire Rhodes East London staff on May 18, to
inform them of the result of Shell’s appeal. He told staff that Shell’s CCMA
case would fail, because the judges who sat at the appeal are also members of
CCMA boards and, clearly sympathetic with Rhodes’s case, would once again find
against Shell. Woods failed to confirm or deny that he said this.
A final twist: two weeks after the M&G reported in March that Shell had been
dismissed, Rhodes’s glossy annual report was published. It proudly showcases the
university’s intellectual credentials, in particular the glittering achievements
of far and away Rhodes’s leading researcher at its East London campus, one Dr
Robert Shell.