David Macfarlane
Short of cash? Accuse a colleague of theft, and pocket R500 from your grateful employer. If you don’t like one of your work-mates, invent a theft charge, pocket the R500 bounty and get your colleague dismissed.
These are some of the perks Rhodes University a haven and defender of liberal values makes available to certain staff members. Since 1999 there has been a standing offer of R500-and-no-questions-asked for any employee in its catering division who fingers another worker for theft of university property, provided this leads to a conviction.
As a result, onion rings, used cooking oil, bits of fish, tomatoes and the odd banana have become prime items of evidence in a host of theft charges, say union sources at the university. Rhodes has a no-warning policy in cases of theft, which means that a convicted worker faces instant dismissal.
A recent victim of this policy was Eunice Onceya (47), a diabetic, widowed mother of five. The Mail & Guardian reported last month that she admitted to taking about 30g of jam to spread on bread because she was feeling faint; but Rhodes convicted her of taking 250g. She was dismissed without the option of appeal.
Rhodes confirms its R500 payment-for-ratting policy. Marketing and communications manager Linda Haschick says the policy “was a decision made by the catering division alone [but] with the agreement of all parties, including Nehawu [the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union]”.
But Nehawu says it specifically refused to sign any such agreement. And the chairperson of the National Tertiary Education Staff Union (Ntesu) at Rhodes, John Landman, says the first Ntesu heard of this policy was at a routine meeting with Nehawu last week.
Ntesu has sent questions to Rhodes’s human resources division on the matter, asking how many workers Rhodes has dismissed for theft and how many R500 bounties it has paid out. The union is waiting for answers.
“There were four dismissals in the catering division last year,” says Haschick, two R500 rewards were paid out and there are no theft cases pending. But Nehawu says there have been and are “plenty” of such cases. Nehawu is “totally against” this policy: it has too easily led to cases where, “if your relationship with a colleague isn’t good, you can simply make up charges”.
Entrapment has also been alleged, with workers encouraged to take home used cooking oil or fish that’s gone off and then finding themselves nailed for theft.
Defending the policy, Haschick says Rhodes “has had to take a firm stance on theft especially in the catering division where most of these issues arise. The institution has a responsibility to ensure that all financial issues are dealt with appropriately, considering that public and private funds are being dealt with.
“‘Shrinkage’ in this division has decreased dramatically since the implementation of this policy and we have thus managed to keep costs down which has a ripple effect throughout the institution especially regarding student fees,” says Haschick.