A report calling for a revamp of management has caused a stir at the University of Pretoria
Bongani Majola
The University of Pretoria has formally rejected a report that recommends moving black personnel into senior management in its marketing and communication department.
Commissioned by the principal, Professor Callie Historius, the report by human development consultant Dr Johan Coetzee sought to optimise the “effectiveness of the marketing department”. However, his recommendations did not go down well with the “five most senior white Afrikaner males averaging 55 years” identified in the report as at the helm of the department, say senior insiders.
Without using the word transformation, the report calls for a “more representative managerial cadre [to be] appointed immediately”.
It also recommends that “the conventional and dangerous top management structure be seriously addressed and normalised so as not to discredit the department and university any further”. More specifically, the report recommends that “a senior black person must immediately be appointed to the senior management of the department”.
The report’s findings note, among other things, that “the internal image of the department to the wider university is precarious and dangerously negative”. It calls for a “forceful internal image conversion as a non-negotiable imperative”.
This, according to sources, proved a such a sore point with the overwhelmingly white management of the university that a meeting was held between Historius and two predominantly white unions, the University of Pretoria Staff Association and Universiteit van Pretoria Werkers Organisasie, at which it was agreed that the report must be “withdrawn”.
Rademeyer concedes that “certain aspects” of the report “became controversial” but does not spell them out, and that “consequently the university decided to abandon the process”.
Allegedly as a direct consequence of the report, however, three white staff members have left the department. Dr Johan Hendrikz, the department director, has been “redeployed” to the university’s faculty of education, and the university spokesperson Leon Rademeyer joins the private sector in two weeks’ time, along with Estelle de Beer. Rademeyer insists that “these resignations do not relate to the Coetzee report in any way”, and that the matter is now “considered closed”.
The University of Pretoria is the largest higher education contact institution in the country, with a head count enrolment of about 59 000 in 2000, 29 000 of whom were registered for contact tuition. According to the National Working Group’s (NWG) Restructuring of Higher Education in South Africa report, the university “is in an extremely good financial position”, which may be why it was not asked to merge with another institution.
However, the NWG was scathing in its assessment of the university’s transformation, or more precisely the lack thereof. In this regard, states the NWG’s report, “the present situation is unsatisfactory and untenable. The university still has a long way to go in achieving equity in its academic and administrative staff profiles.” In 2000, notes the NWG’s report, “only 6% of the university’s permanent academic staff members as well as of its total of professional staff were black”.
Black staffers feel that the university is strongly averse to transformation. “If the university can institute a process of transformation, at the taxpayers’ cost, then squash the recommendations, what is the capacity of the university to ever transform?” asked one source.
Others say that in “withdrawing” the report, Historius is serving the mandate he received from white union members when he was appointed principal last year.
Historius has had a meteoric rise through the higher echelons of the university. Having been the dean of engineering for barely a year, sources say, he “jumped over five vice-principals to become the principal of the university”.
Historius is advised by two senior academics, professors Chabani Manganyi and Antony Melck.
Melck, who was on the shortlist along with Historius for the post of Tukkies principal, is a former principal of Unisa, while Manganyi is a former director general in the national Department of Education and former rector of the University of the North.
Meanwhile, the South African Students Congress and the African National Congress Youth League have resigned from the Students Representative Council (SRC) citing “racism” as a major stumbling block to working with the Freedom Front-aligned SRC leadership. Tukkies is the only university in the country in which SRC elections are contested along national political party lines.