David Macfarlane
Suspicion is rampant at Unisa that controversial council chairperson McCaps Motimele pulled a fast one to get himself re-elected last week for a further term of office.
In developments that have left senior academics seething, Motimele at first let it be known earlier this month that he was unavailable for another term; and vice-chancellor Barney Pityana announced as much on March 11. But days later the battle-weary campus was absorbing the news that Motimele’s reign would continue for another four years.
Outright procedural manipulation and irregularity are being alleged about the process that saw Unisa’s council convene an unscheduled meeting on Wednesday last week and there reappoint Motimele. Some council members’ terms of office including that of Motimele expire at the end of the month; and a new council is supposed to constitute itself next month. Unisa academics question the legitimacy of the procedure whereby the existing council pre-empted a decision about a chairperson that should have fallen to the new council to make.
In particular, staffers suspect last week’s council meeting was a deliberate manoeuvre to secure Motimele’s re-election before new council members appointed by Minister of Education Kader Asmal take office next month. By law the education minister makes four appointments to the Unisa council yet these new members “have now been deprived of their right to cast their votes”, says one academic. “This election has been engineered.”
At heart the two-year controversy over Motimele’s conduct as chair- person concerns who runs Unisa, the country’s largest university, and in whose interests. Councils are the highest governing bodies at tertiary institutions: they are responsible for overall direction and policy.
But by law it is the principal and vice-chancellor who is charged with running an institution; and the senate is responsible for academic programmes. Motimele has been repeatedly accused of interfering in Unisa’s daily executive and operational functioning and of overriding senate-approved senior academic appointments.
He has also been instrumental in waging lengthy warfare against Asmal and in the process has stalled implementation of government education policy. Asmal’s attempts last year to install an interim council to oversee Unisa’s merger with Techikon SA and Vista University’s Distance Education Centre ran aground when Motimele led a legal challenge against the merger process. This court action, which the government will defend, is pending.
Motimele also rammed through the appointment of Pityana last year, which flew in the face of Asmal’s request that senior, long-term appointments be put on hold pending the merger. The validity of Pityana’s appointment is now the subject of a court action brought by former acting vice-chancellor Simon Maimela.
The struggle over control of Unisa has frequently been depicted as a series of clashes between (white) old guard and (black) progressive forces. But black and white Unisa academics reject as a Motimele-inspired fiction the charge that opposition to the council and its chairperson is motivated by racist, anti-transformation elements at the university. They point to petitions circulated among staff last year that expressed no confidence in Motimele and the council, and called for its dissolution. Hundreds of staffers of all races signed these.
Numerous other controversies envelop Motimele. He faces court action brought by former Unisa professor Margaret Orr for alleged sexual harassment, and is a defendant in a case brought by the special investigating unit alleging fraud against the North West government involving tenders for school wall charts.
He and some other Unisa councillors have also been accused of receiving lavish remuneration for duties that councillors at other institutions generally perform for free in the public interest. Last year Asmal requested the auditor general to investigate the matter: the upshot was a report recommending that substantial amounts of taxpayers’ money be recovered from Motimele and certain other councillors. This has not yet been done.
For more than a year, a wide spectrum of Unisa staff have told the Mail & Guardian that Motimele’s exceptional remuneration goes a long way towards explaining the tenacity with which he attempts to hold on to power. Asked how Motimele elicits support, one senior black academic said this week a system of “patronage and loyalty” secures the chairperson’s power base.
Neither Motimele nor Pityana both of whom were present at last week’s council meeting when the vote was taken to re-elect Motimele responded to the M&G’s written questions this week.