Extravagance has wiped out hard-won financial gains at Unisa, insiders say.
Unisa is lavishing millions of rands on accommodation for its new vice-chancellor, Dr Barney Pityana, in a stately historic mansion in Pretoria. Renovations to the property will clock in at conservatively R2-million.
Rubbing salt in the financial wound is the fact that the university had just sold the property at the time Pityana arrived. Unisa then had to pay R1,7-million to extricate itself from the sale.
This expenditure is the latest to raise eyebrows and tempers at the university since Pityana assumed office in November. But he is also receiving flak from Unisa insiders for failing to curb lavish expenditure trends initiated before his arrival.
Sources familiar with Unisa’s financial operations say the distance university’s finances have taken a severe pounding in the past few months. Estimations are that financial gains achieved by stringent austerity measures since 1998 have largely been wiped out within the past six months.
Massive spending damaging the university’s precarious financial status includes:
- refurbishment of Pityana’s offices on campus that will strip the university of another R1,5-million;
- an imminent jamboree in Mauritius for most of the management team and the council;
- first-class international air travel for Pityana and council chairperson McCaps Motimele;
- a senior management team that has nearly doubled in recent months and that rakes in top salaries;
- ongoing payments to some council members that the Office of the Auditor General has adjudged unjustified;
- legal fees in cases brought by Unisa academics on a variety of issues, including sexual harassment charges against Motimele;
- further legal fees for Unisa’s own case against the government concerning its merger with two other institutions;
- more than R200 000 on Pityana’s inauguration ceremony.
Pityana declined to answer the Mail & Guardian‘s questions this week.
Pityana’s residence raises especial outrage among staffers concerned about the university’s finances because, by the time he took office in November, the university had concluded the sale of the property. The selling price was R6-million, but the university then had to fork out R1,7-million in penalties and other costs to cancel the sale, sources say.
Unisa will also be stung for at least R2-million in renovations, repairs and alterations, sources estimate. Work will include structural alterations that Pityana has apparently ordered, as well as repairs to the roof and treatment for damp.
Situated on a prime site in the upmarket Pretoria suburb of Muckleneuk, the enormous house, called Cloghereen, is set within lush, sculpted gardens and radiates double-storeyed colonial splendour. It used to be the official residence of the Unisa vice-chancellor, but in recent years was rented to the Turkish embassy.
Under the previous vice-chancellor, Professor Antony Melck, who did not occupy Cloghereen, the university decided it could no longer afford the enormous costs of maintaining the property. Unisa refused this week to specify these costs. However, one indication of the scale involved is that when the Turkish embassy rented the property in the late 1990s, it paid R24 000 a month — yet even that failed to cover maintenance expenses.
Cloghereen was one of a number of Unisa properties the university resolved during Melck’s vice-chancellorship to sell. The university’s finances reached desperate proportions during the 1990s, with a massive R108-million deficit recorded in 1997.
Melck introduced several austerity measures, such as early retirement options and a moratorium on appointments and promotions, that steadily achieved a remarkable turnaround. The huge 1997 deficit was followed by surpluses of R11-million in 1998, R2-million in 1999, and R7,2-million in 2000.
But sources familiar with Unisa’s finances speculate that most of the gains achieved under Melck have been wiped out since he resigned in September. The university’s management committee has expanded from eight members under Melck to its current 15, all earning huge salaries. Pityana’s executive assistant, whom he appointed, earns R600 000 a year, the M&G has been told.
Top Unisa officials are set to enjoy another university-sponsored spending spree in June, when most of the council and the management committee will wing their way to Mauritius. This is apparently to stage a graduation ceremony for a handful of Mauritian graduates and to conduct a marketing exercise. But the M&G has learnt that Unisa’s marketing ventures in other countries usually involve only three or four representatives at a time — not the majority of the council and management committee.
Further depleting Unisa’s coffers is some lavish travel expenditure. Pityana and Motimele flew first class to the United States in March on a fund-raising trip. First-class return tickets between Johannesburg and New York cost about R50 000 each.
Fifteen universities that responded to the M&G‘s queries this week said none of their officials flies first class. Five said their vice-chancellors fly business class when on official duties; and their council chairpersons do not fly at all on university business. Another 10 said their vice-chancellors fly economy class; and their council chairpersons do not fly on official business.
A raft of legal cases, all of which involve Unisa’s controversial council and Motimele in particular, is also hitting Unisa’s finances hard. The cases have run up ”horrific” costs, according to a senior management official. In two cases alone, those involving Professors Margaret Orr and Annel van Aswegen, Unisa has racked up R600 000 in legal expenses, the M&G understands. Orr alleges that Motimele sexually harassed her two years ago; the case is still to be heard in court.
Van Aswegen is to be a witness in Orr’s case. Motimele was on the committee that considered Van Aswegen’s application in 2000 for a vice-principalship some time after Orr had lodged a sexual harassment complaint against him. When Van Aswegen failed to be shortlisted, she successfully applied for a high court interdict freezing vice-principal appointments. In February this year Motimele filed an affidavit stating that Unisa no longer intends filling these posts. As a result, judgement in the case was no longer required — but the high court awarded costs against Unisa.
Van Aswegen was joined in her application by Unisa’s Academic and Professional Staff Association, which commented on the costs ruling: ”As [union] members will no doubt appreciate, recovery of costs is a materially more urgent matter to the union than to the Unisa council, for we are not in the enviable position of having unlimited access to unlimited amounts of taxpayers’ money.”
Other high court cases include those of Dr McGlory Speckman and Professor Simon Maimela. Speckman’s application argues that he was properly elected deputy dean of theology last year, but that the council improperly overthrew his appointment, allegedly at Motimele’s instigation.
Maimela is seeking to have Pityana’s appointment declared invalid and set aside. He argues that Unisa did not follow procedures for appointing a vice-chancellor in that, for example, the senate was not consulted as required by law. He also maintains that Pityana had no legal right to assume the post, because he could not resign as chairperson of the Human Rights Commission without three months’ notice, except by agreement of Parliament. This Pityana did not get, Maimela claims.
The council this month dismissed Maimela on charges of misconduct. More legal expenses loom here: Maimela intends to take the matter to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration and, if necessary, the Labour Court, his attorney says.
Unisa launched its own high court case against the government late last year, opposing details of its merger with Technikon SA and Vista University’s Distance Education Centre (Vudec). The merger is a major component of the government’s plans for tertiary restructuring, but became a chief weapon in Motimele’s escalating war last year with Minister of Education Kader Asmal.
Insiders argue that Motimele’s hostility to Asmal and the merger dramatically increased with last year’s Higher Education Amendment Act, which enables the minister to dissolve councils in the run-up to mergers and establish interim councils. Speculation was and remains rife that Motimele foresaw his own ejection if Asmal installed an interim council, and that this explains why the council has sought to throw a spanner in the works of the government’s merger plans.
Some of the controversies about the use of Unisa funds predate Pityana’s arrival. Chief among these is the remuneration of Motimele and some other council members. External members of councils are usually high-profile professionals who, at other institutions, generally perform council duties in the public interest for free.
But since Motimele became chairperson of the council more than two years ago, payments to him and some councillors, ranging between R20 000 and R30 000 a month, have attracted widespread condemnation. Last year Asmal asked the auditor general to investigate these payments.
The investigation found numerous irregularities, including that Motimele on occasion claimed and received payments for chairing meetings when he had not done so. The auditor general specified amounts that should be reclaimed from a number of councillors.
”The Ministry of Education has requested the Unisa council to implement the recommendations of the auditor general’s findings,” Nasima Badsha, Deputy Director General in the Department of Education, said this week. ”The matter has not yet been finalised and is currently under discussion with Unisa.”
In the meantime, these controversial payments continue. The M&G has been told that in October, the month following the period the auditor general examined, Motimele invoiced the university for R60 000.
Pityana’s appointment trailed clouds of controversy even before he took office. Asmal had requested that Melck remain in office to oversee the merger of Unisa with Technikon SA and Vudec.
Melck agreed to stay on. But in what was widely interpreted as a bid for power and control of the university, the Motimele-led council refrained from responding to Melck’s indication of his availability. Instead, the council set about appointing a new vice-chancellor. This too defied Asmal. The minister’s repeated argument was that taxpayers’ money would be wasted on giving golden handshakes to senior personnel who failed to obtain equivalent positions in the new merged institution.
Enter Dr Barney Pityana, whose inauguration celebrations in February creamed R212 000 from Unisa’s coffers. Let the good times roll …
Additional reporting by Thabo Mohlala