”Direct interference with evidence and witnesses” in the inquiry into her performance finally toppled Norma Reid Birley from the vice-chancellorship of the University of the Witwatersrand, the Mail & Guardian has learned.
And behind this lies an accumulation of ”appalling, chaotic and whimsical” management practices that began almost as soon as Reid Birley assumed office.
Reid Birley was ”humiliating and abusive to those she works with”, Professor Margaret Orr, director of Wits’s Centre for Learning, Teaching and Development, told the M&G this week. ”Her management was chaotic, she repeatedly missed appointments and frequently failed to come to work. She would arrive at meetings not having done her homework, such as not having read documents.
”The most serious issue is the way she dealt with people: an entire layer of senior management became unable to function, demoralised and confused. Serious concerns have been arising for more than a year: we suggested remedies such as execu-tive coaching, team-building and developmental appraisal, but she refused all these proposals.”
The 40-member Wits council voted overwhelmingly three weeks ago for an inquiry into Reid Birley’s conduct to be led by Judge John Myburgh. According to Wendy Orr, director of transformation and equity at Wits, this followed months of council chairperson Judge Edwin Cameron’s attempts to remedy the problem.
”There was no personal clash: Cameron wanted Reid Birley to stay at Wits, and succeed.”
But as the vice-chancellor and the council were preparing for the inquiry last week, Reid Birley discovered that her secretary had made a statement to the university’s attorneys, the M&G has been told. On Thursday last week she instructed another employee to find the statement on the secretary’s computer.
Wits’s attorneys were alerted to this on Monday this week, and construed Reid Birley’s actions as ”direct interference with evidence and witnesses”, a senior university source says. Reid Birley now acknowledges that this is why she resigned.
Margaret Orr suggests that the flurry of theories over the past three weeks about the conflict between Reid Birley and the university’s council derived from those who had no direct contact with the vice-chancellor.
”This has all caused a catastrophically unfortunate dichotomy in the university between academics and management,” she says.
”The academics have largely been supporting her, because they’ve only seen her polished public relations and fine speeches; but it’s management that’s been at the interface in having to work directly with her.”
Suppositions that an anti-transformation agenda at Wits collaborated to oust Reid Birley are baseless, says Wendy Orr. ”She asked me herself whether the animosity against her was because she was pushing transformation too quickly. But I’m not aware of any such initiatives she proposed or implemented.”
And when Reid Birley suggested that gender bias was operating against her, Wendy Orr asked her to document cases.
”She couldn’t provide any,” Wendy Orr says. In addition, every executive secretary on the 10th and 11th floors of Senate House — where Wits top management works — recently signed a statement protesting against Reid Birley’s ”rude and abrasive management style”, says Margaret Orr — and they are all women.
”It has never been a conflict solely between the vice-chancellor and management.”
Asked to respond to all these allegations, Norma Reid Birley told the M&G: ”In October Edwin Cameron wrote ‘how warmly and admiringly’ Wendy Orr had spoken of my work on HIV/Aids. So I am surprised and disappointed at the Orr sisters, but they are of course close personal friends of Cameron, all of whom opposed my appointment.
”Their allegations contradict Cameron’s public acknowledgement that June 2002, a year into my contract, was the start of his actions. Prior to that he showered me with private and public praise.
”The allegation of a direct attempt to interfere with witnesses is related to the error of judgement that led to my resignation. Last week I learned from my personal confidential secretary that she was giving hostile evidence to the Myburgh enquiry.
”She had had access to highly confidential legal advice and the identities of staff and student supporters who were terrified of being victimised. I asked my special adviser to send this secretary out, as I was minded to look at her open access computer. She offered to do this for me.
”It emerged that she was fully aware of how this could be interpreted, but she gave me no such advice. She told me that there was no evidence of leaking confidential material. In fact she had accessed, printed and sent the secretary’s statement to Myburgh. I had no further contact with the secretary.
”I was subsequently made aware that my actions could be represented as interfering with a witness, and this was the sole charge which led me to resign.
”All other allegations are further examples of the same unevidenced attacks of Cameron’s camp, which I can totally refute with documented evidence.”