Is it a merger or a takeover? Rumbles of discontent have emerged early at the Tshwane University of Technology, which came into being on January 1 in a three-way merger involving the former Pretoria, Northern Gauteng and North West technikons.
The muscle-bound Pretoria brought more than 40 000 students and lavish resources to the merger; the other two have contributed about 15 000 students between them and much thinner financial and other resources.
Now staff and students at the Soshanguve and Ga-Rankuwa campuses — the sites of the former technikons Northern Gauteng and North West — claim they are excluded from the running of the institution and that only the Pretoria campus — now known as the Rand campus — is making important decisions about its future.
Moss Motha, a lecturer at the Ga-Rankuwa campus, told the Mail & Guardian that staff are complaining about the abrupt removal of the management team from Soshanguve and Ga-Rankuwa, the absence of proper communication, non-adherence to resolutions taken by the merger task teams, interruption of the democratic processes through dictatorial tendencies and unilateral restructuring of faculties.
“We were relegated to the status of satellite campuses,” he said. “There is no movement from Pretoria to other campuses but our people and furniture are being moved to their campus.”
But Rand campus-based media liaison officer Willa de Ruyter said “the aim was not to cripple any of the campuses”, but that senior management was centralised in Pretoria to ensure effective central administration.
Justice Mhlongo, president of the student representative council at the Soshanguve campus, said many students could not be registered this year because tuition fees had suddenly increased and the practice of accepting instalments on fees had been halted.
However, De Ruyter said that students from all three institutions had been part of the consultation process and had accepted the new terms for fees.