Knowing and respecting the contribution Professor Jonathan Jansen makes to intellectual life, I had hoped that in raising the North West University (NWU) saga to serve his thesis on race and education, he would have advanced and sophisticated the discourse (”How far have we come?”August 13).
Briefly, the saga centres on NWU’s decision to appoint a white male, Dr Theuns Eloff, as vice-chancellor, who by his own admission does not have the requisite credentials in terms of scholarship. Four candidates — Professor Simon Maimela, Professor Ad Akande, Professor Thandwa Mthembu and myself — believe the process to have been flawed, and have publicly and legally challenged the university to provide reasons for its choice. Jansen questions this challenge, suggesting that it smacks of our demand for racial privilege — a thesis that is not borne out by the evidence.
Interestingly, Jansen appears to be privy to information that our attorneys were unable to extract from NWU. To date, and despite repeated attempts by our attorneys, NWU has not provided us with reasons why Eloff was preferred over black applicants with superior academic credentials. Eloff, a self-confessed mediocre ”academic”, boasts no more than three years in the sector.
Akande, an academic of international standing, has written no less than 176 scholarly articles. Maimela has 11 books to his name, has co-authored 36 and written 95 articles in local and international journals. Yet less than 14 accredited articles and no experience in higher education were sufficient to earn Eloff the position.
Jansen advances subjective and speculative concerns while proving our case: ”NWU had exposed itself badly by placing an advert listing qualities for a new vice-chancellor that did not match the competence profile of its preferred candidate, Eloff.” So why is Jansen surprised that we have called for a judicial review of the decision?
It is worth pointing out that NWU did not even bother to attend the scheduled hearing at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, despite the university being only a 20-minute drive from its offices in Klerksdorp. This is the same university that was quick to indicate that the process of appointment was fair and transparent.
Contrary to the subtext in Jansen’s diatribe, I am not aware that black applicants presumed that ”by virtue of identity, such positions should be occupied by persons of colour”, or that our logic was, crudely, that ”the time of black leaders to lead white institutions had come”. At the same time, Jansen observes, and correctly so, that the ”contestants seriously believe they are more experienced managers, more established scholars, and more familiar with the higher-education sector”. Does Jansen doubt this? His private utterances to me on this matter are inconsistent with his public stance. It seems to escape Jansen that black scholars responded to the advert because they took it to be a public contract between would-be applicants and the university. They took the advert seriously.
It became necessary for Jansen to invent mitigating factors for NWU’s flagrant deviation from its requirements. Without having had the experience of working and supervising any of us, Jansen is bold to suggest that our management competence and business acumen are suspect compared to that of Eloff. Haven’t we heard this before? Black people had never run anything (big business, government) pre-1994 and are therefore, by far, lesser candidates than whites. For Jansen, it must be nothing short of a miracle that post-1994 South Africa boasts blacks with business acumen. In his world, none of the present black vice-chancellors would be suitable given that none has ever owned a spaza shop — let alone big business.
Having occupied management positions senior to Jansen for as long as I can remember, Mthembu and I can state for the record that we are not aware of any of our past and present employers having ever questioned our management competence. But again, Jansen is privy to these things.
Reading his intervention brings into sharp relief President Thabo Mbeki’s observation on the occasion of his inauguration this year: ”For too long our country … was a place in which to be born black was to inherit a lifelong curse … a place where others always knew that the accident of their birth entitled them to wealth.”
It is a pity that some in our country still harbour the notion that scholastic merit should remain subordinate to primacy of colour/whiteness. In the past, white used to be associated with scholarship and excellence. Now the latest inclusion is business acumen. It would seem that the more things change, the more they remain the same. It seems to escape Jansen that despite all the hurdles and other constraints placed before us by apartheid, many of us sought to succeed despite and to spite the apartheid logic and design.
The myth of white supremacy is not sustainable. Distinguished black scholars lead our premier universities. They did not assume the positions on the basis of their blackness, but on merit. It is regrettable that in Jansen’s world, black academics with PhDs in mathematics and physics obtained under repressive conditions of apartheid seem to count for nothing.
Or is this a case of professional jealousy? After all, Jansen lost to Mthembu during the race for deputy vice-chancellor (academic) at the then-University of Durban-Westville four years ago.
Mthembu and I are on record that there were other candidates more deserving of appointment than ourselves. We are opposed to white mediocrity as much as we rally against black mediocrity. The NWU saga suggests that it may be about the colour of one’s skin as much as it is about the colour of one’s politics.
Professor Sipho Seepe is former acting vice-chancellor of Vista University