Sectarian infighting swamped academic considerations in the controversial selection last week of Ihron Rensburg as the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) new vice-chancellor. This is the view of several senior academics, at the university and beyond, who spoke to the Mail & Guardian on condition of anonymity.
The university says ”academic considerations were not sidelined”, said Sonia Cronje, media relations officer for UJ, pointing to Rensburg’s doctorate from Stanford University.
Rensburg scored the lowest of four candidates whose names were given to the senate for consideration. Yet the council, which makes the final decision, announced on Friday that its decision in favour of Rensburg was unanimous.
Currently chief executive of strategic corporate services at the SABC, Rensburg served before this as a deputy director general in the national Department of Education. He was also chairperson of UJ’s council before he threw his hat in the ring for the vice-chancellorship.
The main objection concerns his alleged lack of academic credentials for the post. Rensburg’s CV lists no academic publications at all, yet, when the university advertised the post in September, the first criterion specified that the ”appointee to this post should have an excellent academic and research record and should have the proven ability to exercise academic leadership”.
UJ insiders say the politics following the merger two years ago of Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) and Technikon Witwatersrand (TWR), and the incorporation of Vista University’s Soweto campus, needs to be understood to make sense of the tangled process, involving infighting and politicking, that eventually culminated in Rensburg’s appointment.
On the one side is a clique of former RAU staffers, whose aim is to keep power firmly in the hands of the former RAU; on the other are former TWR and Vista staffers who feel marginalised and alienated by the merger.
The RAU clique was punting deputy vice-chancellor Derek van der Merwe. In November, after applications had closed, the council took the unusual step of calling for nominations. This allowed Rensburg to enter the race. Then a shortlist of four was produced, with the anti-RAU camp supporting Rensburg.
In the process of arriving at the shortlist, some respected academics were eliminated, including Jonathan Jansen, dean of education at the University of Pretoria, and Sipho Seepe, academic director of Henley Management College and former acting vice-chancellor of Vista University.
The names of four shortlisted candidates then went to the senate, which placed Rensburg last in its list of preferences.
”What has happened is symptomatic of the tertiary landscape,” said UJ’s Professor Hartmut Winkler. ”The universities, battered by protests, transformation teething pains, funding cuts and, most recently, mergers, are focusing on survival strategies rather than on bold moves forward. Institutional decisions, such as the appointments of vice-chancellors, are driven by the fears and self-interest of individual staff members and students rather than the mission and broader requirements of the organisation.”