Waiting to be born

On my arrival at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) recently, one academic commented on “how frightened people are to speak”. I soon discovered this for myself. Some academics apologetically withdrew from agreements to meet; others insisted that our meetings be off-campus.

A couple of these involved one of Durban’s murkier dives, the prime considerations here being invisibility from the street and the unlikelihood that this is a favourite haunt of UKZN management.

Such cloak-and-dagger stratagems prompt inevitable reflections about the kind of environment that necessitates them. And one soon discovers that these thoughts lead straight to the central question about the immensely complex and ambitious merger that created UKZN in 2004: what kind of university is still struggling to be born?

Even at the mundane level of logistics, the merger is daunting. The new institution has 40 000 students spread over five campuses, and many academics express weary exasperation at the practical demands this makes. In my own two-and-a-half-day visit, I notched up well over 400km in travelling from one appointment to another.

But it is the identity of the emerging university that sparks the central tensions. The sense you derive of what UKZN is depends crucially on whom you speak to, and in so doing a huge gulf becomes apparent — between management and academics.

Admittedly, the latter do not constitute a homogenous group, speaking with one voice: some academics, for example, align themselves with management unproblematically. But broadly, the gulf is there. And at times members of the two groups seem to be describing entirely different institutions.

A new regime

For vice-chancellor Malegapuru Makgoba, it is a necessary new regime of accountability that partly explains current discontents. Before the merger, academics — and especially the senate — ran the universities, “and there was a vice-chancellor somewhere who never called them to account”.

Makgoba’s office is on the Westville campus, and notably unostentatious. Diagonally opposite his desk, two fairly elderly black leather sofas are at right angles to each other. He hasn’t changed any of the furnishings he inherited, and says his choice of Westville for his workplace is symbolic: “It was only this campus that was disadvantaged, and redress and equity are major aims of the mergers. I felt we should create equal infrastructure here — difficult to do if you’re remote from it.”

He sees the new institution as congruent with the evolving culture of universities throughout the world. “Now we are accountable to the government and the public for how we use our finances. The merger required a review of all systems and the creation of new ones. In this process the executive had to take charge — and that has been a shock to the system after the previously laissez-faire approach.”

But for others, this change represents a serious loss. “Senate needs to assert stronger academic leadership,” says Nithaya Chetty, associate professor of physics and a member of both the senate and the council. “Senators need to feel greater courage to speak up and make their voices heard. We need to establish a greater culture of consultation and debate, of openness and democracy, especially on issues related to transformation.”

As with all South African universities, transformation is clearly contested at UKZN. One reason for this lies in the constituents of the merger. Renuka Vithal, dean of education, says, “The UKZN merger has a very particular set of dynamics — it’s the only merger involving a formerly white, English, liberal, advantaged institution [the University of Natal] and an historically disadvantaged institution [the University of Durban-Westville].”

This combination of contrasts is strikingly evident as you move from one campus to another. The stately colonial architecture of the Pietermaritzburg campus, for instance, is more than physically distant from the starkly functional and drab contours of the buildings at Westville.

For Vithal, the merger has led to “a fundamental shift in power blocs”. She argues that, immediately after the merger, the senate was predominantly white and male, and that this was unrepresentative of the new ­university.

“There have also been substantial demographic shifts in the staff composition,” she says. “We now have a critical mass of emerging young black scholars, who have a different vision for the institution from, say, the power group or leadership at the former University of Natal.”

New black voices

As a result, for the first time, “black and especially African academics are speaking out about how they see and experience the institution”, Vithal says. She refers to a Black African Academic Forum’s (BAAF) document which argued that UKZN needs to adopt specific measures to attract and develop African academics. The document noted that only 17% of the academic staff are African, while 54% are white and 27% Indian. By contrast, half the 40 000 students are African, 32% Indian, 15% white and 3% coloured.

Few, if any, would oppose the BAAF’s aims, yet race still plays a controversial role in the institution. The charge of racism is routinely deployed, say some, against those who express critical dissent of any kind. Chetty puts it this way: “Our debates within the institution have become highly racialised and this has had the effect of silencing many people, which is contributing to a repressive environment. It will be a tragedy of immense proportions if we continue along this dangerous route of exacerbating racial tensions within the university.”

One outbreak of such tensions occurred in June, when 14 ­academics, including Robert Morrell, professor of education, met to discuss the BAAF document. Makgoba, as the 14 saw it, intervened to prevent a second meeting, and also widely distributed emails denouncing Morrell as unethical and anti-transformation. Morrell is now suing Makgoba for defamation, saying in his claim that one email Makgoba circulated carried the “sting that [Morrell] is a racist and is against transformation because of the privileges he had acquired by virtue of his race”.

Racialised debate

Like Chetty, Morrell says that ­”management’s racialising of debate has produced a climate of suspicion … and has regrettably widened gulfs”. But Makgoba expresses surprise that anyone should find such racialising surprising: “We live in a racialised country. Debates in South Africa are racialised, and therefore so too at UKZN.”

He points, though, to recent data demonstrating that each race group has shown a similar success rate — about 70% — in their applications for promotion. “The criteria for promotion have nothing to do with equity or transformation, but only with excellence as an academic. Quality is what matters, not racial criteria.”

Similarly, Nceba Gqaleni, deputy dean of medicine, says UKZN’s vision of being “the premier university of African scholarship” does not mean what some fear, namely “getting them [whites] out and Africans in”. Rather, the vision is “built on a dream of quality work in Africa that’s also world-class”. Adds Nhlanhla Mkhize, professor of psychology: “All members of the institution can contribute to African scholarship — it’s not just for African scholars.”

Vithal echoes this dream of institutional inclusiveness: “I feel proud to be part of an institution that can no longer be referred to as white or black, advantaged or disadvantaged. It’s a unique moment now as we craft what we are and what kind of public institution we want to be or should be — we have a fantastic and unique challenge and opportunity.”

Who can you trust?

Yet it remains clear that for many at UKZN this dream is far from their daily reality. One group of eight ­lecturers spoke to me about “a new management style of fear”, a sense of “being surveyed all the time”, and “worries about who you can trust … Is somebody here going to send an email to the vice-chancellor, to the dean, about what we’ve said?”

Most often, such fears are expressed as a concern about diminished academic freedom. Gqaleni, though, finds this “strange … No one is telling anyone what to teach or research. Yet there is a strong lobby on academic freedom, as if we’re in an authoritarian environment.” For Makgoba, there are clear limits to academic freedom: “It’s okay to speak to the media about your work and research, but to speak about management — that’s not academic freedom. Codes of conduct have to be respected.”

Yet for Chetty, “there has got to be greater recognition at UKZN that a university is a public institution … Expressing oneself publicly and in the press is an important means of encouraging more debate and discussion, especially at this critical time as we try to build our new university.”

In the firing line

For an institution repeatedly convulsed this year by a series of high-profile conflicts, the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) is at the moment remarkably united on one point: everyone wants to say something about Fazel Khan (pictured right).

A sociology lecturer and prominent unionist, Khan faces disciplinary charges that could lead to his dismissal. The action against him follows comments he made to three newspapers in September, after one of the more bizarre of recent incidents at the university.

The official UKZN newsletter had published a photo from which Khan had been airbrushed out; and the story it accompanied, about a documentary movie that Khan had co-directed, omitted any mention of him. Incautiously, as it turned out, Khan remarked to the media that this erasure was deliberate — it was management’s “revenge” for his role during February’s staff strike.

UKZN officialdom, having denied any pre-publication knowledge of the airbrushing, swiftly retaliated, charging Khan with “dishonest” or alternatively “reckless” conduct. The hearing that will determine his future began late last month, and has been postponed till November 27.

So everyone wants to say something about the case. Some warily refrain, though, citing unfamiliarity with the details and sub judice considerations. But others angrily describe it as the latest assault on personal and academic freedom, mounted by what they see as iron-fisted, corporate-style university management.

This perception was evident in the slogans on T-shirts and banners during the strike in February, which was formally about salaries but clearly expressed wider frustrations: “Resist oppressive management”, “Free UKZN”, “We demand academic freedom”.

Whatever else it involves, Khan’s case clearly highlights the role of academics vis-à-vis management. And since that remains a simmering area of concern at UKZN, it is understandable that so many at the university should be holding their breath for the outcome. — David Macfarlane