University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) academic Fazel Khan, sacked after being found guilty of bringing the university into disrepute, is to fight on. Khan said recently that he would challenge the disciplinary procedure and, ‘if need beâ€, take the matter to the CCMA and the Constitutional Court.
Khan’s first step will be to establish who was responsible for his dismissal, which was announced to staff last week by UKZN’s deputy director of human resources, Paul Finden. Khan said only the vice-chancellor, Malegapuru Makgoba, and the university’s council have firing powers.
As a witness at the disciplinary hearing, Makgoba was legally precluded from dismissing him, he added.
Khan, a sociology lecturer and acting president of the Combined Staff Association (Comsa), was charged with dishonest conduct over statements he made to newspapers, including the Mail & Guardian, about his excision from a photograph in UKZNdaba, a university newsletter.
The photograph accompanied an article focusing on a documentary film about the shack-dwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseÂMjondolo, co-directed by Khan and Sally Giles.
He was also charged with misconduct for allegedly leaking a confidential task team report after a university staff strike last year.
Khan was found guilty on both charges by a disciplinary committee chaired by advocate Christine Qunta after a seven-month hearing. He said this week: ‘We have a constitutional right to academic freedom and freedom of expression, and I feel that this has been violated. If you can’t speak out in a university environment, then where can you?â€
UKZN spokesperson Dasarath Chetty replied that ‘by no stretch of the imagination can the sanctioning of dishonest and unethical conduct, calculated to project the management of UKZN as autocratic, be interpreted as a denial of academic freedomâ€.
On the charge of dishonest conduct, Qunta found Khan made ‘several false statements, knowing them to be false†to the Natal Witness and The Mercury newspapers, including saying that he believed he had been targeted by management for his role in last year’s strike, and that university management did not want him promoted or published in UKZNdaba.
Qunta recommended a written warning on this charge and dismissal for leaking the report. Khan’s defence argued that all his comments were mere opinions or speculation, but Qunta found only two statements to be opinions: that the UKZN management used UKZNdaba as a propaganda machine and that the university staff had lost confidence in the publication, perceiving it as a mouthpiece.
She found that an M&G article comparing Khan’s excision from the photograph to Joseph Stalin’s practices had cast the university in a negative light.
The leaking of the task team report, which portrays UKZN as a divided institution, was considered a ‘breach of the duty of trust and good faith that Mr Khan owes to the university as his employerâ€. Qunta recommended instant dismissal on this charge.
The task team report notes that ‘examples of intimidatory interpersonal behaviour of managers were cited in union submissionsâ€, and that there was agreement ‘that this kind of behaviour stifles democratic debate and decision-making and creates the kind of environment in which autocratic practices … are proliferatingâ€.
The final report, compiled by a joint task team of union members and the executive, was supposed to have been tabled before the university council on September 1, but this has not happened.
Chetty said he was ‘not sure†why the report had still to be presented to the UKZN council, but that this would probably happen at its meeting this Friday.