For a university leader who has just weathered yet another eruption of torrid student protests against fee increases, Wits vice-Âchancellor Loyiso Nongxa was exuding an impressive degree of serenity and confidence this week.
These qualities in the softly spoken mathematician were so noticeable that the Mail & Guardian was moved to ask him what he does to relax. He admitted to making the odd visit to the gym: ”One has to try to keep fit,” he said without much enthusiasm.
But, with much greater animation, he confessed to being a ”sports nut who does what people say we shouldn’t do: spend lots of time watching TV”. Well-informed comments about the Rugby World Cup followed this disclosure, as well as an expression of deep satisfaction that Arsenal is topping England’s football league.
Yet ”my three young children are my main form of relaxation. I often try to explain to my nine-year-old daughter in simple terms what I do in my job.”
He must have had his work cut out trying to explain last week’s events. In a replay of upheavals that racked the campus a year ago, classes were disrupted and some university property damaged when students reacted angrily to proposed fee increases of between 5,7% (for accountancy) and 10% (for health sciences). A huge hike of 18% also is on the cards for first-year bachelor of education (BEd) students.
And, in a further replay, Wits management again called police on to campus, saying ”isolated incidents of assault”, as well as ”force and intimidation” on the part of the protesters against staff and students, had compelled the university to take this step.
But in his wide-ranging interview with the M&G this week, Nongxa spent no time pointing fingers at anyone over last week’s events. Referring to the institutional autonomy of universities, which gives them ”the privilege of self-regulation”, he conceded that ”if we have to call in outside help [such as the police], this suggests a failure in the whole university community”.
At the same time, though, ”universities are not islands of privilege”, he said. ”The laws that apply to the whole of society — regarding the safety of people and damage to infrastructure, for instance — apply to us as well. And I have a responsibility to the [Wits] council and the broader community in that regard.”
Last week’s conflicts led to negotiations between management and student organisations which resulted in agreements that fees would increase next year by an average of 8% and that the BEd increase for first years would be 9%.
So, what is the state of Wits’s finances? When Nongxa was appointed vice-chancellor in 2003, he expressed concern that Wits could be ”living beyond its means”. This week, though, he spoke confidently about financial developments since then. ”We have developed strategies to address financial challenges systematically, so that we do not rely solely on the government subsidy — which is woefully inadequate.”
Last year, for instance, student fees and the state subsidy together contributed R1,1-billion to the university’s budget, Nongxa said. But Wits’s own efforts, in the form of research grants to academics and fundraising, took the budget up to R2-billion. ”Wholesale retrenchments and cuts to departments are not on the cards,” he said firmly.
He looked thoughtful when the M&G referred to the national education department’s study last year of the dropout rate at all universities, showing that about 30% of Wits undergraduate students do not complete their qualifications. In addition, Education Minister Naledi Pandor herself expressed concern that financial factors were damaging the government’s equity policies regarding access to higher education.
In other words, are we developing a two-tier national education system both at school and beyond — that is, a high-quality one for the well-off and an inferior one for the poor?
”That’s a good point,” Nongxa said. ”Partly, it’s a matter of self-belief. After all, I’m from a rural background [the former Transkei, where he went to school] and am a product of apartheid’s Bantu education. But I still managed to get my doctorate in maths from Oxford University.” (Nongxa completed his bachelor and master’s degrees at Fort Hare before proceeding to his 1982 doctorate.)
But partly too, he said, ”we have to find ways of identifying talent earlier in schools”. Wits’s solution is a programme aimed at learners from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds in the university’s three main feeder provinces — Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga.
”We’ve identified rural schools there that, despite the odds, produce good results. Our relationship with them enables us to identify really smart kids entering grade 10 and they come to Wits to see what student life involves. We show them our laboratories and other facilities, get professionals in a variety of fields — whether journalism or accountancy — to talk to them about careers and alert them to options for financial assistance.”
Wits had been reaching beyond national borders too. ”In Africa, for instance — and especially East Africa — the profile of the institution has certainly gone up: we’re not any longer seen as Eurocentric, but as an African university.” And Nongxa himself is going to India shortly, as part of a research initiative that seeks to promote and develop India studies in South Africa. ”India’s successes in software development, for example, is something from which we can learn.”
Locally ”we’re still there in the ‘Big Five’, with the universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Pretoria and KwaZulu-Natal”, he said, ”but our new strategic plan, adopted last year, is to make it into the world’s top 100 rankings by 2022”.
The primacy of academic values was clearly central to Nongxa’s vision as he spoke about controversies around the rise of managerialism to the detriment (some argue) of academic interests. ”The senate at Wits hasn’t been mariginalised, as it’s said has happened elsewhere: it remains the custodian of the academic project, and we’ve managed to create an intellectually vibrant atmosphere via, for instance, a programme of public lectures.”
The ”first law of academic leadership” is that ”thou shalt not attempt to exercise authority or influence over academics”, he told the M&G when he was appointed. After four years in the hot seat, does that law still apply? ”Certainly,” he said, ”and it should be extended to students.”
He admitted to ”frustration” sometimes when academics constructed a ”them-and-us opposition. Because I’m in management, I’m seen as ‘The Other’. But I am an academic and am influenced by that background.” What was needed was a ”deeper and shared understanding of the terms ‘managerialism’ and ‘academic freedom”’.
One of the enduring legacies of Nongxa’s leadership at Wits might well turn out to be his own contribution to the understanding he calls for: he is a member of the Council on Higher Education’s task team due to produce its keenly awaited report on institutional autonomy and academic freedom next month.