UWC farce in selecting VC and UCT’s candidate list alarming

In recent weeks, two potentially calamitous events on campuses happened largely under the radar of public attention; the collapse of Educor and its private higher education brands hogged the media limelight.

Largely ignored was the selection of university leaders at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the other at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

At UWC, we saw the end stages of a farce in choosing its new leader.

Universities are democratic institutions, or at least they’re supposed to be.

So, when two important statutory bodies repeatedly voted for candidate X over rivals Y and Z, you would expect the council (the highest decision-making body) to be responsive to such important voices.

Those bodies, firstly, were the Institutional Forum (IF), which represents stakeholders from across the university community and therefore, in reality, offers a position that enjoys broad campus support.

Secondly, there is the senate which consists mainly of the senior professors of the university, that is, those who run an academic institution and give it its credibility as a place of higher learning.

To repeatedly ignore this authoritative voice would be unthinkable in a modern university.

Most council members go home after such a momentous decision; the senators have to show up every day to teach, research and serve community.

But then the big puzzle in UWC’s council decision. Because of the hefty agenda of a council, it appoints a senior committee of council (the SAC) to do the hard work of sourcing, interviewing and judging the pool of candidates before making a final recommendation to the full council of about 30 members.

On at least two occasions, SAC recommended candidate X. In other words, the council’s own committee made a solid recommendation.

In 99% of such cases, a university council follows the recommendation of its SAC unless, since they made it, something disastrous happened: like the first-choice candidate died or was discovered to have concealed a previous jail sentence. Something of that magnitude.

Not UWC. It ignored its SAC and by a stretch of one vote, overturned the recommendation for another candidate. How about that?

Why does this matter to the broader public of taxpayers who keep our universities afloat to the tune of billions of rand?

Quite simply, here in the full glare of the public, UWC decided to act undemocratically by ignoring the wishes of its major stakeholders and its own appointments committee.

It is not that they acted illegally for there is the thinnest of fig leaves covering their shame — that the council is the highest decision-making body of a university.

Here’s the rub. What if the council is corrupt?

Or, on a lesser charge, what if the council, as it did here, decided that bodies like the senate do not matter unless they rubber stamp what many in this body always wanted to do — ignore the people’s choice, so to speak.

If I were the council of UWC, I would resign in shame for acting undemocratically.

If I were the senate of UWC, I would down tools unless there are guarantees that their voice is taken seriously.

This does not mean council must automatically follow a senate’s choice; but it had better give a damn good reason for its choices, which it has not.

If I were the candidate selected by a margin of one vote, I would decline the offer since I was clearly not the first choice of the most important stakeholders of the university.

On the other side of the Liesbeeck River, UCT interviewed three shortlisted candidates. I could not believe my eyes.

This must be the weakest slate of potential vice-chancellors in the history of Africa’s leading university.

There was a candidate with a C-rating, the lowest category of research rating in a university that leads with the most A-rated scientists.

Another candidate was not selected at UWC but made it onto UCT’s choice list.

And a third candidate with a modest CV (for UCT) and significant inexperience at the highest levels of a university, might well be asked to take on one of the most challenging universities in the country.

I hope UCT re-advertises or it is looking at the possibility of another chaotic period after a tumultuous decade. That much is clear.

Yet there are few top candidates available in part because being offered this job is a poisoned chalice if ever there was one.

For one, the new VC will have to implement the findings of the Mpati Report which fingered some senior academic administrators in the mess that nearly brought UCT to its knees.

One such prominent person now has a mixed bag of people circulating a survey attacking the report on grounds that UCT is racist for attacking the black administrator under fire.

This must be among the worst kinds of racial goading that UCT has experienced in recent years.

I have no doubt there is racism at UCT as is the case for every other former white university.

But the general claim that somebody who colluded to undermine and mismanage UCT is simply the victim of “institutional racism” must be dismissed with contempt.

UCT has run out of money. It will also run out of depleting resources of moral courage unless it appoints a VC who has a world-class academic stature, a political backbone that stands up to racial bullies, and a fierce determination to put the academic project (and it alone) at the forefront of the university’s imagination.