Proof Positive: Beads & Mirrors are High Academic Currency at the African University

A week ago one Public University Vice Chancellor was hauled to a South African Parliamentary Committee on Higher Education and Training to answer as to why he is serving a 'third' term while the University Statute allows for only two.

A press mention of the committee sitting was made and some comment from the embattled vice chancellor expressed exasperation from a drilling Nothing much to write home about, and it seemed the most it achieved was fluffed feathers that would be well-combed back into place by the time the VC had returned home. But it made news in my local weekly tabloid simply because it published local news on social and school events and the like once a week. So the article appeared in the weekly review, and there is where I let the matter rest.

When someone sent me the actual 13 hour parliamentary grilling marathon.

Firstly; whoever sends out a back-room parliamentary proceedings that long does not seem to think that time matters much. But there was a catch. The proceedings were a Two-for-One grilling. It seems questionable universities are hot in South Africa's Government of National Unity politics. So the rather long session actually comprises two almost separate matters. The first, is the ongoing review of University of Fort Hare (UFH) which had been on Administration for reasons of total failure of governance, academic and financial in favour of criminal gangsterism. The Second was on the issue of University of Limpopo(UL)'s interminable vice chancellorship term.

There has been frequent mention of Prof. Volmink, a prominent academic in that Higher Education sector whose findings repeatedly point at the same malaise. In one research survey after another his students find that the South African university is inundated by corruption.

So why do I proceed to paint the entire continent with the afflictions of just the Southern Tip?

I would start by saying that I have no basis to assume there is a difference across that jig-saw puzzle of borders. Crossings are decidedly random in direction and hence on the basis of that unbiased sampling on to that tip, the rest are the same until proven different.

That hypothesis is corroborated by the presentations of the UFH witnesses. One academic corruption lynchpin since fired, as happily reported, happened to be Nigerian. Another criminal mastermind of fraudulent Cash payment happened to be of Indian ancestry. So significant 'factor treatments' point to non-local influence in the sector hence African. Along the way the parliamentary inquisitors did point out that there are equally many well-performing academics and administrators of 'foreign' national origin that you find in the Higher Education sector so that the UFH case at hand should not lead to lazy xenophobic causations or conclusions. So that's another reason to Pan-Afrcanize the malaise.

I thirdly will refrain from generalising the hearings evidence into something more lofty and continent-wide. I believe the evidence speaks for itself as evidence or sample from contemporary Africa archeology.

The UFH hearings star witness was the Vice Chancellor of that institution who needed to request assistance of Presidential Special Investigations Unit to uncover the web of corruption and gangsterism. The arrest of the Lynchpin was announced with a sense of triumph. The VC himself sounded much like a football league coach or general manager who was elated at barely coming out of relegation.

The University of Limpopo hearings were less cordial, having opened with angry exchanges by inquisitors requesting clarification of insulting correspondence received from the university. In this case the sporting "Coach and Referee" of the Ice Hockey league were huddled in a penalty box being asked why they should be let out, if ever. The VC anti-star of that show was uncharacteristically subdued raising his eyes above the desktop horizon to occasionally assess the damage while the Board Chair sidekick draped in Team Scarf seemed happy to parlay at every opportunity in post-match Yob pub crawl style.

The inquisitors eventually decided that questioning the duo was futile exercise. They eventually turned their attention to their supporting cast and out of nowhere, the most revealing pattern emerged. The Director (or Manager) of the Institutional Forum whose term lasts 5 years was actually also overstayed in her tenure. She apparently spoke for the university community at large but seemed to be contradicted by submissions of Labour Union stakeholders under her protective umbrella Institutional Forum.

She was also well-schooled in the Corporate song whose refrain is currently "The Knowledge Project". That was impressive, but also very telling to me. During my one-only tenure there, the Corporate Song was "Academic Project" a refrain sung by one and only one Choir Master. So the Choir is well rehearsed for lifelong stellar performance.

It was only one inquisitor that caught on to it. The rest, including the chair were combative without discrimination nor nuance. When it came to the failings of the Student Finance Scheme (NSFAS) another lady inquisitor was quick to catch the triggers of gender abuse of taking female students hostage by withholding of stipends that NSFAS has been prone at doing for "recourse" with happily indulgent university managements(&).

So my verdict is that the panel struck a gold mine and raw nerves all round, but they lack the ability to identify their find. The matter shall bounce around between Parliament and the Executive which shall indulge the various culprits as it always has done - with kid gloves - and the entire matter shall eventually rest to be forgotten as just another laugh in "Yes-Minster" comedy style.

Perhaps the inquisitors already know of the futility of their exercise, accepting as they might be, of University Management acting as brokers not of any professed academic "Project", but of an appearance thereto while indulging their probable cause quarry actively diverting monies earmarked for student loan, student rent and tuition fees, and new student housing into becoming extra-curricula, extra mural, post tenure businesses for life annuity.

It is possible the inquisitors themselves may not be in a position to authoritatively articulate the reasons for that Higher Education mission beyond it being their newfound right to whatever gift wrapped democracy it might actually be, albeit as colonial Beads and Mirrors, for the most part. The infractions are after all, just of the 'rules of the game' called "the Constitution". Nothing to do with the "Spirit" of the "University Act", nor the tenacity of contested interpretation of their respective "Statutes" at UFH and UL.

There are after all many other institutions looking to UL as precedent for them too to start building lifelong nest eggs. Other universities in Mpumalanga and Eastern Cape are picking leadership governance cues from UL(*).

The problems they exposed are deep and entrenched such that a mere jettisoning or change of anti-star faces as remedy shall not even scratch that leprous surface. If I were to characterise them with medical metaphor I would say they see indications, but have no diagnosis and there is no hope for apt prognosis any time soon.

(*) Month before last I paid respects to departed Prof Muxe Nkondo by selectively posting his Oral Testimony over Turfloop.

I stopped the transcript at the point where I felt it captured his life as an individual and did not post his thoughts of struggles with meaning thereof.

So there was a significant portion I omitted, sections that had direct bearing on the conduct of vice chancellors coming out of disadvantaged and Historically Black Universities (HBU). In a follow-up Observer tabloid interview the UL VC recalls receiving some sort of mentoring into leadership from the late Prof Manganyi. A touching tribute to an academic who had just passed away, but hardly edifying if not besmirching in the current context.

It might be of use for me to return to those portions of Prof Nkodo's testimony to straighten out that record. I shall have to either add the snippets of that Oral Testimony that rightly belongs to Muxe's tribute or to insert the excerpts into this less than honourable inquisition. I chased down my original recordings and noted that the Prof Manganyi remembrance was in the last hour of Muxe's Oral Testimony.

The "Project" of the ZA HBU of which UL is undisputed ideological leader is a radical democracy realpolitik and is well articulated by Prof Nkondo who was steeped in its genesis.

It personifies in ULs Black Staff Association which erstwhile Apartheid Bantu Education vision had conceived to be destined into "Drawers of Water, and Hewers of Wood" for Whites, and materialised at the Bantu University of the North in the Bantu Education Extension Act (the "Statute") as the Bantu staffing category "Class G".

That's the only real "Project" the institutional incumbent there actually knows well. At some stage for a flitting moment it became the ANC Radical Economic Transformation (RET) by whatever means, student endowments notwithstanding. Especially under the watch of Minister Blade Nzimande's - previously 'Black Bag' accused by prior COSATU president later expelled by SADTU secretary Willlie Madisha.

I think it should be worthwhile to find and include Prof Nkondo's narration of the "Class G" project here to complete this contorted Higher Education tale sensibly. Of interest in the other footnote (&), Allusions to Institutional Forum structure are already in the earlier parts of Muxe's testimony (Hour 3) although he does in the last hour do more reflective interpretation on how for instance their student-led Black Transformation Committee (BTC) eventually altered the "Statute" into turning the BTC into the hapless umbrella Institutional Forum intended to becoming owner of the VC selection process that is now more a pliable facility for incumbent VC's whims.

(&) It would be a disservice to not elaborate the reality this female inquisitor noted in passing anger. Her words specifically noted the pattern of female students being obliged to sacrifice themselves by "dropping their panties" to just try and complete this hazardous university education which does not only stop with landlords. Male moderated exam marks at times present the same sacrificial obstacle. Inquisitors would neither have had cause to think in terms of "architecture of capture" when also addressing the sudden graduation obstacle the two KwaZulu-Natal female Masters students faced weeks prior to graduation. But they fought back and luckily won, like young springboks embarrassing the old and tired broken-toothed lion past its better year's in life.

One can only sympathise with all females in South Africa Inc, forever made to institutionally surrender their genomic phenotype heritage to male institutional predators. Including to wit the two discerning inquisitors and their hostage Institutional Forum witness quarry.

They are after all living proof the university student body and staff complement is constantly at higher than 60% Female and the sector's palpable salvation can only come out from angry Female leadership pushback; Beads, Mirrors and All unintended consequences notwithstanding.