Can the ‘systemically racist’ ‘pluriverse’, ‘managerialized’, ‘go woke, go broke’, ‘GNU’ University of Cape Town (UCT) be “stabilized”, let alone “rebuilt”?
OR Why not just leave unfettered academics, support staff and students do what’s necessary to sustain Her as a world-leading university striving to find ‘Truth’?
Prof. Mosa Moshabela has taken on UCT’s ‘VC-ship’. Like his much-maligned two predecessors (Dr Max Price and Prof. Mamokgethi Phakeng), he takes the tiller with “near-unanimous” support from the relevant UCT Selection Committee, Council and Senate. Like Phakeng, but not Price, he comes with experience as a distinguished educator and PhD-certified researcher. Like Phakeng, but not Price, he inherits an institution in financial and reputational tatters populated by Fallist-silenced staff whose morale and trust have been broken.
The unkindest cut of all it that Moshabela’s ‘about-to-become’ UCT is self-branded by UCT-Council-approved “independent” reports (see here and here) – confirmed in an article published in Nature the world’s preeminent science journal – as “rife” with various forms of “entrenched” anti-black “violence” and “systemic racism” and, “failing in good governance, fairness and nonracialism.” In short, She may be “spiralling out of control”.
Dear VC-Moshabela,
I am an emeritus professor and Life Fellow associated with UCT as a student, educator, researcher and administrator for 50 years – see also my ‘lived experience‘ and curriculum vitae. Like many other ‘silenced’ members of the UCT community I, Gwen Ngwenya (former UCT SRC President and Member of Parliament) and recently – and forcibly? – prematurely-retired UCT Profs David Benatar and Anton Fagan have argued that, for decades, UCT has been peaceably committed to non-racialism, political-neutralism and academic freedom and excellence. Ngwenya described the “bartering” of UCT core values during Price’s administration as “sacrifices” on the “alter” of ‘decolonisation”. When she and I attempted to present motions at the 2016 AGM of the UCT Convocation to allow its members to express their views on unpunished Fallist intimidation and desteuction, Fallist invaders disrupted proceedings, referring to me as “racist”, “Jim Crow”, “killer of black people” and Gwen as “house-ni**er”. My 235 pieces on matters-UCT may be found by searching for “Tim Crowe” and/or “Rational Standard” and “Politicsweb” and connecting to https://timguineacrowe.blogspot.com/.
What to do?
First and foremost, before continuing UCT’s deconstructive decolonialization or starting any ‘rebuilding’ process – even with support from all or selected sides – please maintain the institutional stabilization effected by interim VC Emeritus Prof. Daya Reddy. Only by remaining neutral and non-partisan until you get a fuller measure of my alma mater can you maintain/restore Her reputation as Africa’s premier university.
Having said this, there are two matters that the Mpati Committee identified as warranting immediate attention.
- UCT must institute disciplinary proceedings against DVC for Transformation, Student Affairs and Social Responsiveness, Professor Elelwani Ramugondo, for having posted a racially offensive message on social media regarding constructively-dismissed fellow DVC for Teaching and Learning, Adjunct Professor Lis Lange, and then untruthfully denying under oath doing so to a DVC Selection Committee and to the Mpati Panel.
- Council must institute disciplinary proceedings against SRC-nominated Member of Council, Dr Lwazi Lushaba for violating its Code of Conduct by using racially offensive language in one or more Council meetings.
Lushaba, is a 50+ year-old UCT lecturer who has never been a full-time student at UCT and is infamous for disturbing comments made during lectures:
“[T]here is no possibility of friendship between you as a Black person and you as a White person.”
”[B]lack people are forced to disconnect from their own bodies that are not ‘good enough’ or ‘white enough’. They live in an ‘existential vacuum’ is formed where they experience profound anxiety and despair.”
When commenting on the Holocaust, he stated that “Hitler committed no crime. All Hitler did was to do to white people what white people had normally reserved for black people.”
Moreover, during the selection process for a new Dean of Humanities, Lushaba set the Faculty into turmoil when he stomped on ballot boxes, ate ballots and verbally and physically attacked fellow academics while objecting to a non-South-African ‘Black’ woman being elected Dean. For this, was reprimanded by the Phakeng-led UCT Executive for “unacceptable, inappropriate and disrespectful conduct”.
As I write this piece it appears that Ramugondo’s investigation appears to mired in a bureaucratic morass and no action has be taken vis-à-vis Lushaba.
VC Phakeng, of course, was induced to resign.
What you need to know?
You have already stated your intention to investigate and learn from widely mentioned reports on events and governance issues that occurred during – and before – the Price/Phakeng Eras and relationships among past and current members of the Executive, Council and Senate. More importantly, you have also stated that “[I]t would be good for us to broaden our minds in terms of the history of UCT and not just look at it in the last few years, but really look at it more holistically [sensu Jan Smuts?] to build it going forward”.
This requires Her administration and community collectively to “own [Her] history in all its convoluted manifestations” and that its chroniclers “should not be selective” and “should not sanitize [or demonize] the past from which we have evolved”. To help you appreciate UCT’s history ‘warts and all’, I have submitted the first of several historical pieces outlining actions/inactions of all of UCT’s VCs to date to Her Registrar, hoping that it might reach VC Moshabela.
Let’s see what the future holds. But, as one of my boyhood heroes – New York Yankee baseball player Yogi Berra – once said:
“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
