Njabulo Simakahle Ndebele (2000-2008)
The first eight years of the new millennium saw the administration of a highly experienced university administrator, Prof. Njabulo Ndebele. He had previously been a VC and DVC at historically ‘black’ universities and had been shortlisted during the search for Saunders’ successor. He was also an eminent Africanist scholar, fiction author and public intellectual, enabling him to relate to the full spectrum of UCT’s Community. Unlike Ramphele, he was perceived as the universal ‘pacifier’. He attempted to embrace the positive elements of the past while promoting demographic and academic ‘inclusivity’. An excellent example of his writings on this score is his introduction to Viewpoints, published in November 2013. He writes on the vexed legacy left to UCT by CJ Rhodes. It is written from the perspective of one sitting on the Jammie steps beside his bronzen figure, looking through the lens of time. Ndebele argues that while Rhodes’ absence may be desirable, it is a reminder that although some of the treasures of UCT may revive painful happenings of the past they should be treasured nonetheless. His reflective also provides guidelines concerning preserving, presenting and reinterpreting UCT’s collections and treasures.
Beneficence
Key beneficiaries during his administration included ‘Core’ academics (who pushed for the continued primacy of academic excellence and merit-based equity) and, to a lesser extent, ‘progressive’ academics and students who demanded pedagogical and demographic ‘inclusivity’ and generally nebulously defined/motivated ‘decolonization’ sensu lato. His mixed management strategy resulted in considerable improvements in UCT as a centre of excellence in research and the international competitiveness of her researchers. This ‘elitism’ was matched by massive increases in the number of inadequately supported, educationally ‘disenabled’ (by the now highly dysfunctional Basic Education System) first-year ‘People-of-Colour’ (PoC) students. It was not matched by a concomitant increase in the population of education-oriented academics (let alone ‘progressive’ ones) and key support staff necessary to mentor/nurture the PoC students, or making constructive changes in curricula and/or teaching methods.
Academic transformation
The key act of academic transformation by the Ndebele ‘Team’ was the implementation of the aggregation of the Academic Development Programme (ADP) and some other components involving learning into a separate, new, ‘horizontal’, faculty-like entity, the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED). This greatly expanded the original aims, scope and responsibilities of the Saunders-initiated Academic Support Programme. In retrospect, many academics and ADP students whom I have interviewed – including ASP/ADP/CHED educationalists – are persuaded that the creation of CHED was a wrong decision, since it further reduced the responsibility for academic support/development of the Core Departments and the School of Education. Core departments could now even more effectively avoid adapting their staff and curricula to deal decisively and constructively with decolonization. The School of Education’s major practical contribution to academic support was reduced to one year of post-graduate training of Bachelor’s graduates and unemployed PhD grads, many of whom turned to teaching as a career ‘Plan B’.
Real violence
Ndebele’s administration was also characterized by a brutal murder on campus. In 2005, Assoc. Prof. Brian Hahn was, without provocation, brutally beaten to death by a disgruntled affirmative-action lecturer, Dr Maleafisha ‘Steve’ Tladi. Tladi, after fair academic evaluation, had been denied a permanent appointment. Tladi initially admitted his guilt and was portrayed as fit for trial by his personal psychiatrist. Yet, he was found “unfit for trial” and “not guilty” due to mental illness that only became ‘apparent’ during the course of his appearances in court and after his lawyer-spouse accused him of assault. Nevertheless, he was adjudged to be “a danger to society” and declared a “State Patient” to be indefinitely “detained in a psychiatric institution or hospital with such a facility”. But, after less than two-year’s confinement, he was inexplicably released from custody and employed as a senior academic at the University of Limpopo. He initially stated in his widely circulated e-mails that he was “totally cured” from mental illness as a consequence of a “miraculous religious experience”.
In a widely-circulated February 2019 e-mail he claimed that he was: “an undercover intelligence officer of Mphatho wa Magasa” and, in 2005 “under orders, carried out an abroad secret assignment of the combat nature” that “involved Pr.Dr. Hahn”. “I arranged a secret, eye-to-eye meeting with Pr.Dr. Hahn in Cape Town and destroyed him”.
So much for being “not guilty” due to mental illness.
Regardless of the merits of a murderer’s release, the UCT Executive made little effort (beyond a well-attended and moving memorial service) to counsel the UCT Community on this horrible act or use it as a watershed moment. Former UCT Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a senior research professor in trauma, memory and forgiveness who served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, commented at the time: “What really concerns me is why we are, when we are faced with a violent murder on this campus, not talking about, first of all, what led to this incident, and not talking about why the only reaction that is vocal about this incident is reaction that seems to be condoning this behaviour”. She then left UCT.
There was never any “talking about” or attempt at restorative justice. Indeed, by 2015, pro-Fallist, Feminist author and Wits Prof. Pumla Gqola (now Dean of Research at University of Fort Hare) characterized Brian’s murder by Tladi as possibly “an incident of self-defence”.
Exposing the institutional ‘handicap’
One of Ndebele’s major administrative achievements was, in his capacity as head of Senate, commissioning a 2007 survey: Matters pertaining to heads of academic departments at the University of Cape Town. The survey was headed by Emeritus Prof. VC ‘Cliff’ Moran (a highly respected former UCT Dean of Science) in collaboration with Prof. Cheryl de la Rey (DVC for Research) and Assoc. Prof. Andy Duncan, one of UCT’s most savvy senior academics.
Key findings of the Moran Report are:
- The University can contribute fully to the social and economic development of South Africa only if it is internationally competitive. This requires that the institution “Promotes academic excellence and the attainment of the institutional goal of becoming a world-class African University”. In this respect the University is only reasonably placed, and there is considerable room for improvement.
- The number and demographic mix of its graduates can best contribute to the country’s needs if the qualifications earned by its undergraduate and postgraduate students have increasing value and currency, locally and globally.
- The above objectives can be realised only if the academic departments in the University are functioning optimally, which in itself is possible only if the HoDs pursue a clear plan for the development of teaching and research in their respective disciplines and only if they are willing, motivated and effective academic leaders, managers, and administrators. Presently the performance of the majority of the academic departments is perceived by many at UCT as being sub-optimal and it is common cause that many, but not all, of the HoDs at the institution are, for various reasons, reluctant to do the job, demoralised and frustrated.
- Many of the issues and problems facing HoDs at UCT are shared by other medium-sized or large universities in other parts of the world.
- Without the concerted will of the University at large to acknowledge the centrality of academic departments as the cornerstone of the institution, and to bring academic departments and HoDs back into the main stream of the University’s focus and activities, the University cannot enhance the value of its degrees, nor can it achieve its mission.
In short, the inordinate power concentrated in the ‘managerializing’, ‘fiscally-focused’, ‘commodified’, centralized administration needs to return to academics and students, the people who are responsible for UCT’s core ‘business’ – education and research. Neither VC Ndebele nor his successor acted decisively on the findings of the ‘Moran Report’.
The Ndebele legacy
Still, both during and especially after his time as VC at UCT:
Ndebele gave her a “conscience”.
