Frustrating selection process for vice-chancellor position Op-ed
This piece was posted on the Facebook page of former UCT student leader Lebogang Hoveka, titled ‘A mediocre white man, the noble savage and the not-so-good native’
THIS week, a disappointed black professor at UCT, Elelwani Ramugondo, is taking the university to court for hiring a less qualified white woman in her stead.
Not only does she consider the appointed candidate less qualified, she also takes umbrage with the university’s assertion that she, herself, is “unappointable”.
I may not have personal knowledge of the facts in Ramugondo’s case, but as a former student who was involved in the “manipulation” that led to the appointment of the outgoing VC, Max Price, I have a story to tell.
Admittedly Ramugondo is by no means the best available. Neither is the appointed candidate, she too comes with no flying colours. Nor does UCT have a propensity for appointing the most qualified. UCT always appoints “The University Estate’s” approved candidate. Yes, it is as simple as that.
You would recall that UCT is the only university post-apartheid to have a registrar with just a BA degree.
Today it singularly holds the disgrace of having a VC (vice-chancellor) who is neither a professor nor holds a PhD. But that is too convoluted an argument.
Let me explain my involvement in the appointment of Price, then we can join the dots.
In 2007, I was the provincial secretary of the South African Students’ Congress (Sasco) in the Western Cape. This is when the selection process began. We had won elections the previous year, so we were well represented in the SRC.
At some stage during the selection I received instructions that Price should be our preferred candidate. I was told that he is “a comrade”. The directive was that he consulted for the movement on health policy, so he was assumed to be progressive.
I was not convinced. I looked at his qualifications and told his suitors that he was woefully underqualified, adding that UCT would never appoint him. I was dead wrong. We also had our own preferences. We had worked well with Professor Martin Hall, who often got things moving in our favour.
At that stage we were working on a plan to implement a fee-free plan for poor students. He was also keen on helping us to set up student co-ops to fund our plans.
The other option was Professor Cheryl de la Rey. She was the only black female deputy vicechancellor (DVC) at the time. She had sound academic records and was an experienced executive.
She is now the vice-chancellor of the University of Pretoria. After leaving UCT she became chief executive officer of the Council on Higher Education (CHE) and the executive director at the National Research Foundation. So her credentials speak for themselves.
Hall went on to be appointed vice-chancellor of Salford University in the UK.
So how did we end up with the least qualified Price? But for our naivety, goodwill and youth – we were played.
Shortly after the first round of interviews, a shortlist was leaked to me. That list neither had Hall nor De la Rey on it. Price was among the top three. Just as it is today said that Ramugondo is “unappointable”, I was told that Hall and De la Rey were not appointable.
I was having none of it. Hall is a white male but De la Rey is black and female. They were both head and shoulders above Price. If anybody was unappointable, it was Price.
It later turned out that the selection committee had used confidential character reports from academics who said they were not willing to work with Hall.
In so far as De la Rey was concerned, similar submissions were made with claims that she was underwhelming and would not receive senate support.
My understanding was that these reports were never shared with the panel but were relied upon in closed interviews. Instead of evaluating the candidates based on merit, they were subjected to disciplinary and performance assessments.
At first I had decided to let it pass. What could we do, we were just students? Only one student sat on that committee. I was worried that she could be expelled and accused of leaking information.
But by sleight of hand, I used my Nehawu and ANC connections to source the proof I needed to challenge the process. I found independent sources that were neither students nor from UCT’s black caucus. It was the stuff of spies! I received a call on a Cape winter’s day to come to an address somewhere in Rondebosch East. There I would get documents and speak to someone with intimate knowledge of the process. I will not forget that day. I had finally found an ace to put up my sleeve.
We called UCT’s bluff and threatened to interdict the process. And a bluff it was. Sasco didn’t have a cent. Moreover, we were being defiant against a “comrade Price”; we could not raise the funds needed even if we tried.
And so on a Saturday morning UCT sent us its best – advocates Budlender and Gauntlet. We met in the Steve Biko Building, in the boardroom on the ground floor. There were the vice-chancellor and principal of UCT. When they introduced themselves, I knew we had struck a nerve.
The power dynamics were immediately visible. Budlender was scruffy, unshaven in a ruby pink lambswool jersey with a matching cotton shirt. And Gauntlet, oh Gauntlet, not a hair out of place. And there we were, cold and pale plebeians, in yellow T-shirts and torn jeans, telling them we would ruin their client.
The rest is history. Whatever we said to Budlender and Gauntlet that day when the shortlist was announced on September 20, 2007, it read – Price, Hall and De la Rey.
For us justice was done. This would allow a transparent process and the university community would decide for themselves who was best.
We felt victorious. We thought the Senate and Council would never support Price. We were convinced that the odds were stacked against him. For us he was simply “unappointable”. So what is the moral of the story? How the irony is lost on us today! For UCT, “unappointable” is a term that is barren and denuded of its normal meaning. It is actually an expression used to beat extraordinary men and women into a pulp of ordinariness. It is a spade by which the exceptional are dug into graves meant for simpletons. It is an expression used by the mediocre white man to remind the world of his power and authority.
As a former student, I recall many incidents that still haunt me about these endless bounds of whiteness at my alma mater. For whiteness has an insatiable appetite. It is like a bottomless pit that eats up every fibre of your being and, when you are spent, just when you have nothing left to give, it dares you for one more pound of flesh.
I often tell the story of a lecturer who once accused me of submitting a philosophy essay late. Much as I knew I had submitted on time, I thought I could not prove it.
As the oppressed often do, I tempered my protest with some deference. Instead of fighting with no holds barred, I appealed for clemency. He would hear nothing of it. Nor did he seem to care that that one single essay could extend my university stay by another semester.
I was eventually able to show that the difference in the timing was the result of my computer having an older software version. He never apologised to me. He simply said, “Okay, I see what happened. But I must tell you, I don’t know why you are so pedantic. It was such a terrible essay, it was just not well written at all.”
I took what was mine and left his office. Outside, in the corridors, I mastered the courage to take a peek, the mark was 68. It seemed evident to me that he had long marked the essay. As a student who never mistook academic effort for natural dexterity, a pass would have done just fine.
I was angry. What did he mean it was a dismal failure? Why had he put me through so much trauma?
I think he did it for two reasons – to demonstrate power and to say “you are good but not good enough”.
This is what white male privilege does. It tells black people, and women, you may think you are good but you are not good enough. And to make the point we will even appoint a mediocre white man in your place, just to show you we can.
For example, as a black writer I could write you a forest on the policing of black ideas – what I call editorial, if not intellectual, theft.
There is a three-line rule – your writing is always bad but always materially useful. So we will add three opening lines, retain your original ideas and misappropriate your efforts. It really amounts to nothing more than trimming verbosity, breaking up convoluted sentences, removing some definite articles and correcting malapropisms here and there.
But the young, gifted and black child also faces another damning fate. Now that we are all becoming “too educated”, some of those we used to look up to as black intellectuals and Struggle stalwarts are now appearing ordinary and not much above common. So the spears are turned inwards and our regiments are infiltrated by gate-keeping and petty jealousies against rising black talent.
As Barry Gilder puts it: “For some black South Africans who experienced the denigration and denial of dignity of apartheid, there (is) surely an element of ‘seduction’ in suddenly being on equal or even superior terms with their erstwhile detractors.
“And, for many of us, the ability suddenly to be able to hobnob with corporate chief executives and other powerful people must certainly have led us into the temptation of believing that we were suddenly personally ‘special’ and – in this belief – to adopt the attitudes, cultures and habits of our former rulers.
And so even where black people hold power, young people are told they are still not good enough. We frustrate their natural talents, steal their contributions, exploit their brilliance, misappropriate their work and pay them peanuts to add insult.
So it is not that we don’t know that Ramugondo is not the best. We do. But we also know she is willing and able to put in the effort to be just good enough. Sadly, however, we are sending her on a fool’s errand. It is a summit on a slippery slope along which she will find black gate-keepers of fortune, wealth and opportunity. If she passes first-post, the descendants of Cecil J Rhodes will be waiting atop to knock her over the moment she arrives.
And so I wonder if Charles Dickens was right? Black child you are on your own.
Hoveka is a speech-writing specialist in the public service and author of ‘They Think and Speak for Themselves: Memoirs and letters to the children of the ANC’. He writes in his personal capacity.