VERBATIM
Zeblon Vilakazi’s big dream is that Africa cannot simply be a spectator in the age of techological innovation; it must lead, and to lead it must act
O“Fear is not a bad thing in my opinion, because if you don’t have fear then you are going in front of the lion thinking it is a cat ... You can have fear but you need to have motivation, concentration and also in this kind of game, brave” — Everton football club manager Carlo Ancelotti, speaking before the derby match against Liverpool on Saturday. The Toffees have not won a game against the Reds since 2010.
O“The country has now clearly emerged from the second wave. New infections, admissions to hospital and deaths have fallen significantly and continue to decline steadily.” — President Cyril Ramaphosa announces on Sunday that South Africa will move to lockdown level 1.
O“When he [John Steenhuisen] spoke of the possibility of working together with the ANC, he didn’t mention coalitions. He spoke of reaching out to the reformers in the party who are in favour of a pro-growth agenda and seeking their support in backing a reform agenda when tabled in parliament.” — Democratic Alliance chief whip Natasha Mazzone, after the Sunday Times reported that Steenhuisen had said DA is open to a coalition with the ANC. A complaint has been filed with the press ombud.
O“It will be very premature, and I think unrealistic, to think that we’re going to finish with this virus by the end of the year. If the vaccines begin to impact not only on death and not only on hospitalisation, but have a significant impact on transmission dynamics and transmission risk, then I believe we will accelerate toward controlling this pandemic.” — World Health Organisation executive director of emergency services Dr Michael Ryan.
I watched as people — friends, foes, family and strangers alike — celebrated during the so-called “month of love” just past. Some people were shown affection intentionally, loudly and deliberately with grand gestures performed for all to see. The words “I love you” reverberated as lovers of different sexualities, races, classes and genders declared their devotion to each other both in private and in public. But some scoffed at single people (such as myself) and that got me reflecting once again on this thing we call love.
What is love? How do we show it? Who is worthy of it? What social value do we attach to romantic love?
Of course there are different types of love and the meaning differs depending on whether we are using scientific, religious or social definitions. Whatever love means to us, some experience plenty of it while others never experience it at all.
I turned 30 years old last year and I have never been in a mutually romantic relationship. Of course, I have known familial and platonic love — that of my mother, siblings, friends, pastor and teachers — but a truly intimate connection with a partner has eluded me.
Whenever I reveal this about my life, my inquisitors seem to gasp for air as a look of shock or pity infused with a pinch of disgust creeps across their faces. It is as though my worth diminishes on hearing that I have never been “chosen” or found love of the romantic sort. They usually go on to lecture me that I should be more open to falling in love, that it is important, that no human should be without it, and so on.
Never mind that I could have opted not to engage in relationships, that I could have chosen to put my education first or that there are other fundamental reasons for this “unnatural” state of affairs; their disappointment is tangible.
Sigh.
I suppose I should pity their ignorance. Or I should point it out.
People tend to impose their ideas of love (and family or lifestyle) on others, not stopping to consider where others come from, their past experiences or what their motivations are. They might not realise that as a fat, black queer man from the working class, I have had to grapple with the concept of what love means from a very young age. Existing on the periphery and being treated as an appendage because I do not occupy dominant identities has a huge effect on the prospects of love and acceptance, be they romantic or platonic.
Love is intersectional warfare — systemic oppression from racism to ageism, from homophobia to fatphobia, among a whole matrix of domination, matters — who is more deserving of love? Are we all loved equally?
Love is a currency and we do not all have equal access to it. Our identities mitigate and determine what type of love and how much of it we receive. I have always had to contend with the politics of lovability and desirability because, in whatever sphere, they do not come easy for people like me.
The first man to deny me love was my father — it has taken me years of therapy to unpack what that festering wound means. My father woke up one cold morning in 1998 to throw my siblings and I out of his house because he and our then stepmother did not want us in their space any longer. He stuffed our Ghana Must Go/machangani bags without even folding our clothes and then chased us away — he even took a broom to sweep our footsteps off of his yard after informing his ancestors at his gandelo. The symbolism of that act led to many years of dysfunction and a vicious cycle of hurt.
I have spent most of my life wondering why my own dad did not want me. I strongly believe that your own parents’ relationship determines your views and practices of love. If you grow up not seeing healthy relationships, your adult life tends to mirror that.
In my heart of hearts I am aware of how that deep-seated trauma has led me at times to chase after unrequited love and wonder if Freud was right. Has my toxic trait been my insatiable quest to find men that resembled my father? I know how to sit at the feet of a man and beg for love that never comes. I know what it is to run after a man who does not turn around. I know what it feels like to be treated as an experiment or a sex object.
As well as being rejected by my father, I was taught self-hate by a society which has people believing one is only worthy or valuable if you receive and give love in socially acceptable ways. Everyone deserves all kinds of love; however, not receiving it does not make me any less worthy of being human. My worth is not tied to whether other people choose to see it or not. I am just worthy, innately.
To walk in self-love and self-acceptance and attain true inner happiness that is not predicated on discreteness and hiding parts of my being is a choice. I refuse now to beg anyone for anything that I am capable of giving myself, especially love. As the great Toni Morisson said: “Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”
He had been a month in the job when I spoke to the new vice-chancellor (VC) of the University of Witwatersrand, Zeblon
Vilakazi.
He was still as excited about the job as he was when the university council announced in June 2020 that he would be the person taking over from Adam Habib on 1 January this year.
“I arrived at a campus that was empty,” he says. None of the usual welcoming activities that staff members usually hold for new vicechancellors took place, as the muted tone of the second wave lockdown prevailed.
Generally, Vilakazi says, there is less movement on campus in January because students have not yet arrived, but staff members are usually back. Not this year.
“My entire corridor was empty except for my support staff that was there to receive me. That was quite strange,” he says. “It was surreal.”
At that moment it dawned on him that he is a “Covid-19 administrator” of a higher education institution.
But although this unnerving quietness characterised his first month on the job at Wits, it soon gave way to the bustle of campus politics.
For the past two weeks, the Economic Freedom Fighters student command branch at Wits has been holding peaceful protests demanding, among other things, that all students with historical debts be registered.
The student representative council has started a campaign to raise R21million to help fund students who can’t afford to pay their fees and face being financially excluded
Vilakazi told me that the financial crunch the university finds itself in and student debt are just some of the pressing challenges he walked into.
He says the world economy has been severely affected financially by the Covid-19 pandemic and universities are not immune to this crisis.
“That is one of the big challenges we face. How to manage under Covid and also, of course, how do we adequately slice and dice the cake? You have to ensure that you continue the [academic] programme and yet you do not make the university incur unnecessary debt. It’s a tough balancing act.”
The income streams of the university are not big enough, according to Vilakazi, and the reality is that many families have financial difficulties of their own as a result of the pandemic, which means they may fail to sustain the education of their children.
Vilakazi says he expected these complications.
Even though he was exposed to them when he was Wits’s deputy vice-chancellor for research and postgraduate studies, he is acutely aware now that as vice-chancellor, the buck stops with him.
“I was aware of the challenges. As the management team our job is to manage this, we are paid for it. We put our hands up, some of us, to take up these positions in the middle of a Covid crisis. I did not walk into this blindly,” he says. “I am sure we will manage it and, believe it or not, the university will emerge stronger after this. We just have to be a bit efficient and smarter in how we conduct our business.”
After a seven-year stint as a deputy vice-chancellor, the nuclear physicist says he had initially planned to take a sabbatical to clear his head and think about going back to academia.
But, when Habib left, friends and colleagues urged him to apply for the top job.
Those who persuaded him to apply said his time in senior management at Wits meant he had gained enough experience to take the university forward.
Others believed he had the appropriate academic standing and global profile to take Wits to the next level. So Vilakazi applied, and got the job.
Now that he is steering the ship, there are a couple of things that Vilakazi would like to accomplish while at the helm.
The most urgent for him is to see Wits at the centre of driving Africa’s technological innovation in the century to come.
“It’s a big dream, but it can be done.”
He says there is an intellectual challenge for leaders in the education and technological space to ensure that they build institutions that are capable of producing people who can make a meaningful contribution to global knowledge and not just be consumers of all the apps that come from abroad.
“The vision is Wits of the next century long after we are gone. A university that has at least played a part in entering South Africa and the continent into the technological innovation age.
“At least produce a generation of thinkers that will not be spectators in this next frontier of global conflict but be participants in it. If I achieve 10% of it as a VC I will be more than happy. The rest will be taken care of by those that will come after me.”
Vilakazi says Wits has the right tools to achieve this, including its location. The university attracts the “brightest students” in the system, is rated among the top institutions on the continent and also has a pool of “the best candidates on the continent and the world. That is the spark that will take us from our research output, which has been excellent, to now move to the next level of innovation.
“We have built an innovation hub next to Wits — Tshimologong [Digital Innovation Precinct] — that is one of our means of converting some of the African-based knowledge driven systems of solving problems that we face on the African continent.”
He admits he himself is not cut from an innovator’s cloth, but “I know guys who can help”, and what he can do is to put the right policies and strategies in place to see this take off.
The new vice-chancellor says Covid-19 will come and go and although it is important to focus on the challenges that have come with the virus it is also important to plan for the future and not be caught off guard.
“The future is not running away,” he says. “It is waiting for you to either seize it or it will control you.”