Wishing Habib well
WITS University vice-chancellor Adam Habib has had a challenging time of it since he took over from Loyiso Nongxa in June 2013. When he took over, it seemed the greatest conflict at the institution was that many of its academics thought it was poorly governed.
A survey of its academic staff had reflected a considerable concern with its management’s distance from and inability to hear both staff and student concerns. It was described as an institution in a complex crisis that threatened the success of the academic project and its own future. Meanwhile, a recent strike by Nehawu members had caused Nongxa some distress. He’d worried about Wits’s reputation.
Habib, however, didn’t seize upon that report or the strike as an indication of Nongxa’s failure, or a failure of Wits’s management. Instead, he looked forward to the good effects of a turnaround strategy under new leadership. Among his plans was to secure and prioritise funding, with Wits having appointed a task team to consider benchmarking academics’ salaries against those at six of the country’s leading universities.
It’s not clear what has become of those plans because Habib’s attention over the past two years has rather been on students and the rapidly changing political environment which has put Wits at the epicentre of significant strife. It has been up to Habib to take on the role of juggler, trying to manage students, academics, funders, the alumni, the government and, increasingly, the political left. To his credit, he seems to be doing rather well.
And now he has come up with what is probably the most progressive idea certainly of the past two weeks: to poll students about the protests. This could either go very well, and allow what we assume is a small group of anarchists and opportunists to be separated from those students with genuine concerns about their fees and prospects for completing their studies. Or it could help propel the protests into an even greater vortex, particularly if it threatens those very opportunists.
We wish Habib well. He has one of the toughest jobs in the country.