O’Connell takes talents to Pretoria
CENTRE for Curating the Archive director Siona O’Connell is saddened to be leaving UCT and wishes things could have been different.
O’Connell said she is set to join the University of Pretoria (UP) after receiving a retrenchment package deal from UCT earlier this year.
Speaking about leaving UCT, O’Connell said: “I am saddened to be leaving UCT and I wish things could have been different, but at the same time in many ways I have flourished despite the adversity I faced.”
Last year, O’Connell received hundreds of hate e-mails and phone calls after she wrote a column for the Cape Times’s sister newspaper, the Cape Argus, raising questions about transformation at UCT.
In the Cape Argus article, O’Connell wrote: “My experience is not the exception, given that UCT’s alarming academic staffing figures illustrate just how poorly this university has transformed. By 2013, the number of black academics at UCT was 48 out of a total of 1 405. There is not a single ‘black African’ South African woman who is a full professor at UCT.”
She would not be pressed to comment on transformation at UCT yesterday.
As a student as well as a UCT staffer, O’Connell has used her time at the university to draw attention to her interests, which include land reform and the local clothing and textile industry.
She said her work about how we live in the wake of slavery, colonialism and apartheid will continue, regardless of where she works.
UCT spokesperson Kylie Hatton said O’Connell’s decision to leave was her own.
“The faculty requested her to reconsider, but she indicated that she wished to leave. The university wishes her all the best in her new position.”
Hatton said the article O’Connell wrote is unrelated to her leaving.