Plucky chancellor serves on the front line
Sizwe Mabizela puts himself in harm’s way at Rhodes University to stand up for his beliefs and those of his students, writes Adrienne Carlisle. And sometimes their beliefs clash
AT his inauguration in February last year, Rhodes University vicechancellor Sizwe Mabizela asked who in their right mind would accept such a position, given the challenges universities faced.
And boy, has this guy found himself between a rock and a hard place.
#Feesmustfall protests still loom large in the national memory, but at Rhodes they have been overtaken by #RUReferenceList, a combative protest against what the students have termed a prevailing rape culture at the university.
Mabizela predicted that protest would be part of the future of the university. At his inauguration he characterised the university as “an institution animated in large part by a progressive and innovative spirit, and there is an appetite for a future characterised by a culture of ‘business unusual’ ”.
#Feesmustfall certainly proved him right.
But, while other panicked vicechancellors secured interdicts against students or forked out millions for private security on campus, the maverick Mabizela was in the thick of a protest he embraced.
He made concessions where necessary, squeezed the government for extra funding, blocked police from coming onto campus and was frequently seen sitting on pavements hashing out ideas and issues with his students.
His discomfort is not with protest in general nor, in this case, the reason behind it. “It’s youthful idealism at work. Youthful impatience is about wanting things to happen here and now. It jolts us into action. We get comfortable and complacent without it. I support absolutely the issues being raised about sexual violence and rape.”
But towards the end of April this year, the usually energetic Mabizela is grey and weary after a week of protest. His vibrancy is diminished. His eyes brim with tears of exhaustion and he is not as articulate as usual.
He has been without sleep for 72 hours.
This particular week-from-hell began with a student dying in her digs of natural causes. At most universities, other staff would take care of what needed to be done, from notifying the family to comforting and counselling family and friends.
But Mabizela takes this all on himself.
“What other VC does that?” asks Rhodes director of special projects Sue Smailes, who works closely with Mabizela. “He visits every student who ends up in hospital. What VC does that? He cares deeply for each and every student. He has such compassion and humility. It is rare and very special.”
Mabizela’s story is an unusual one. He was born in Baldaskraal, a village near Ladysmith in KwaZuluNatal, in 1962. He and his four siblings grew up in a loving but humble home. His mother, Sibongile, was a nurse and his late father, Christopher, a teacher. Both instilled in their children a passion for education. “Education was very important in our home. Our father made it clear to us that he did not have material wealth to bequeath us, but he would give us every opportunity to acquire an education.”
Mabizela himself eschews material gain. His lovely home, owned by the university and previously filled with the valuable heirlooms of previous vice-chancellors, is now comparatively bare of luxury. He annually donates a sizable chunk of his salary to a bursary fund for those who would otherwise battle to afford university fees.
His understanding of protest politics comes from his own activist past as a student at Fort Hare in the 1980s when he, along with many other students, battled apartheid and the homeland policies that saw Fort Hare consigned to the nominally independent Ciskei. He is not new to student confrontation with armed police and spent more than one night in the Alice police cells in the early 1980s.
The now-iconic photos of Mabizela placing himself in harm’s way between armed police and protesting Rhodes students are one reason many of his students refer to him as Tata. On social media they have been unstinting in their expressions of love and appreciation for a man who is always accessible and ready to go that extra mile for them.
Last year he offered to personally stand surety for any academically deserving student who stood to be excluded for financial reasons.
However, although Mabizela aligns himself with the #RUReferenceList battle to combat rape culture, he finds the publication of the names of alleged rapists deeply problematic, and something he cannot reconcile himself to.
“[The campaign leaders] have been so single-minded in pursuit of their goals that they have consistently undermined the rights of others,” he says.
The names of 11 men — past and present students of the university — were anonymously published on social media, accused of having raped or sexually assaulted women.
Mabizela has happily acceded to almost every demand, including beefing up the university’s response to rape and support for victims, and the creation of a democratically appointed team to interrogate all policies to do with sexual harassment and assault. But, he says, he won’t automatically exclude all the men on the list from the university, as it would deny them due process and force him to act outside the law.
The list sparked fury on campus. Barricades preventing access to campus went up, lectures and tutorials were disrupted and some of the 11 men named were hunted down, held against their will, questioned, humiliated — then released only after Mabizela intervened.
And this has angered activists. There are three issues on which they have taken him to task:
Mabizela and members of management physically placed themselves between one of the “accused” on the list and a group of angry students;
He was filmed pushing a student who sat on a barricade that he wanted to move to the side of the road; and
Mabizela was instrumental in seeking an interdict to prohibit unlawful behaviour such as kidnapping, assault and intimidation during the protest action.
As a result of their vice-chancellor’s actions, the sense of betrayal among Rhodes students is tangible. Some have dubbed him a rape apologist and castigated him on social media for putting the rights of perpetrators above those of their victims.
“This shows his real attitude to our struggles,” said students on social media, where a video of the vice-chancellor pushing the student was shared thousands of times.
Mabizela has apologised profusely and repeatedly for the incident.
“It was completely unintentional. I will regret it for the rest of my life. I was focused on one thing. I would never do anything of the sort in the normal course. I am human. I make mistakes.”
But he is unapologetic for protecting those named on the list.
“I would never protect a rapist. It is a horrific crime. But I will defend anyone’s right — even my worst enemy — to be afforded fair and just process.
“No one can say he is a rapist until he is charged, prosecuted and convicted. Until then he is just one of my students.”
Smailes says that bringing the interdict had hurt Mabizela to the core but he had been unable to align himself with actions that saw the rights of others being infringed.
Mabizela is passionate about the academic project. The educational opportunities provided to him at some cost by his parents and others were something the young Mabizela grasped with both hands.
After matriculating at St Chad’s High School in Ladysmith, he went on to do a BSc, BSc honours and master’s degrees in mathematics at Fort Hare.
He then received funding to pursue his doctoral studies in maths at Pennsylvania State University in the US. His PhD thesis, “Parametric Approximation”, was completed in 1991. He immediately sought to use his education to educate others and lectured in maths at the University of Cape Town from 1992 to 2004, by which time he was deputy head of the department. In 2004 he took charge of the maths department at Rhodes. In 2008, Mabizela was appointed deputy vice-chancellor and in November 2014 he was appointed as the sixth, and first African, vicechancellor of Rhodes.
He says maths continues to facilitate everything he does. “It is part of my life and has been since I was a little boy. It is stimulating and challenging. It makes me think systematically and insist on reason. If you can’t justify it, don’t say it.”
The other things that sustain him are an odd mixture of family and habit. He says he relies heavily on the support and love of his wife, Dr Phethiwe Matutu, and his daughters Zama and Zinzi. Reading, jogging at dawn, sudoku and saying his rosary every morning also help.
Smailes describes him as a workaholic and an inspiring, gentle, passionate soul who has the love and support of almost everyone who works for him.
“He is off-the-charts bright,” she says. “Absolutely logical, utterly reasoned, truly brilliant. He reads all the time. He gets to the heart of an issue immediately.
“And yet he has this enormous humility. His moral compass is firm and he believes absolutely in the constitution and the rule of law. One could not hope to work for and with a better human being.”
Since asking that key question at his inauguration barely 14 months ago, Mabizela has provided his own answer: his role as vice-chancellor gives him the leverage to serve the university, the nation and humanity. “I accepted because I am motivated and driven by a desire to make a difference,” he says.
The usually energetic Mabizela is grey and weary after a week of protest. His vibrancy is diminished I would never protect a rapist. It is a horrific crime. But I will defend anyone’s right to be afforded fair and just process