WOMEN RULE ROOST AT UCT
New chair Babalwa Ngonyama in hot seat
● Babalwa Ngonyama took the helm of the University of Cape Town council at a time when Covid-19 had shut down its ivy-draped campus and turbulence about the university’s vice-chancellor was roiling senior faculty.
But uncertainty doesn’t intimidate UCT’s first female chair of the council in a century, whose cleareyed determination is needed to steer the university through external and internal storms.
Ngonyama, CEO and founder of the JSE-listed firm Sinayo Securities, has confronted the unknown since she was nine years old in a school uniform and polished shoes.
Her grandmother exposed her while young to difficult situations, forging the independence and confidence that have marked Ngonyama’s career, she says.
One Friday her grandmother, who taught at her school, told the grade 2 pupil to walk 10km home without her to fetch clothes for the next week, and to be back by Sunday. “I had to cross those rivers and mountains alone, gripped by fear,” she remembers.
Her grandmother, as her mentor, gave her strategies to stay safe: look wide, listen for movement and, if she felt in danger, wait for someone and ask for help.
“She died when I was about to write my grade 12 but she left me self-sufficient,” says Ngonyama, who was by then community-minded.
“Whilst I am fighting for my own survival, I try to enhance the lives of others.”
That is why Ngonyama said yes when UCT first called, back in 2016, in the midst of the Rhodes Must Fall turmoil, asking her to chair its finance committee.
Ngonyama, who the year before had started her own stockbroking firm — the first women-led blackowned firm on the JSE since its inception — consulted her partners in Sinayo about taking this on.
“Either we sit here and throw stones, or we lead that change,” she said to them.
“I was asked to chair council during [another] time of great change: Covid-19 and the fourth industrial revolution are upon us, and it is challenging,” says the 45-year-old, who took up the mantle on July 1.
Meeting her on Zoom late on a Friday afternoon, when much of SA (or at least Cape Town) is winding down, was invigorating, a blast of energy blowing Zoom cobwebs away. Her headquarters and home are in Johannesburg but UCT was the backdrop on her screen.
Milestones
Covid has changed how the world operates. And at UCT “transformation is the ethos”, says Ngonyama.
UCT’s vice-chancellor, Dr Mamokgethi Phakeng, reported in August: “Within two years the deanery at UCT has transformed to a point where, out of the eight, five of them are black, and out of eight, four of them are women.”
UCT is ranked first in Africa in four out of the five major world university rankings. The university’s commitment to research, excellence, transformation and inclusivity makes it a magnet for talent, says Ngonyama.
On research, for example, it offers more than the usual sabbatical tenure system and conference funding. A fully FirstRand Foundation-funded Black Academic Advancement Programme supports a three-year sabbatical for black academics to obtain their doctorates.
“We are not looking at ticking boxes [on transformation]. We are building a strong foundation of excellence,” says the council chair, noting that the university has nurtured “home-grown talent”, including the deans of commerce, science, law and humanities.
Navigating the culture
In February, UCT released its Inclusivity Survey findings, the first step in a programme that will run until 2023. The introduction of the gender-neutral title Mx and of gender-neutral bathrooms are signs of the “targeted and specific interventions” to come.
The university wants to create global citizens, prepared for “a world that is increasingly uncertain, disruptive, unequal and disturbing”, says Ngonyama.
The old mantra of “knowledge and skills” is no longer enough.
“Teaching and learning at UCT encourages students to critically examine their own traditions and beliefs, recognise their community and fellowship with human beings around the world, and consider what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes,” she says. “The key to great leadership is listening.”
When she started as council chair, Ngonyama spoke to 40 or 50 stakeholderPs aRt UCT “to understand the issues at UCT and how they think they should be resolved”, before releasing her first public statement on July 21.
“I did not walk in and think one size fits all. I respect that UCT is a unique organisation which has got its own needs and its own culture. I need to make sure I can navigate that culture,” she says.
“The interests of the university must be first and foremost in whatever you do. You cannot bring your own personal ideological views.”
Allegations of bullying
Her leadership style has developed in the roles she has held in boardrooms and corporations over nearly 20 years.
“By 29 I was already playing serious leadership roles,” says Ngonyama, a chartered accountant with an MBA, who serves on the boards of corporations and nonprofits.
“On those boards I learnt how to become strategic in driving an organisation.” At home, she and her husband Loyiso hone their skills by parenting three sons, now 15, 20 and 25 years old.
Ngonyama’s approach at UCT is to be as consultative, decisive and transparent as possible.
She could not yet release specifics about how UCT is dealing with allegations against the vicechancellor’s leadership, which gave rise in 2019 to complaints about an institutional culture of bullying.
Phakeng’s conduct reportedly prompted 30 UCT staff members to complain to the UCT ombud, who herself lodged a complaint against the vicechancellor in her 2019 report.
“This matter is being handled through an ongoing internal process. Once concluded, the university will be able to provide a full update,” says Ngonyama.
On July 20, Phakeng and her four colleagues on the executive said in a statement: “We acknowledge that there have been tensions in the executive, much of it has been resolved and we remain committed to working as a team.”
Ngonyama noted in her first statement that the office of the ombud will be strengthened and monthly meetings will take place between it and the chair.
“We are making sure we hold the executive accountable and the vice-chancellor, as the head, must be accountable to council. We are playing a strong oversight role.” But the council must “be careful not to overstep” its duties and must respect the role of the executive in running the university from day to day, she says.
“We don’t believe that we should be asking the executive to sign agreements.
“We will not allow individual agendas to undermine the university … we want a robust and consultative institutional culture.”
She says she believes that encouraging people to speak out, and listening to dissenting voices, are central to UCT’s vision of “unleashing potential”.
On the role of students — whose demands erupted publicly during the Fees Must Fall protests — she is clear: UCT must, and is, building a strong partnership between students, the council and the executive because students should not have to fight to be heard.
“As council we are empowering our student representatives. We want them to participate and contribute more meaningfully … to ensure that we understand their issues much earlier, that we engage them and try to resolve them in an amicable way.”
Ngonyama says: “We think that we could have resolved that issue of Fees Must Fall much better had we been proactive and respected each other.”
Finishing the academic year without compromising the wellbeing of staff and students is the priority.
“We were able to identify the most vulnerable students and have about 2,000 students back on campus,” she says.
The surge in digitally facilitated learning at UCT is one of the changes most likely to stay, post-Covid. “We will bring students back at some point, but I don’t think all will come back.
“With the fourth industrial revolution, UCT had started to invest in remote learning and it meant we could move fast [during lockdown],” Ngonyama says. The university will accelerate investment in this. UCT negotiated free data for some of its websites with four mobile networks, delivered print materials to those with limited network coverage and even dropped off laptops for its students.
Financial stress
These unexpected costs and the struggle to collect fees when people’s incomes have been slashed have increased UCT’s financial burden. Falling donor funds, bursaries, income from foreign students and loss of fees from empty residences all add up.
“At UCT you pay for value and if you do not get service, you do not pay,” says Ngonyama. But parents and students have demonstrated a commitment to pay fees, coming forward to negotiate payments.
The university has made exceptions to its normal requirements: students who have not paid fees in full may still register for 2021, and students who are not coping have been allowed to reduce, change or postpone courses without paying penalties.
The financial stress has raised fear among UCT staff, however, about long-term prospects. “Some staff are worried about job security and wanting to migrate,”
We are making sure we hold the executive accountable … the vicechancellor … must be accountable to council
We could have resolved that issue of Fees Must Fall much better had we been proactive and respected each other
says the council chair, noting that UCT has enough reserves but tight discipline and smart capital allocation decisions will be required to manage costs.
Ngonyama should know. She chaired the UCT finance committee from 2016-2020 and sat on the remuneration committee.
“If you want to know what matters [in an institution], look at how it remunerates and incentivises its staff. That was the beginning of my understanding what makes the university tick.”
Coaching graduates
Her career took off when she joined Deloitte as a partner in its financial services department, after graduating from the University of Transkei and working for audit firms.
From early on she supported the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants and served as a director of the Financial Services Board, and on the board of the Eastern Cape Development Corporation.
A former financial director of Sifaka holdings, she co-founded the African Women Chartered Accountants organisation. She is a fellow of the African Leadership Initiative SA and completed the Women in Leadership Programme at Harvard University.
Every year Sinayo mentors about 60 university graduates in workplace skills, mostly women in finance, under its Project Funda. Ngonyama provides a role model.
“I met and worked with people who have moved big companies, who have shifted the dial. I personally have also contributed to moving big JSE-listed entities forward,” says the woman who got Patrice Motsepe to invest 49% in Sinayo.
‘A public resource’
She has contributed to global operations as the lead independent director with companies such as Impala Platinum and Barloworld.
“The operations of Barloworld in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the business in Russia were especially challenging … but we successfully navigated through,” says Ngonyama.
Impala Platinum operates in the difficult environment of Zimbabwe and as far away as Canada.
“For Aspen, we withdrew from Venezuela, opened new markets in China and competed in the difficult European markets,” says Ngonyama, the audit committee chairperson and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
She can make tough decisions. Letting go of a CEO and firing a director on a board “who was not performing” have been among the hardest she has taken, guided by the principles PR of being “fair, impersonal and promoting the wellbeing of the organisation and its stakeholders”.
When it comes to UCT, the council has to account to the public, says the council chair.
“The university is a resource owned by the public and its people, and I respect that deeply.”