Top jobs require learning, skills and industry

BLADE Nzimande’s recent statement that there are too many white male professors at the University of Cape Town gives credence to those who claimed the issue over the Rhodes statue was a smokescreen precursor for Nzimande’s transformation plan for universities where the staff is too white.

He mouths the usual platitudes describing the transformation he wishes for UCT, including for the university to be non-racial when his proposal to remove professors because they are white screams racism. He then bemoans poor conditions at our technical institutes and blames the poor quality of staff for this situation.

That UCT – one of our flagship universities – is ranked so highly in international ratings is because the university employs only the best academics in their field. I know that in science and engineering, UCT does not employ academics as professors unless they have either an A or B rating, which means they are the best.

These ratings have nothing to do with race; to qualify for an A rating requires not only a superior intellect, but a proven record of research resulting in so many publications that the researcher achieves international status in that field. So these highly rated white male professors at UCT have achieved their status by hard work and dedication.

Just where Nzimande thinks he will find equivalent black South African replacements for these whites, only he knows, because there are none. However relevant the argument that apartheid is to blame, or universities are too Eurocentric, it provides no solution to his problem.

And now that xenophobia seems a permanent part of our landscape, those highly qualified black, nonSouth African academics who have been used to replace whites will be reluctant to risk their lives to fill these posts.

The problem in South Africa is our government appears not to understand that with a position there comes an activity and a history.

One cannot “legislate” someone into a professorship or position as chief executive; these are demanding positions requiring talent, hard work and years of experience.

A glance at Eskom and most of the departments supposedly running the country will illustrate that being a good, well-connected cadre is clearly no substitute.

Nzimande has spent sufficient time in academia to know this; any guess as to why he is doing this to UCT and, no doubt, after that, Stellenbosch, Wits et al?

Someone wrote in a Saturday paper that the principal of UCT, Max Price, has gone to a secret location for a backbone transplant so that he can better bend over backwards; hopefully there are others at UCT who will stop Nzimande from turning this continent’s best university into the academic Bafana Bafana of Africa.

C B ROGERS

Durban