EFFECTIVE public relations often goes unseen, working its magic behind the scenes with subtle nudges and suggestions that eventually lead the public at large to believe what the spin doctors want you to believe before the proverbial faecal matter hit the proverbial fan.
Yet, massive bungles abound, the ‘alternative news’ tit bit dropped by one of the brains in the newly crowned Trump administration for example, or the ongoing Ford Kuga malarkey.
But locally, we have a bungle so epic, so short-sighted and blindingly obtuse, that it takes one from ‘uneasy’ to downright nauseous in mere moments.
Over the course of six months last year I, together with Sunday Times investigative journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika, dug deeper and deeper into issues at the University of Zululand, leading to the publication of more than a dozen articles.
We uncovered an extensive fraud syndicate selling marks and degrees and even lecturers sleeping with students as payment for getting an ‘A’.
The university management spent close to R30-million buying and furnishing luxury homes for themselves.
Following extensive conversations with different sources, one was left convinced that at one point between 2008 and 2016, the entire academic system the university uses to record marks was compromised to the extent log-in details for lecturers were being used to give students higher grades for a fee by individuals unknown.
The marks of a former SRC president, who with a faint odour of sour grapes went to court to challenge the installation of newly elected SRC leader Lindelani Duze earlier this year, were upgraded to pass from fail days after a policy change lowering the academic requirements for a student to stand for SRC election.
The list, which reads much like a badly written Telenovella, is endless.
Yet throughout the course of my investigation, the university remained mum – only occasionally challenging my enquiries with requests to reveal where I obtained confidential information.
Wrong questions asked
Instead of addressing the core problems staring them in the face, the university management was more focused on identifying the sources of the leaks.
It stubbornly maintained the exact same narrative and employed the same tactics.
When dealing with the ZO, they simply brushed it off as nonsense, while behind the scenes deploying an army of agents to root out the moles with polygraph tests or one memorable faux pas ‘press conference’ filled with non-answers and bluster.
Last week, The Mercury ran a short front page article informing its readership the Vice Chancellor was in fact under investigation by the Hawks, SA’s top ‘sophisticated’ crime busters.
This time the university, it seems, lost all semblance of self-control, paying upwards of R500 000 for a full page advertisement in the Sunday Times trying to discredit the story as a fabrication.
They even compared it to ‘Trumpesque fake news’.
The Zululand Observer first reported on the charges against Professor Mtose days after pen was put to paper by a complainant at the Mtunzini Police Station in November last year.
The university tried, and failed, to squash the charges by offering him a compromise – withdraw and the charge of theft against him would be withdrawn in return.
He refused and soon the Hawks will come knocking.
Spending a small fortune of students’ money on an advertisement trying to discredit the man smacked of a desperate, futile act.
(Not to mention withdrawing advertising from this newspaper as ‘punishment’ for revealing the rot).
Like any savvy corporation dealing with negative issues, the university fails to grasp that an approach of transparency and of course,
honesty, really is the best policy. The time has come to turn the
dial from ‘defend’ to ‘accept and recover’.
The university is a public institution funded by public funds and its integrity must at all times be above reproach.
Trying to cover the cracks with superglue and a piece of string simply won’t cut it.
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