MORE than a decade ago the University of Zululand hit the headlines as an institution where fake degrees and questionable student admissions were the shady stock-in-trade deals between students and corrupt staff.
The whole affair was in the event ineptly handled at all levels, revealing glaring systemic weaknesses in the institution’s management, governance, admission and registration of students.
The role of the Council, the University’s highest policy-making body, was not properly interpreted by the majority of its members, many of whom pursued their own ambitions when attempting to micro-manage the university staff, undermining the Rector’s office, and in some cases blatantly promoting their own very personal and political agendas.
Instead of sculpting visions for the future of the university, the focus was rather on petty matters which had little to do with education priorities.
In April 2011 Minister Blade Nzimande stepped in to correct what was a real mess and simply dissolved the fractious Council, appointing Prof Chris de Beer, an academic lawyer from the University of Pretoria, to administer the place.
This in itself caused a furore, De Beer being branded ‘an Afrikaner outsider foisted on the institution by a Zulu Communist’.
In the event this odd couple’s efforts have indubitably borne fruit.
Removing the rot
Prof De Beer’s forensic probes over thirty months implicated 30 strategically placed staffers who had colluded with students in totally unacceptable, corrupt practices. Control over blank degree and diploma certificates was non-existent, exam marks were manipulated, under-the-table fees secured routinely non-admissible drop-out registration.
Disciplinary steps were taken and criminal activity was reported to the SAPS, trusting that prosecution would follow.
Financial management was overhauled.
The new Council should resist the temptation to regard the Rector and senior staff as mere functionaries, as former Councils tried to do, and to realise that its main task is to encourage imaginative new policies which can be implemented in this part of the world.
The summary dissolution of the previous Council by Minister Nzimande, his patience utterly exhausted with them, should be a salutary warning to super ambitious Councillors who might not appear to put the university’s interests above their own.
It is vital too, that academics fully buy into any new development strategies through greater consultation than previously.
Unizulu is after all, a university and not a business in the strict sense of the word, although of course it must always be run in an efficient manner.
Unizulu should continue to strive to reshape its academic offerings to ensure it appropriately serves the needs of the region and the community.
