on universities. In writing this book, I have interspersed my own leadership experiences among those of my eleven colleagues. Based on my direct experiences with students, I bring in the relational aspects of the university leader and students in the years leading up to the crisis and in the period of turmoil up until I resigned as vice-chancellor at the end of September 2016.
Of course I am emotionally and intellectually invested in this study. I do not stand outside the turmoil of 2015–2016. I approach the inquiry with empathetic commitment to my fellow vice-chancellors but also to my students. I am not unaffected by what I hear both from poor students as well as from struggling university leaders. Like all vice-chancellors, I recognise that the students have a point to their struggle, although my own sense of how to achieve their goals is very different from theirs. Clearly I do not enter this study as the detached, clinical, independent outsider; the book will reveal my own passions and commitments, and my ‘being implicated’ within the research process. And yet truth matters, not simply experimental truth but narrative truth: the heart-and-mind accounts of real leaders in crisis situations in which their very lives, and those of their followers, are on the line. This book is not the whole truth – there is no such thing – but a perspective on the truth, and an important one from the rare and relatively unstudied vantage point of the university leader.
Following the approach I took in writing my book Leading for Change,10 I decided to dispense with unnecessary jargon and to focus on communicating what are sometimes complex ideas in everyday language. The crisis in and future of South African universities is too important a topic to cloud or conceal important issues behind the shroud of academic pretence. The use of everyday language does not make research less scholarly; it makes it more accessible, and helps contribute towards public scholarship as well as academic debate.
The sample
All but one of the sample of eleven vice-chancellors were men, of which only two were white. There are too few women leaders of South African universities, and among the few approached for inclusion in this study only one responded positively or at all. The institutions themselves are richly diverse in terms of age, origins, region, racial demographics, politics, and resource profiles. And as indicated in the table on the next page, the status of these university leaders was changing even before this study was completed.
None of the traditional black universities were included in the sample since the purpose of this study was not to investigate those institutions where routine protest cycles were well established and which were bypassed, for the most part, by the violent protests of 2015–2016. For example, the issue of decolonisation would not come up in any serious and sustained manner on the historically black campuses. What happened at the sampled institutions was that their leaders were confronted for the first time by a scale and intensity of protest not seen before and which required extraordinary leadership and management responses. This is not, however, a study of the institutions themselves, but of the leaders of those universities and how they managed and led within their particular environments.
Although the vice-chancellors themselves represent a variety of personality types and a range of leadership styles, they all carry a deep concern and a heavy personal burden in relation to the future of South Africa’s 26 public universities. This concern prompted the vice-chancellors’ engagement with questions such as the following: What does this analysis of the student protests foretell about the prospects for vibrant and viable institutions of higher education in the southernmost region of the continent? Given that so many African universities lost their intellectual vibrancy and social value in the post-colonial period, can South Africa expect to be different? South Africa is home to some of the world’s leading research and teaching universities, attracting more and more African students from north of the Limpopo. Will the student protests destroy or enhance these institutions of higher learning? That is the key question that should be kept in mind in the course of reading this book – and to which the final chapter hazards a response.
| University and leader | Total enrolments(2014) | Black* | White |
| Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) Professor Prins Nevhutalu (placed on leave) | 33 186 | 29 024(87,5%) | 4 162(12,5%) |
| Durban University of Technology (DUT) Professor Ahmed Bawa (resigned) | 26 472 | 25 707(97,1%) | 765 (2,9%) |
| Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) Professor Derrick Swartz (stepping down, 2017) | 26 510 | 20 162(76,1%) | 6 348(23,9%) |
| North-West University (NWU)Professor Dan Kgwadi | 63 135 | 45 354(71,8%) | 17 781(29,2%) |
| Rhodes UniversityProfessor Sizwe Mabizela | 7 519 | 4 830 (64,2%) | 2 689(36,8%) |
| Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) Professor Lourens van Staden | 56 785 | 54 027(95,1%) | 2 758(4,9%) |
| University of Cape Town (UCT) Dr Max Price (end of term, 2017) | 26 357 | 18 120(68,7%) | 8 237(21,3%) |
| University of the Free State (UFS) Professor Jonathan Jansen (resigned) | 31 032 | 22 040(71,0%) | 8 992(29.0%) |
| University of Johannesburg (UJ) Professor Ihron Rensburg (stepping down, 2017) | 49 789 | 44 427(89,2%) | 5 362(10,8%) |
| University of Pretoria (UP)Professor Cheryl de la Rey | 56 376 | 32 215(57,1%) | 24 161(42,9%) |
| University of the Western Cape (UWC)Professor Tyrone Pretorius | 20 582 | 19 473(94,6%) | 1 109(5,4%) |
| University of the Witwatersrand (WITS)Professor Adam Habib | 32 721 | 25 152(76,8%) | 7 569(23,2%) |
Source: Enrolment data from Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS). Available at: http://chet.org.za/data/sahe-open-data.
*‘Black’ includes African, coloured, and Indian students. The total enrolments include students in distance education, almost exclusively black, offered by institutions such as NWU (47% contact white in 2012) and UP (52% contact white in 2012) in which the contact numbers are more white. The racial distribution of students also does not reflect campus-specific racial numbers or dynamics. For example, the Potchefstroom campus of NWU is largely white, and the Bloemfontein campus of UFS is more integrated than its virtually all-black Qwaqwa campus; such differences relate to the 1990 mergers and incorporation of former black and white colleges and universities.
Interviewed vice-chancellors
Ahmed Bawa Durban University of Technology (DUT)
Cheryl de la Rey University of Pretoria (UP)
Adam Habib University of the Witwatersrand (Wits)
Dan Kgwadi North-West University (NWU)
Sizwe Mabizela Rhodes University (RU)
Prins Nevhutalu Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT)
Tyrone Pretorius University of the Western Cape (UWC)
Max Price University of Cape Town (UCT)
Ihron Rensburg University of Johannesburg (UJ)
Derrick Swartz Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU)
Lourens van Staden Tshwane University of Technology (TUT).
Abbreviations and acronyms
ANC African National Congress
BFLF Black First Land First
CHE Council on Higher Education
CPUT Cape Peninsula University of Technology
DA Democratic Alliance
DASO Democratic Alliance Student Organisation
DHET
