Troubled campus slammed

THE University of Durban-Westville was described as "ungovernable" by former vice chancellor Jairam Reddy on the eve of his departure to head South Africa's national commission on higher education.

A presidential commission agrees, saying in a report published this month: "We question whether it would have been possible to govern the campus effectively given the threat of anarchy constantly hung over their heads by staff association leaders".

The university has just reopened to staff after two weeks of mass meetings, protests and marches sparked by publication of the inquiry into years of trouble. Acting vice chancellor Marcus Ballintulo said the management committee and the senate would soon decide when students could resume their studies.

Meanwhile, university managers will continue with planned disciplinary proceedings against the six Combined Staff Association leaders it suspended on the commission's recommendation, and five students who had restraining orders issued against them.

"There was a degree of tension between Comsa and management, and students and management, before the release of the report," a staff member said. "There was also growing unease about the release of the report."

The tensions spilled over into violence immediately after the report was made public by education minister Sibusiso Bengu. Students staged several meetings, protests, and a class boycott during the week before last, forcing the university to shut its doors.

Police were called in force one day, but university security staff managed to contain the angry students, although a missile hit acting vice principal Pitika Ntuli on the head. Later, hundreds of students stormed the main security gate and stoned police and campus security guards.

There was even a hunger strike by the five "suspended" student leaders, who said they were "prepared to put their lives on the line for their inalienable right to education".

The university's managers have welcomed the commission's report as "constructive", and the Academic Staff Association, which represents 250 of the university's 400 academics, also supported it.

ASA president Kanthan Pillay said members respected the commission's findings and supported the university's closure "in order to keep the academic programme on track".

The report paints vivid pictures of fearful professors facing armed and angry students and staff during anti-management uprisings over the past two years; staff and students intimidated; university leaders taken hostage, individuals being attacked in vicious and inaccurate pamphlets; offices being ransacked and homes broken into; tyres slashed; confidential files stolen and physical threats made.

Equally compelling are its descriptions of worried administrators, "almost wholly Indian by culture", threatened by changes both to their privileges and positions and banded together in a "closed circle" reinforced by friendships and family and business ties, desperately resisting efforts to make the university more democratic and representative.

In its main report the commission, comprising advocate Johann Gautschi, Durban attorney Linda Zama and University of Natal medical professor Jerry Coovadia, traces the history of UDW over the past 11 years. There are a further 28 volumes of evidence, some of which will not be made public and one that will be sent to the attorney-general recommending criminal prosecutions.

The university has sent a copy of the report to its lawyers to scan for disciplinary action, and begun acting on its recommendations. A further copy has been handed to South Africa's National Intelligence Agency for investigation - probably into political subversion.

"Throughout the 11 years (of transition from the apartheid era) the balance between good governance and destabilisation was always an issue. Governance, as represented by statutorily empowered bodies - council, management, senate and the student representative council - progressively lost the fight against destabilisation and its bedfellows - manipulation, intimidation, violence and anarchy," the report reads.

It lays blame for the university's troubles on Comsa, set up in 1986 to represent all staff. Most directly it brands three Comsa leaders as disruptive influences on the campus.

The report says Comsa evolved from a broad association championing the cause of transformation into "a small clique of campus politicians whose rhetoric and initiatives are often more suited to revolution than evolution, and whose activities are the major cause of campus problems over the last three to four years".

The association's leaders, it adds, developed a pattern of destabilisation comprising several stages. First, a development would be seen as threatening to Comsa members. The cause of the threat would be identified - usually a manager or a person disagreeing with the association.

The person would then be targeted for attack, first through defamatory pamphlets, and then at a mass meeting called to protest the threat and seek his or her resignation. Next, the individual would be offered a compromise. Intimidation in a variety of forms would follow. Finally, there would be mass mobilisation, often resulting in violence.

Comsa chairman Prea Banwari slammed the report. The association, along with students, refused to give evidence to the commission.

The report also criticised the media, saying biased and uncritical reporting contributed to problems on campus and damaged the reputations of the university and some staff.

The commission was less harsh on students, naming only two SRC leaders as virtually impossible to deal with. The report says students were often manipulated into troublemaking by Comsa.