The fate of the University of South Africa (UNISA) hangs in the balance after a court order stopped Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande from announcing who would take control of the 150-year-old institution.
A damning 300-page report completed in March this year, recommended that the university be placed under administration and the current vice chancellor, Professor Puleng LenkaBula, be relieved of her duties.
Court stops announcement
Nzimande commissioned Professor Themba Mosia from the University of Pretoria to compile the report in September last year. In it are scathing allegations of maladministration, financial misconduct, tender irregularities, and intimidation and bullying at the highest levels of leadership.
“Millions of rands are thrown into a bottomless pit at UNISA Enterprises (Pty) Ltd. It is blatantly clear that the entity has failed to achieve the mandate given to it,” said Mosia’s report.
Nzimande was set to make the announcement about who would manage UNISA on 6 October, but the university’s council filed an urgent application on 4 October with the Pretoria High Court to interdict the announcement. The next day, 5 October, Judge Harshila Kooverjie signed an order prohibiting Nzimande from doing that.
Judge Kooverjie’s order referred to another order issued in August prohibiting Nzimande from taking any actions on the report’s recommendations until two separate applications challenging it (both from UNISA leadership) were finalised.
“UNISA has always maintained that the report of the Independent Assessor is fundamentally flawed, and its recommendations totally misplaced. For that reason, the university has taken the report on legal review to be set aside,” UNISA said in a statement issued on 6 October.
Expedited matter
Staff and students from the university have vocalised their discontent with Judge Kooverjie’s decision.
“UNISA council and management was afforded a special privilege of having their matter on 5 October 2023 heard and enrolled within less than 24 hours. The court showed a historical efficiency in light of other urgent applications not being afforded the same privileges,” the aggrieved parties said in a letter sent to the office of Gauteng Province’s Deputy Judge President.
These syndicates see our institutions as cash cows
The letter, seen by staff at local newspaper The Star, insinuates that the awarding of honorary doctorates to Constitutional Chief Justice Raymond Zondo and his deputy Mandisa Maya in September this year was a bid by UNISA to curry favour with the courts.
In a statement on 16 October, UNISA categorically denied this.
“It appears at best to be a petition by faceless [or even fake] people masquerading as UNISA staff and students, who are just on a frolic of their own; and who are advancing their own petty, narrow, and factional interests, working with their embedded and ‘hired guns’ in the media.”
It went further, claiming that it besmirches the chief justice and his deputy.
“Any insinuation that with these awards, the university was attempting to bring the judiciary closer to itself in light of its legal battle with the minister is silly, preposterous, and slanderous. It also undermines the intelligence and integrity of the chief justice and the deputy chief justice,” the statement said.
UNISA, the continent’s largest open distance learning institution, has faced growing criticism ranging from outrage over the so-called ‘laptop scandal’ and allegations of sexual harassment against its registrar, to questions about the quality of the university’s qualifications.
UNISA’s reputation has undergone a beating, along with South Africa’s tertiary education sector.
“The Post-School Education and Training sector has been plagued by corruption, maladministration, and capture by some unscrupulous individuals. Minister Nzimande is committed to root out all instances of these ills,” Ishmael Mnisi, spokesperson for the Department of Higher Education tells The Africa Report.
“This phenomenon finds expression within our institutions of higher learning as targets by criminal syndicates assisted often by the employees of our institutions. These syndicates see our institutions as cash cows,” Mnisi says.
News of UNISA’s downfall follows a troubling trend within South Africa’s tertiary institutions.
Examples like the allegations of corruption at the University of Mpumalanga and the acts of violence against the vice chancellor of Fort Hare University have raised serious concerns about ‘institutional capture’ in the country.
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