Maxwele's unedited and unexpurgated letter to Wally Mbhele - former editor

Chumani Maxwele

In today's Sunday Independent Mr Wally Mbhele, one of the influencial newspaper editors in South Africa, published my letter as a response to UCT's Prof Tim Crown article on August 7, notwithstanding very short version thereof. Here I am publishing my original letter to Sunday Independent. Please, anyone who knows Prof Tim Crowe send this to him.

Dear Editor, Mr Mbhele.

UCT's Emeritus Professoer Tim Crowe in his “Let’s ask the hard questions and build UCT together”, August 07, 2016. Makes many claims about Prof Mangcu’s article which appeared in this paper on July 31. Prof Crowe makes a claim that Prof Mangcu “…continues with his practice of maligning unidentified racists based on their undocumented racists acts.” This alone makes Prof Crowe a racist denialist in the same line with Holocaust denialist.

I am not sure whether to call Prof Crowe arrogant or ignorant. Well, he has already stated that he is a retired UCT Professor and he is an active alumina of UCT. It is safe to say that Prof Crowe is no longer aware about what is happening at UCT now now that he is retired.

In the following lines I am identifying the “unidentified” and I am documenting the “undocumented” according to Prof Crowe. The names below are the names of White Professors that Prof Mangcu has been writing about in relation to UCT's racism. They are documented in his seven-page letter of “Grievance Against Nicoli Nattrass” to Dr Max Price. I have the letter in my position, if Prof Crowe want it or anyone else, I am willing to give it to them in the spirit of fight against racism at UCT. I have a paper trail of e-mails in relation this matter between Prof Mangcu and racist Prof Natrass. Equally, I am keen to give it away to anyone who is interested. Just in case we need to let Prof Crowe know that cases of racism have been documented. On the 2014-10-17, a UCT Black PhD student who was making a proposal presentation was “shocked and upset” by the insults from Prof Jeremy Seekings, the husband of Prof Natrass. In a letter to Prof Ari Sitas the Head of Department of Sociology the student wrote “towards the end of the presentation, after I had calmly and respectfully listened to criticism from the panel and defended my work where appropriate, Professor Jeremy Seekings began to belittle and attack me in an undignified fashion at one point referring to me as a “whacko” which he later tried to deny by pointing out that his exact words were “you would be whacko if…” a completely disingenuous to be sure…”. If Prof Crowe wants this letter I will happy give it to him. Acts of racism are documented but documents disappear within these deeply racist institutional structures of UCT.

UCT’s Professor Nicoli Nattrass resigns last Friday, 22 July 2016, as a Professor of Sociology to join UCT’s Economics Department, the very Department that she came from before joining Sociology. This comes after my Face Book status that I wrote in June 21, 2016. Professor Nattrass is the wife of Professor Jeremy Seekings who is also a Professor in Sociology Department at UCT. Prof Nattrass and Prof Seekings, wife and husband, are both running the Centre for Social Sciences Research in Sociology Department at UCT.

At UCT as Black students we are forced to prove the “acts” of racism at the university. Dr Max Price UCT’s VC said that the university is “not racist” but Black people at UCT “experience acts of racism”. These two White Professor are part of UCT White academics who were, and still are, opposed to #RhodesMustFall student movement, the renaming of the buildings at UCT, removal of Rhodes Statue and are opposed total transformation at UCT.

Currently, Professor Nattrass is facing disciplinary hearing from UCT after a complaint that was lodged by Professor Mancgu in relation to Prof Nattrass racism at the Department of Sociology against Prof Mangcu. Prof Mangcu complaint comes after Prof Nattrass, a colleague of Prof Mangcu at the Department, questioned and instructed Prof Mangcu about his travelling to Harvard University after his invitation from Harvard. Prof Nattrace asked Prof Mangcu when is he coming back? Who will teach the students when he is away? And that Prof Mangcu must come back within “four days” and thus “stay no longer than that”. What authority does Prof Nattrass have over Prof Mangcu to have a right to ask such questions? Notwithstanding that Prof Nattrass is no Head of Sociology, nor Dean of the Faculty neither the VC of UCT. All this is part of the e-mails that were made public to all the Department staff.

Professor Nattrass and Professor Seekings, wife and husband, have a "special contract" with UCT, because they are White Professors, that is, they teach in UCT for a half a year and the other half they teach in Yale University. There is no Black Professor, let alone wife and husband, have such a contract in UCT. Prof Nattrass and Prof Seekings are racist Apartheid beneficiary. And they sill benefit in the democratic post-Apartheid aprtheid south Africa because they are White Professors. They run the Centre of Social Sciences Research as a family affair. If they are away the Centre is closed and if they are on campus it is open. “Most of the times they work from home” so says a staffer at the Centre.

Prof Nattrass is a living example of personal racism at UCT that informs institutional racism at the university that Black people are subjected to everyday.

Prof Mangcu’s complaint is with Dr Max Price (VC), Prof S Klopper (DCV) and Professor D Visser (DVC) all of them are UCT's White Administrators. They are assessing a complaint by a Black Professor Xolela Mancgu, who is a number one UCT critic, over a racist White Professor Nicoli Nattrass. Can a White Administration judge against White Professor? In fact, the question is: Can White people committee suicide for Black people to live?

This comes at the back of the unresolved matter of one Professor David Benatar, Head of Philosophy Department at UCT who insulted the Dean of Humanities Professor Sakhela Buhlungu at the Faculty meeting by forcing the Dean, who is the chair of the faculty meetings, to talk about how to stop usage of animal products in the Departmental events such as meat. Prof Benatar argued that no one must eat meat in the Departmental events because of the cruelty with which animals are killed only to be eaten.

As #RhodesMustFall activists, we have always knew that after the public spectacle of the removal of Rhodes statue, after the political rhetoric from many camps, we will have to face the day to day racism from White people who will force us to reverse the gains of #RhodsMustFall student movement which is a political project that seeks to confront White power using radical political approaches. We are ready to fight White power all the way! #RhodesMustFall #FeesMustFall

Is the University of Cape Town (UCT) abandoning ‘universality’, academic freedom, excellence,

Is the University of Cape Town (UCT) abandoning ‘universality’, academic freedom, excellence, pursuit of the “Truth” and non-racialism in favour ‘pluriversality’, characterized by contemporary contextually powerful ‘values’ and ‘principles’?

Emeritus Professor Tim Crowe – B.A., M.Sc., Ph.D. and F.U.C.T.

“No one will be left behind.”  UCT Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price - 20 March 2015

N.B. Information in this ‘twitter’ history of UCT and comments on recent ‘developments’ there are elaborated on at great length and fully documented in various pieces to be found on my Blog Site timguineacrowe.blogspot.co.za

Born under a bad sign

Since its beginnings nearly a century ago, the University of Cape Town has adhered to goals and principles: ‘universality’, academic freedom, excellence and pursuit of the “Truth”.  Sadly, for its first 40 years of existence, it was institutionally colonialist, sexist and racist, with academic ‘power’ being vested in a ‘feudal’ system dominated by senior academics within an “Old Boys” network.  This notwithstanding, the UCT administration was small, efficient and had to “justify its existence” by “relieving the teaching departments of the responsibility for those duties which can be carried out more efficiently through a central office”.

By the 1950s, UCT was becoming increasingly Afrocentric academically and women students and staff began to demand and receive status and some meaningful power.  But, although Vice-Chancellor T.B. Davie formally rejected institutional racialism in 1950 in response to massive and increasing ‘legalized’ Apartheid, this was done in principle only. 

From the late 1950s until 1980, UCT’s leaders, academics and students fought a ‘rear-guard’ action, resolutely opposing the overwhelmingly powerful forces of Apartheid while transforming her from a “second-tier, male-dominated, ‘whites’-only athletic institution where intellectual advancement [was] not altogether discouraged” into a global centre of academic excellence.

But, still UCT remained racialist in practice.

Adaptive transformation and missed opportunities

From 1980 until the end of the millennium, institutional colonialism withered, with some tenuous ‘hold-outs’ in the humanities and social sciences.  Sexism and racism (even in tenuously overt form) were dealt with aggressively.  During the administrations of VCs Stuart Saunders and Mamphela Ramphele, UCT transformed rapidly and adaptively to remove the vestiges of the nefarious ‘isms’ while retaining a “non-negotiable commitment” to UCT’s goals and principles.  Both VCs endeavoured to recruit ‘black’ (sensu Biko) academics from within and outside of South Africa. 

However, as it became possible to dramatically increase the numbers of ‘black’ undergraduate students, Saunders and Ramphele succumbed to the resistance of academics in Core departments to incorporate first-years into ‘normal’ educational streams.  Many of these initially deliberately ‘underprepared’ (especially by Bantu ‘Education’) kids were relegated to an Academic Support Programme (ASP) that evolved into the Academic Development Programme (ADP) and, ultimately, into a new faculty-like structure, the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED).   To cut a long story short, many of these ASP students maintain that they were “marginalized”, preventing them from acquiring the expected academic ‘goods’.  More than half of ASP students admitted failed to obtain a UCT undergraduate degree, and more than 80% took four or more years to obtain less than stellar degrees and were often saddled with massive financial debt.  Hence, very few of these bachelor’s graduates pursued even more demanding post-graduate study and research.  Thus, rather than growing its own academic ‘timber’, UCT failed to ‘grow’ the ‘forest’ of ‘black’ academics so desperately needed today.  It didn’t miss the boat. It missed the super tanker.

Also during the same period, UCT’s administrative sector grew massively in cost, personnel and power at the expense of deans of faculties and heads of departments.  Its senior leadership grew from a modestly-salaried, supportive registrar and vice-chancellor with secretaries and a small number of functionary support staff into a highly powerful-paid-bonused Senior Leadership Group (SLG) including: the VC and registrar with several administrative assistants, two deputy registrars, four DVCs, a similar number of Executive Directors, all ‘supported’ by assistants and secretaries.

The actions of this “unjustified” hegemony have become increasingly self-promoting, less “efficient” and increasingly focused on financial priorities.  This ‘corporatization’ has led to the academic ‘emasculation’ and early retirement and/or departure of staff who have left to flourish elsewhere.

Since 2000, the SLG has massively increased the admission of subsidy-earning ASP students without a concomitant increase in academic and decentralized support staff or a sensitization or retraining of extant personnel.  Furthermore, it retained [or failed to proactively ‘contextualize’] potentially offensive symbols reminiscent of the ‘bad old days’ and steadfastly ignored legitimate requests and complaints from aggrieved staff and students.

In the meantime, Core academics, even within the School of Education, continued to evade educating and/or engaging with ASP students, leaving the ‘gap bridging’ to CHED.

Fealty to retaliatory racialist Fallism

When faced with initially non-racial protests that emanated from the choreographed defacement of Rhodes’ Statue, the SLG failed to act decisively.  This inaction allowed the process to be co-opted via a blitzkrieg enacted by a retaliatory racist black nationalist minority [supported by the racially exclusionary Black Academic Caucus (BAC) and the UCT Association of Black Alumni (UCTABA)] and an even smaller number of destructive anarchists.  The SLG steadfastly ignored requests from those illegally intimidated and assaulted by the now self-identified Fallists for community-wide consultations/referenda. The SLG re-compounded this strategic error by repeatedly granting amnesty to multi-lawbreaking Fallists, tacitly condoning their illegal acts. 

Unlike VCs from Wits and Rhodes Universities, VC Price, in particular, allowed his personal ideology to influence his actions/inactions to the point of formally admitting that UCT remains institutionally racist and that its goals and principles must be continuously re-evaluated within a “powerful contemporary context”.  This set the stage for the capitulation/collapse of the Academics Union, Senate, SRC and Council to Fallism by mid-2015 and culminated in the November 2016 Agreement between a handful of SLG members and nine highly radical, destructively decolonist Fallists. 

This agreement created the Institutional Reconciliation and Transformation Commission Steering Committee (IRTC SC) de jure dominated by pro-Fallist ‘constituencies’.  The IRTC is charged with making recommendations that could profoundly affect the institutional and academic future of UCT. Although the IRTC SC has met multiple times, it is currently deadlocked vis-à-vis the appointment of commissioners and how to deal with lawbreaking Shackville Fallists.  There has been no definition, let alone discussion, of decolonization.  Despite this, key IRTC SC member [and former vice-chair of the BAC] and Transformation DVC Loretta Feris [with SLG approval] invited highly controversial mathematician Chandra Raju to speak on decolonizing science in general and mathematics in particular at UCT.

During his seminar and subsequent discussions and e-mails, Raju defamed, inter alia, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, plus internationally renowned mathematicians at UCT.

DVC Feris vision for decolonization calls for UCT transformation into “a pluri-versal space” “where there is more than one central truth”.

Finally, at the UCT Fellows’ Dinner on 11 October 2017, VC Price defended Feris’ invitation and Dinner co-host Research UCT DVC Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng proposed that the Fellows chosen to speak formally use the word “power” as their focal topic. 

Tellingly, one of the speakers included the most famous quote of British historian and moralist Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The time is long overdue for the return of academic power at UCT to the educators and researchers whose work makes UCT Africa’s top university.