When Professor Sakhela Buhlungu took over as Vice Chancellor of the University of Fort Hare in January 2017, the mood around the institution and the industry at the time was rather bleak. Fort Hare was a hopeless institution.
It was going through an academic, financial and structural crisis. Each newspaper article and each institutional report issued by the different organs of the State painted a horrifying picture of this.
Not only was it overwhelmed by local crime syndicates organized around its procurement systems, but its teaching, research, and human resource practices were also in shambles.
A report commissioned by the ministry of higher education and training on Fort Hare, published on October 3, 2019 by two independent advisers, Professor Chris Brink and Professor Louis Molamu, who also worked with a financial expert, Bulelani Mahlangu, revealed the following damning findings – among many:
- Academics earned personal gains from research grants that had to be reinvested in the institution. For example, when a student completes a master’s degree at Fort Hare, the supervisor received R20,000. For a PhD: R60,000. These amounts were not paid into their research accounts. They were paid directly to their personal bank accounts.
- Procurement structures and the departments and staff responsible for financial management were open and vulnerable to political interference and manipulation. A disclosure made by the multinational professional services firm EY in Fort Hare, cited in this report, classified the university’s financial architecture as “rudimentary”, the lowest possible rating in the governance of financial systems.
- The administrative management systems at the registrar level and human resources were a disaster. The report says crucial university committees like the senate did not have an up-to-date tracking system for simple things like minutes and records (some policies were outdated or missing or non-existent) and admission and graduation lists were manually written. on staff personal computers, to the point that some names of graduates were added to the list at the last minute without the knowledge of the Senate.
- The above point suggests that some qualifications in the institution were given to people who did not take any exams, and admission to academic programs was given to people who did not qualify at all.
In essence, the institution was on its knees and losing its legitimacy as a capable body that can produce credible talent. Worse yet, its graduates were also questionable in the eyes of the market. Private donors were hesitant to invest in the institution, so it relied on limited and conditional support from state, provincial and national networks to survive emergencies.
This is an institution that Buhlungu inherited in January 2017, and believe me, Fort Hare is just one example of many rural universities in our country that are going through exactly the same thing today as well.
Buhlungu then began the long and difficult journey of fixing the institution. Listening to his inaugural address in 2017, one could get the sense that he viewed the task ahead as a historic mission whose time had come.
Fort Hare was once a towering asset of the highest standards of African intellectual traditions throughout the 20th century, and felt that it needed to be rescued from the black hole into which it had been sinking since the beginning of these last two decades.
He came as a seasoned executive leader in the higher education sector: a sociology professor who previously served as dean of the humanities faculty at the University of Cape Town. Furthermore, his field of research was located on the left and he had a long history of progressive activism in the liberation struggle. These credentials gave him the footprint and legitimacy needed to lead this once prestigious scholarship institution for the black working class of the Eastern Cape region.
He intended to make Fort Hare an institution that houses the finest class of students and faculty who can compete with anyone in the entire world and produce science that serves our region and the world. This world-class science, he said, must be rooted in our unique African philosophies, languages, histories and innovations.
To make this bold vision possible, Buhlungu knew he had to first fix the institution from within. The virus of poor governance, low standards, corruption and ‘short cut’ that had infected the institutional culture of the place for so long had to end immediately.
As he began to conduct this mission in practical terms, the gas main blew and all of us watching from a distance began to see the full scope of the crisis.
During his first five years at the helm of Fort Hare, we saw the academic and financial systems harden. The standards began to rise. The policies and rules were now being applied. New talent was being recruited. Suspensions and terminations were taking place.
Politicians and student leaders found themselves unable to do whatever they wanted in the institution.
In other words, Fort Hare was returning to being a normal functioning university with proper checks and balances. The institution was being restored to its primary mandate and purpose: the production of knowledge in the service of humanity.
Black education was being repositioned in its place.
For these efforts, Buhlungu was re-elected again in January 2022 by the Fort Hare council to serve another five-year term as Vice Chancellor until December 2026.
But many people close to him and his staff at Fort Hare, those who are fully committed to the project, have commented countless times that the job of fixing an institution like Fort Hare is not easy. It’s exhausting, toxic, depressing, and potentially deadly.
The institutional culture of the place does not allow breathing or doing good. That’s why so many of my colleagues at Fort Hare have quit and left. Others live on medication. Others have been killed.
Those who are working elsewhere in higher education do not want to go to Fort Hare or any other similar rural college in the sector to protect their mental health and their lives.
There is no doubt that Buhlungu and his family are experiencing these problems. He is human after all. The situation is difficult. Even if he decides to resign, the next person the council appoints will have to spearhead the exact same task that Buhlungu and his staff are engaged in. There is simply no other way out of this. It must be done. Fort Hare must be fixed, right now, for the sake of the future of the young people of the Eastern Cape who come from extremely difficult living conditions.
Black education and our public institutions must be repaired and rebuilt in our lifetimes.
But most importantly, as a society, we need to think deeply about the kind of government we now require to seriously end corruption and mismanagement of our public institutions. This disease is a thief of every fiber of our society. Now it has infiltrated our knowledge institutions. It is taking innocent lives. It is threatening our remaining credible leaders in higher education. It has the potential to rob us of the future we deserve.
We need to be angrier as citizens and take back control of our nation. We sacrificed so much in the fight for liberation to allow this cancer to overwhelm us. The generational task of fixing black education is not supposed to come with such a high price.
May Mboneli Vesele’s soul rest in peace. Buhlungu’s bodyguard was assassinated on January 6 in front of the official residence of the vice-chancellor.
