Love him or loathe him, it seems you can’t ignore Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, writes Dennis Pather.
Johannesburg - When Professor Malegapuru Makgoba retired as University of KwaZulu-Natal vice-chancellor two years ago there were sighs of relief from many of his academic colleagues.
He seemed to attract controversy, with headlines claiming he was a bully, stifled academic freedom and used sledgehammer disciplinary procedures on detractors - all of which he denied.
Nor was the good professor top of the popularity polls in his previous stint as deputy vice-chancellor at Wits, where he called the mainly white university leadership a “small in-bred elite”. Many there recall an opinion piece he wrote comparing the behaviour of post-apartheid white men with “baboons and bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees)” who had lost their alpha status and were in serious need of “treatment and proper African rehabilitation”.
Makgoba would like to believe his detractors are just Eurocentrics opposed to his transformation campaign, but many colleagues at UKZN and Wits nodded their heads when a prominent academic described him as “intellectually pompous, arrogant and utterly self-centred, if not downright egocentric”.
Makgoba is now the country’s first health ombudsman, but he is not throwing in the towel on the education crisis. This week, addressing the Commission of Inquiry into Higher Learning, he challenged the government to make difficult choices in the fees crisis.
In an interview with Tim Modise late last year he blamed the present vice-chancellors, whom he said were appointed to lead, and not just administer universities. “We have a group of people whose productivity and citation impact on the knowledge arena is not consistent with where they should be. That’s why I’m saying they are not fit for the purpose because they can’t read the environment.
“That’s why the student leadership is ahead of them, is outsmarting them all the time; and they are actually reacting to what students want, rather than planning the future of education in our country.”
How does he know the students are united in their no-fees protests?
“They talk to me. I know most of the SRCs in the university sector and they tell me what they’re doing.”
Love him or loathe him, it seems you can’t ignore him.
The Sunday Independent