Cape Town - A top executive at the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) is taking legal action against a group of UCT alumni and students after they questioned her academic credentials.
Gwen Ngwenya, chief operating officer at SAIRR, has faced a barrage of social media allegations relating to the authenticity of her UCT and international academic qualifications. She denied the claims, referring the Weekend Argus to her lawyer, Chantelle Gladwin.The mudslinging, Ngwenya said, stems from a disagreement over a motion of no confidence against UCT vice-chancellor, Max Price, at last year’s convocation meeting.
“There is nothing to say except that the allegations are false,” she said.
“These are students who don’t know how to engage with ideas or arguments and this is how they play politics.
"It’s juvenile. My lawyer is attempting to reach some of the parties involved.”
Ngwenya said she would afford them an opportunity to apologise and retract their statements before taking further legal action.
She added that it was a campaign to reduce her credibility without dealing with her arguments.
UCT alumni Kamau Macua started posting about Ngwenya’s alleged false qualifications on December 24. He said the group’s main concern were not her qualifications. “She has largely misrepresented her profile,” he said.
Macua said the posts were prompted by Ngwenya’s “anti-black attitude”. She displayed this, he claimed, when she had student activist Chumani Maxhwele removed from the convocation because he was not an alumni.
Macua said Ngwenya had been against their ideas of decolonising UCT's culture. He said her name change raised suspicions because “Amanda Ngwenya doesn’t have records” at the university.
Macau claimed Ngwenya had misrepresented herself as having a qualification from the University of Paris. He said Ngwenya’s academic records using the names Gwen or Amanda could not be found.
He stressed that she used her qualifications, which the group questions, “to silence students and that (the) probe into the qualifications she claimed was as a reaction to that action”.
“(It’s) not that we believe that colonial degrees matter, but that in the case of an anti-black person such as herself, working for an anti-black institution, contradictions are all over the place,” he said.
The students and alumni - which include Kanyi Ntombini, Dima Nchodu, Paleo Mokoena, Sihle Lonzi, Sisipho Fongoqa, Wanelisa Xaba, Mase Ramaru and Sinoxolo Mbayi - were present at the convocation.
The group uses #AmandaDegree and #AmandaGate on social media to air their allegations. Xaba said her main issue with Ngwenya had been her attempts to silence black students.
She said because of the events that took place at the meeting, Macua had initiated an investigation into Ngwenya’s qualifications, which spurred other students to do the same.Among other allegations, they said Ngwenya only attended UCT in 2011, but did not return the following year.
UCT spokesperson, Pat Lucas, said Ngwenya had obtained a social sciences degree, majoring in classical studies and law in 2012.
The University of Paris had not responded to queries at the time of going to print.