Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng has returned with a bang to celebrate her second year in the hot seat as vice-chancellor of UCT, ensuring that Twitter was awash with utopian colourful memories.
The outspoken Phakeng had maintained a stony silence following the damning report into the university’s starring role leading to the death of the top scientist Professor Bongani Mayosi almost a month after she took office.
The report did not absolve Phakeng, then deputy vice-chancellor, and university executives under former vice-chancellor Dr Max Price or students from culpability in contributing to the conditions resulting in Mayosi taking his life on July 27, 2018.
But it showed a university devoid of heart in honestly addressing Mayosi’s cries for help. Sadly, they ignored him. Last week Phakeng did not give media interviews around the controversial 157-page Mayosi report. But a few days later her ego could not keep a safe distance from social media, even as a mask of respect to the memory of Mayosi.
Instead, it was business as usual, celebrating two years in charge with pictures, boasts and an insensitive, almost crude, remark that showed Phakeng has some way to go before maturing into her role: “Student suicides are no longer a thing,” she said incredulously on Twitter, describing it as one of her three biggest successes.
She made no mention of the university’s biggest failure. If Phakeng needed to jog her memory, the Mayosi report is on the university website. But she ignored reference to it, again.
Addressing student suicide, according to Phakeng on @FabAcademic, ranks among her three major successes, alongside senior appointments of eight blacks and two whites, and UCT leading Africa in all five major world university rankings.
There’s progress but still a long way to go. Reduced suicides from double digit numbers to less than 5 in 2yrs but we need total eradication. Black students have a voice but the achievement gap remains. We’ve appointed black people but institutional culture change is a challenge https://t.co/dNZFtblFlY
— FabAcademic (@FabAcademic) July 2, 2020
Why are students killing themselves at this highly-rated institution? She opened a Pandora’s Box, now the university must provide statistics on student deaths and circumstances around what seems to have been a campus of death - if her tweet is serious and not a snide remark.
If there was one, Phakeng would probably ace the social media award for most outspoken vice-chancellor on the continent. But there may be question marks on the compassionate side, if one takes into account her apparent coldness around Mayosi.
Phakeng posted a picture of herself, the only black African, with her untransformed executive team. “We’re the only university with guts to hand over its core business to women,” she claimed.
The picture says it all - one needs no clearer reason why transformation is doomed when individuals like Phakeng continue to feed into the stereotypes that continue to divide South Africa.
In addition to his colleagues at UCT, Mayosi was forsaken by the very students he championed, even marching with them to the vice-chancellor’s office. Ironically, one of the sore points for Mayosi, according to the report, was the inefficient taxi system supported by one of Phakeng’s team, highlighting UCT’s failure to show empathy with poor black students. He was unworthy of the names they called him and just as undeserving as the criticism meted out by so-called colleagues at UCT.
The hurt on campus has not disappeared in the past two years, otherwise the university council would not have ordered Phakeng and her executive to implement recommendations and deal with mental health issues facing staff and students.
But her first action since the Mayosi report highlighting the deep divisions at UCT suggests that Phakeng is living in a Twitter bubble.