Anger at UKZN plan to shut unit

 

 

Fred Kockott, Sunday Tribune, 10 August 2008

 

 

UNIVERSITY of KwaZulu-Natal management has evoked the wrath of the intellectual left, worldwide, and Cosatu, over moves to close down a feisty, vibrant research unit, the Centre for Civil Society.

 

The centre is a voice for leftist thinkers - from anarchists to socialists, black nationalists to social democrats.

 

Now its appears UKZN management is backtracking. It said on Friday a decision on closure of the CCS had not been made, but "recommendations" to integrate the CCS into the school of development studies were "under discussion".

 

This follows CCS staff going public with a formal appeal against a management announcement that it had decided to close down the centre.

 

CCS director, Patrick Bond, said he and his staff were summoned to a meeting last week and advised the centre was being closed at the end of the year. All CCS staff contracts, besides Bond's, would be terminated as of December. Bond said the reason - that long-term financial viability of CCS was not secure - was a red herring.

 

"With our healthy reserve and incoming funding commitments for core staff for 2009-10, there is no financial basis for closing us," said Bond in the appeal supported by other UKZN research units, peers at Yale University in the United States, Oxford University in Britain, and Cosatu leadership.

 

"Hands off the CCS," was the message this week to UKZN management from Cosatu's national spokesman, Patrick Craven, who described it as a world leader in researching socio-economic and environmental justice issues.

 

Craven said inadequate funding appeared to be a "possibly spurious reason" for closing the centre. "If there is a genuine problem of finding funds, the government must step in to fund this important institution," he said.

 

Yale University's Prof Immanuel Wallerstein, a world renowned sociologist, wrote a letter to UKZN communications head, Dasarath Chetty, this week, stating that he was "appalled to learn of the imminent closure of the CCS".

 

"This," said Wallerstein, "would not only damage severely UKZN's reputation but set back research worldwide on contemporary South Africa.

 

"The single most prestigious activity of the UKZN, as seen from a United States vantage-point, is the CCS.

 

"Those of us who try to follow what is going on in South Africa have come to rely upon the centre," said Wallerstein.

 

Similar messages from eminent peers at UKZN and around the world continue to be posted on the CCS website, which also carries a formal University Review of CCS carried out between September last year and February this year.

 

The review says: "Through its international recognition and standing, CCS has put UKZN on a world map in social science, a position the University dare not risk to lose."

 

"So why close the unit?" was the question Bond and his colleagues were grappling with this week.

 

"The announcement came out of the blue. It makes it very difficult to comprehend. All follow-up discussions have only left us more confused."

 

Bond said closure would result in the services of one white man (himself) being retained, and the firing of more than a dozen black and female staff.

 

"This is a repudiation of the UKZN's commitment to employment equity."

 

Bond said UKZN vice-chancellor, Prof Malegapuru Makgoba, disapproved of some of the centre's work, going as far as banning "UKZN's best-known scholar, Ashwin Desai" who had worked at CCS.

 

"The vice-chancellor also has an unusual view of politics. He once suggested we inject more right wing views," said Bond.

 

"That's an antithesis of what the centre is about. It's like asking the Business School to hire Marxist scholars."

 

Makgoba's office declined to comment on the future of the unit, referring queries to deputy vice-chancellor and head of humanities and development studies, Prof Fikile Mazibuko; the dean of humanities, Prof Donal McCracken; and head of the school of development studies, Prof Vishnu Padayachee.

 

Backtracking

 

These queries in turn were referred to the UKZN's public affairs department which issued a statement saying that a final decision had not been taken, but that the future of the unit was "under discussion".

 

Bond said this was clearly a backtracking tactic in the wake of the public furore around the move to close down the unit.

 

Bond said he was interested to know who was having discussions about the future of the centre, as he and his staff were completely in the dark as to what was going on, and had not even received acknowledgement of their official appeal.

 

Like Cosatu, Dr Timothy Quinlan, research director, UKZN health economics and Aids research division, said the funding argument was flawed. "Our division does not have funding in perpetuity, nor does the medical school's flagship HIV/Aids project, Caprisa, or a host of other units.

 

"There is need for clarity from UKZN management as to why this threat was made - because it is absurd," he said.

 

Cosatu said it hoped that "university administrators who want to close the CCS will realise their mistake."