Statement by Professor Patrick Bond, Centre for Civil Society director

 

 

 

(Monday evening, August 11)

 

August 11 - The closure of CCS, as dictated in a July 30 statement by Deputy Vice Chancellor Fikile Mazibuko and read to our staff and our School of Development Studies colleagues that day by Dean Donal McCracken, has been effectively negated, and is now overridden by a genuinely collegial process amongst intellectuals, it was agreed this afternoon.

 

The academic process we now embark upon means that no binding official university decision has been taken, and that fellow scholars will make recommendations about the Centre's future in coming days and weeks, in a far more democratic manner where merit not political ideology prevails.

 

Prof Mazibuko and Dean McCracken may still believe that CCS should be closed on December 31 this year - for they refused to deny or confirm the status of the July 30 death sentence when we met this afternoon - but Vice Chancellor Malegapuru Makgoba has ensured, in an earlier meeting with me today, that a series of other scholars will make their inputs prior to any decision: the School of Development Studies Board; the Howard College Faculty Board of Humanities, Development and Social Sciences; the Academic Affairs Board; the University Research Committee; and finally the Senate. (If CCS is to be closed, Council would also become involved.)

 

These are committees whose senior academics will, we trust, bring perspective and wisdom to the matter. They will carefully consider the alignment of Centre work to the university's broader mission and goals. They will properly assess our accomplishments and faults rather than dismiss the Centre's future based on a financial red herring.

 

The SDS Board has already expressed their solidarity with the Centre's appeal against the July 30 ruling. The Faculty Board meets on August 13, and will be asked to form a subcommittee to rapidly assess the official report of the University Review Committee of the CCS, chaired by Dr Peter Krumm, who filed it on February 29 this year. (The report is here:)

 

Several months have been lost (recall that this process began in March 2007), and we are back at square one. Still, this is more than a stay of execution, it is a negation of the death sentence and a chance to have genuine scholars carefully consider the Centre's relevance to academic enterprise and community service.

 

Below, find Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Corporate Relations) Dasarath Chetty's communique this evening to the university community. On August 6, Prof Chetty was quoted in The Mercury newspaper as saying Prof Mazibuko knew nothing of the threat to close CCS, which was not correct; and on August 8 Chetty sent a confusing note to the university community and press that implicated Dr Krumm, his committee (all named), and Professor Vishnu Padayachee (head of the School of Development Studies) in the

"recommendation" that CCS should be closed. In discussing these problems with Prof Chetty today, I am convinced he was misled by colleagues, and that he recognises that Prof Mazibuko did indeed call for CCS's closure on July 30; and also that Dr Krumm's Review Committee and Prof Padayachee are on record, decisively, against CCS's closure. CCS is committed to working together with Prof Chetty, to ensure that university statements reflect the facts on this matter.

 

So we now continue our campaign to resist closure, and to preserve what scholars, civil society constituencies, and the general public - in Durban and across South Africa, Africa and the world - consider useful about CCS. Our campaign will be thoughtful, and make the case in a reasoned way. We encourage further brief testimonials about CCS, and how what we do can be improved. We are far from a perfect site of knowledge production, we make many mistakes, and it is only through constructive critique that we can best serve civil society.

 

A huge thanks goes to the many people and institutions offering their solidarity and sympathy. Without exception, you have encouraged us to continue the campaign to keep CCS alive and well. (Just by way of illustration, more than 600 low-income people spent all afternoon yesterday in Chatsworth celebrating the local community's decade of organising and Prof Fatima Meer's eight decades of vibrant life, and all of us from CCS were privileged to cohost, and heartened by the commitment of all present to continue forging a unifying vision of social justice.)

 

Please see our website - for more, including upcoming events such as the August 28 Wolpe Lecture on water access as taught by Sowetans who defeated Johannesburg Water and the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry in the High Court a few weeks ago.

 

FURTHER READING:

Some of the testimonials about CCS that have arrived so far are uploaded,here and a further website (including a petition) was set up by trade unionists who support CCS: http://groups.google.com/group/handsofftheccs

 

For more analytical material (including three new journal articles), see

http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40 and also the five-year review for our funders conducted by David Sogge:

http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?3,28,10,2776

 

(Note - although in issuing this statement to the many concerned friends of CCS, I have consulted only our Research Director, Prof Sufian Bukurura, this afternoon - two staff meetings with colleagues in CCS and SDS this morning convince me of their unanimity in opposing CCS's closure, and their support for our appeal to reason. Further meetings tomorrow will add to the next stage of our strategy, and we will issue another statement by Wednesday about how we hope academic colleagues view our situation.)

 

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Notice to the University Community

 

Centre for Civil Society

 

Following a meeting between Professor N Mazibuko, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Head of the College of Humanities, Professor D McCracken, Dean of Humanities and Professor Patrick Bond, Director of the Centre for Civil Society, it was agreed that the Faculty Board be requested to consider the Krumm report on the future of the CCS at its meeting on Wednesday, 13 August 2008. As a way forward the Board is to be requested to consider appointing a sub-committee which should, in a reasonable time, come up with recommendations relating to the future of the Centre.

 

Recommendations would then be forwarded to the Academic Affairs Board on 12 September, to the University Research Committee on 16 September and to Senate on 12 November 2008.

 

Professor Dasarath Chetty

 

Pro-Vice-Chancellor

 

Corporate Relations

 

11 August 2008