Toxic Stakeholder Relations at CUT Collapses Higher Education Oversight

The Portfolio Committee on Higher Education has suspended planned discussions with the Central University of Technology (CUT) in Bloemfontein due to a breakdown in trust among senior management, unions, the Institutional Forum (IF) and the Student Representative Council (SRC). The decision follows an oversight visit that exposed severe governance failures, administrative disfunction and a campus environment that is not conducive to teaching and learning

CUT stakeholders unanimously decried the state of the institution during the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education’s oversight visit. The IF, organised labour and the SRC said the CUT has serious administrative and governance issues, which is affecting staff morale and creating an environment that is not conducive to teaching and learning. University stakeholders also told the committee that the CUT registration process left much to be desired – many students could have been admitted but lost the opportunity due to the failure of IT systems.

Some of the allegations levelled against university leaders was that that the university has a serious shortage of academic staff members and the academic programmes is being run by part-time lecturers. In one faculty, for example, there are more part-time lecturers than full-time academic staff. The committee further said it is discouraging to note that CUT does not have an officially recognised SRC despite the fact that elections were held in August last year.

The committee Chairperson, Mr Tebogo Letsie, said that although the committee has postponed immediate engagement with CUT, it plans to revisit the university’s challenges in the committee’s programme next term. “We will schedule a dedicated hearing to dissect the root causes of this distrust. CUT’s leadership must account for why stakeholder relations have deteriorated to this extent and how they intend to rebuild academic and operational stability,” added Mr Letsie.

Members of the committee were deeply concerned that the CUT did not have a recognised SRC. The committee cautioned against a growing practice in the sector where senior management in post-school education used the institution’s resources to go after workers and students in the courts.

Per Kind Favour of APO

Africa Fact: The Nigerian city of Surame flourished in the sixteenth century. Even in ruin it was an impressive sight, built on a horizontal vertical grid. A modern scholar
describes it thus: “The walls of Surame are about 10 miles in circumference and include many large bastions or walled suburbs running out at right angles to the main wall. The large compound at Kanta is still visible in the centre, with ruins of many buildings, one of which is said to have been two-storied. The striking feature of the walls and whole ruins is the extensive use of stone and tsokuwa (laterite gravel) or very hard red building mud, evidently brought from a distance. There is a big mound of this near the north gate about 8 feet in height. The walls show
regular courses of masonry to a height of 20 feet and more in several places. The best preserved portion is that known as sirati (the bridge) a little north of the eastern gate . . . The main city walls here appear to have provided a very strongly guarded entrance about 30 feet wide.”