SOUTH AFRICA: An Irish-born academic is fighting to keep her top job at one of South Africa's universities. Patrick Laurence reports
Irish-born Norma Reid Birley is a contestant in a battle at one of South Africa's best-known universities that could, if she loses, end in her dismissal as vice chancellor.
Holder of a DPhil from the University of Ulster, Prof Birley has rejected an offer from the university council to agree to "a dignified and mutually agreed termination of her contract" hardly 18 months after she was chosen as vice chancellor.
She has chosen, instead, to confront her detractors and risk the humiliation of defeat and perhaps even the withdrawal of the proffered "golden handshake".
Ranged against her is a majority in the university council on the University of Witwatersrand, represented by Judge Edwin Cameron, a Supreme Court of Appeal judge and a man widely admired for publicly declaring he is HIV-positive and acknowledging, indirectly if not explicitly, that he is a homosexual.
The charges against Prof Birley relate primarily to her "management style". Judge Cameron describes it as "dysfunctional", a characterisation that Prof Birley rejects as unsubstantiated and unspecified. The allegations against her, as she noted in a public statement, question her integrity. Judge Cameron identifies "truth and trust" as issues raised by Prof Birley's exercise of her management responsibilities.
Underlining the point, he describes her public statement rejecting the golden handshake offer as one that contains "many grave inaccuracies and mis-statements" Signalling her intention to take the battle to her detractors, Prof Birley says: "There is no financial settlement that I will accept in lieu of a principled resolution, affirming my integrity, professional ability and commitment to leading university".
The settlement offered is reported to have been between three and five million rand, a lot of money in rand terms but not enough, in the words of one observer, "to buy half a house in Oxford". The differences between Prof Birley and the university council have been referred to a former judge, Mr John Myburgh, for investigation. The council nominated him to chair the inquiry and Prof Birley has endorsed the appointment. "I have total confidence in the fairness of the proposed chairman," she stated.
Mr Myburgh's brief includes a mandate to hold closed door hearings - which started on November 20th - and to present his report by December 6th. The early deadline represents, on the face of it, a desire by the university to settle the dispute as quickly as possible. Mr Myburgh is empowered by the council to recommend "any remedial measures", including, presumably, unilateral termination of her contract. One of the reasons the university wishes to expedite a decision on Prof Birley's future is its unhappy history of acrimonious quarrels over the appointment of people to senior managerial position.
The dispute over Prof Birley seems, on the surface, to be one without political or ideological overtones, focusing essentially on her managerial and inter-personal skills. But several observers believe there is an important, though publicly unacknowledged, political dimension.
When the position of vice chancellor was advertised, the then deputy vice chancellor was Prof Leila Patel, a South African of Indian origin and therefore, in the parlance of contemporary South Africa, a black person.
She was seen as favourite for the post. One of the reasons for that was her "ANC aristocracy" status through her membership of the Cachalia family, with whom the ANC and Nelson Mandela have had close ties since the 1950s.
Prof Birley, surprisingly, emerged as first choice. Her presentation at an open forum impressed many notables at the university and may have swung the vote in her favour. In it she referred to a "principled stand" taken by the university during South Africa's "past troubles" and, while supporting the university drive to make access easier for historically disadvantaged blacks, she stressed the importance of "rigorous evaluation" of the process.
Her stress on "rigorous evaluation" may have won her friends in the university senate, whose primary concerns include the maintenance of academic standards, but the pro-ANC faction at the university was reportedly waiting to pounce on Prof Birley's first major mistake. She may have provided them with an opportunity when, shortly after her appointment, she had to cope with her husband's death and her own ill health (she suffered a thrombosis after a long air trip).
A warning of dissatisfaction from on high may have been sounded when President Thabo Mbeki remarked recently that, according to reports reaching him, the experience of blacks at the university was that was not a particularly friendly institution, to which Prof Birley riposted (unwisely, politically speaking) by asking when last Mr Mbeki had actually visited the campus.
Evidence of the senate's concern over the matter came when it endorsed the Myburgh inquiry but requested that a senior member of the academic staff be appointed as assessor in the inquiry. It did so because it was concerned that an inquiry headed by a judge might "not give sufficient attention to the concerns of the senate".