An orange Suzuki Jimny, one of more than a million I’ve spotted in Cape Town, gently swerves to a stop on the University of Cape Town (UCT) lower campus. Out steps a woman who is no taller than a broom. She’s in a navy bell-skirt, sleeveless white and navy striped top, flat pumps and a matching navy wristband. She greets me in SeTswana before opening the gate to Glenara, official residence of the vice-chancellor. I steal a look at the words tattooed on her upper arms: “Believe” and “Forgiven”.
Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng arrives 15 minutes late for our interview. She had called to say she’d be running late. As we walk towards the entrance I ask her: “Prof … will you survive this?”
“This” being the weeks of corrosive and often confusing colonial drama at UCT which culminated in an e-mail from the acting chair of the UCT council, Marlene le Roux, early this month announcing an “independent investigation into UCT governance” — effectively an audit of Phakeng’s leadership style. There have been accusations of misconduct, bullying, intimidation and media leaks.
Since its formation in 1829, and particularly from the 1950s on, UCT has suffered bouts of colonial and racial discord. But it was the 2015-2017 #RhodesMustFall movement that focused attention on its image as a bedrock of colonial, English-speaking, white liberal refusal to transform.
In her own words, Phakeng, who joined UCT in January 2017 as one of two deputy VCs and succeeded professor Max Price as VC in July the following year, was brought in to “calm things down”.
“But they wanted someone who would assimilate. They had no idea who they were dealing with.”
They wanted someone who would assimilate. They had no idea who they were dealing with.
The Rhodes Must Fall movement did indeed lead to the statue of Cecil John Rhodes being removed from the UCT campus, but at the heart of the movement was a bolder, far-reaching ideal to overhaul the concept of a university.
Students — ranging from those who invested in the struggle with the nonrefundable deposit of their lives, to those who were desperate just to graduate and move on — had a clear agenda: the destruction of the remnants of the colony.
Hardly three weeks after Phakeng’s ascension to the VC post, professor Bongani Mayosi, dean of health sciences at UCT, committed suicide. Mayosi had previously submitted resignation letters to Phakeng’s predecessor, Price. The official inquiry established that he had been under a great deal of pressure as dean and wanted to return to his first love: research. Some in the university put the blame for his death on the student insurrection, though the university clearly also bears responsibility for the historically toxic culture that black staff and black students have had to deal with.
However, even before Mayosi’s death, Phakeng had been in the middle of a storm. Media leaks from unnamed colleagues cast aspersions on her qualifications.
“They said I had no qualifications. Now they are saying I am unfit to lead the university,” she tells me. “It’s ridiculous. I am a B-rated scholar with tons of experience comparative to some of those media leakers.”
Phakeng is not known for self-deprecation. At Unisa, where she served three years as executive dean of the college of science, engineering & technology before becoming vice-principal for research & innovation, colleagues called her “Professor Achiever” behind her back. That was a full decade ago.
A former colleague at Unisa told me in an e-mail that Phakeng might be vain but she had an impressive work ethic. “That woman is a pioneer,” he said. “I am telling you, the research & innovation week she established at Unisa is still intact. It is big, big, big. Haai shem, she has no politics, all right. But that woman, uhamba yedwa [in a league of her own].”
Her curse, though, might be the way she puts her head on the block for what she believes in; some of the things she believes in could be seen as unrealistic or insensitive. In a Power FM radio interview she asked rhetorically how anyone could sleep at night without a PhD.
I chalked this down as an exhortation for South Africans to pursue education with more enthusiasm. But in a country with well-documented disparities of literacy, income, housing and social mobility, a country where black people are the poorest of the poor, her message misfired.
This is not about Phakeng the individual. It is about the skin she inhabits. I have had my disagreements with the VC but I understand this is about the university’s racist history, which has never really dissipated
— Tiri Chinyoka, mathematics lecturer
Some UCT academic staff and student activists remember the early stages of her tenure as VC. One black student activist who has since left the university shook her head as she recalled: “She spoke to us and told us straight she was not there for us.”
Tiri Chinyoka, a mathematics lecturer, was at a meeting between Phakeng and the UCT Black Academic Caucus (BAC). “She told us: ‘I was appointed on merit. You guys have done nothing for me. I didn’t come here to be bogged down by minutiae blackness.’”
‘It’s about the skin she inhabits’
Chinyoka, an outspoken member of the BAC, said in reference to the current storm raging around Phakeng’s head: “This is not about Phakeng the individual. It is about the skin she inhabits. I have had my disagreements with the VC but I understand this is about the university’s racist history, which has never really dissipated.
“The problem is that complaints from white staff are taken seriously and black people are left to fend for themselves.” Chinyoka took me down a timeline of white supremacy at UCT.
“We had a commission here then [2018] known as the Shackville TRC, officially known as the IRTC [institutional reconciliation & transformation commission] because Max Price and his people had a problem with any invocation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Fine.
“Everyone who went in front of that commission, including white academics, everyone, told the commission that UCT is a racist space. There have been two commissions of inquiry since. The verdict remains the same,” said Chinyoka.
“So, yes, the VC has her own politics on race. But the thing about white supremacy is that it doesn’t care about your personal politics. If you are black you must be lynched, period.”
He echoed what a senior academic told me a day earlier: “People might have a problem with the VC’s personal style, her approach to leadership. But she doesn’t beat about the bush. She is a straight shooter. Some of us here are saying: ‘With all her faults, we stand by her on this one.’”
The primary charge that ignited the latest UCT storm is that Phakeng and Babalwa Ngonyama, the chair of the university council, misled the council about the true facts behind the sudden departure of deputy VC Lis Lange in May, eight months before scheduled.
They told the council Lange decided to quit voluntarily, but Lange, in a letter submitted to the UCT senate on September 30, said she left because Phakeng had made it clear to her that she had no future at the university.
A person who was present at the senate meeting that day told me that was when the first shots in the “attempted coup” against Phakeng were fired.
The meeting, held when Phakeng was one month into a planned five-month sabbatical, was chaired by professor Sue Harrison in her capacity as acting VC. Harrison allowed Lange’s letter to be read out, which was at odds with senate policy that “any documentation brought before the council should be submitted seven days in advance” to allow members to acquaint themselves with the contents. “But this one was sneaked in,” said the senate source.
The letter, the contents of which are now public, triggered a series of council sittings. Some of these could have been straight out of George Orwell’s Animal Farm — farcical and bizarre. And yet all deadly serious in their attempt to make the VC’s head roll.
Four days after that first senate meeting Ngonyama — who recused herself from chairing further council sittings because she was perceived to be protecting Phakeng — surprised everyone by announcing that the VC was cutting her sabbatical short and returning to work. I tried several times to interview Ngonyama, whose response was: “Not [now], but I will indeed speak when the right time presents itself.”
The council held a special sitting on October 6 and an ordinary meeting on October 15, with the issue of “misleading the senate” on the agenda at both. Both meetings were chaired by Ngonyama’s deputy, Pheladi Gwangwa, though at the second meeting some members tried to remove her.
She stood her ground on that occasion but recused herself at the next special meeting on November 7, which infamously began at 5pm and ran until 1am the next day.
The meeting opened with Tshidi Mokgabudi as chair; she tried to adjourn it at 10pm because it had overshot its scheduled finish by an hour. She was stone-walled, and recused herself. Le Roux was then voted in to continue the meeting, which finally ended after agreeing to set up the independent investigation into UCT governance and agreeing on its makeup.
Five members of the panel were chosen: retired judges Sisi Khampepe, Lex Mpati and Azhar Cachalia, plus Trish Hanekom and Bernadette Johnson.
When we meet at Glenara six weeks after her premature return to work, Phakeng tells me: “I am under legal advice to say as little about the issue as possible.”
But once she started she kept on flowing. The atmosphere between us is relaxed; we laugh a lot, sometimes because the alternative would be to cry. We laugh at her belief in the relevance of social media.
The day before she had posted a video clip of herself getting down to an amapiano track in her office. She tweets, ’grams and stars in truly moving motivational YouTube clips. A digital juggernaut.
Two years ago, she sparked equal measures of shock and praise when she posted photos of herself performing yoga-like poses dressed in a body-hugging athleisure outfit and her footwear of choice, Converse All Stars. It is not clear if her detractors are engaged in body policing, or if it is just that Calvinist South Africa is shocked at what one person called her “lack of deportment”. She seems to delight in the “shock and awe” effect of her public avatar: Amapiano Queen.
I ask how she is weathering the current crisis, prompting a look of bemusement.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she responds. “What I know is that I am a believer. Truly I am. I know that God would not bring me to this storm without knowing if I would survive it. I am not worried one bit because I have done nothing wrong whatsoever.”
It seems it could end in you being fired, I say, but she pooh-poohs the idea. “I don’t know where you get that from. What I know is that a few months ago I received 78% of the votes, effectively renewing my contract for my second tenure as VC.”
The same council that voted for her then is now instituting an investigation against her. “You have to ask yourself what went wrong in that interim,” she says. “I am an employee of the university and up to now the human resources department has not written to me. I hear all these [things] from you people in the media. But I have nothing to hide, nothing at all. It does look like someone is out to get me. I don’t know why.”
She says she overheard someone saying she was also going to be investigated for dancing. “Can you believe that? Forget it. I am not even thinking of stopping dancing! Those who have a problem with it have no idea how constrained I am in those videos. I was a champion dancer. I won trophies for that. Now I should stop? He banna!”
She tells me she is the only VC in the country who had no inauguration event, because “I don’t need all of that”.
I know that God would not bring me to this storm without knowing if I would survive it. I am not worried one bit because I have done nothing wrong whatsoever
— Mamokgethi Phakeng
“I said: ‘Let’s use the money to pay for students who owe the university so they could afford to graduate.’ I told them do this thing and I will come and give a speech at the students’ graduation. That was my inauguration.
“What people forget is that I am not just the VC of UCT. I am a black woman. They thought they could have their way with me. These people want me to assimilate. Well, they will never get that from me. This is nothing new.”
For the first time in the conversation, there is a hint of fragility as she talks about her introduction to UCT. “The first six months here were tough. They laughed at me for what they imagined were my grammatical mishaps. For suggesting that a comma belongs here and not there …
“One day I had a pink coat on and an African doek. A cleaner in the university’s employ was shocked. She said: ‘No-one dresses like that here.’ Look, I think I make people uncomfortable. I have come to accept that I disrupt spaces.”
I ask if it’s possible that her problems have less to do with race and more to do with competence.
“I have no problems with the university,” she retorts. “As for competence? I am a B-rated scholar. I demand everyone put in their best. What I expect from others I expect from myself first. I say people should exert their best because I exert even more myself. What’s wrong with that? Nobody says: ‘You are too demanding.’”
I tell you this: my detractors don’t want to say this is about race, then tell me what is it about?
So what is this all about?
“I tell you this: my detractors don’t want to say this is about race, then tell me what is it about?”
The issue of a “management coach” comes up in the discussion. Three years ago, the UCT ombud, who had received complaints about Phakeng’s “bullying” management style, recommended, among other things, that she receive coaching.
“I do have a coach, but I do not need a coach to nanny me,” Phakeng says. “I don’t need a prescribed coach. I have a problem with the prescribed model. I have a problem with Sipho Pityana prescribing a coach to me like I am a delinquent.” Pityana was chair of the council at the time.
Phakeng believes she is being “attacked” because she is a black woman.
‘They have a problem with my style’
“They do all these sorts of things. Just the other day they were questioning my qualifications. It is not only my gender and race they have a problem with. They have a problem with my style, my personality. But I can’t help them. I am who I am.”
I put it to her that though she is framing her battle as a race war, some of those at UCT who are unhappy with her are black. Several academics and activists I spoke to, besides Chinyoka, complained that she had effectively killed the BAC.
“I don’t know which blacks you are talking about. You will never understand the amount of affection and support I receive in this university. The students refer to me as theirs, their VC. But I can tell you this now: I have never recruited anyone, any black person or interest group, to support me, to fight my battles; that’s just not me. The argument that white people advance that blacks here do not want me will not work. It’s a ruse. A hell of a ruse.”
She says she does not shy away from radical affirmative action when necessary — an issue that has a bearing on the Lange case. “So, when it comes to talent I do not mince my words. I have a responsibility towards black South Africans. You want to charge me for that, go ahead. People think that this is too much for me, that I should leave it all, run away. Well, do I have news for them — I am going nowhere.”
She tells me that when she arrived she found the university “in tatters”.
I have improved the university’s ranking as the best in Africa in matters of research and the sciences, all aspects that make a university matter
— Mamokgethi Phakeng
“But right now look where we are. And I know you will write that I am narcissistic,” she laughs, “but I have improved the university’s ranking as the best in Africa in matters of research and the sciences, all aspects that make a university matter. Look at our business school, the best on the continent.”
For the first time in the university’s history, Phakeng says, there are two black women on the executive, heading the human resources and the research departments. And the CFO is a black man. “The kind of transformation I believe in is the strategic approach that cultivates and places talent from within the university, first.”
When we get to the elephant in the room, the question of Lange and why she left, Phakeng straightens her back and turns serious.
‘Lange has never taught at university level’
“The thing about Lis Lange is that her appointment did not follow proper governance rules. Lis Lange has never taught anyone at university level, but she got the job of a deputy VC of learning and research. Had she been black she would not have made it that far.”
She says she “never hid the fact that I have never supported Lis Lange’s appointment. At least initially. Once she got the majority nod after Price’s vigorous campaign, including gathering people who, like me, never supported her initially, I also consented.”
But Lange’s appointment came at the expense of a senior black academic, she says.
The relationship between Lange and Phakeng soured quickly.
“She had this tendency of swearing. She would spit ‘f***s’ and ‘s***s’, and I was like, not on my watch. I told her she could not swear in my meetings. She would swear in my meetings and they would all laugh … I told her if she was black she would have been fired. I feel that was the beginning of the end.”
Lange’s favourite line, Phakeng says, was “It’s a matter of opinion”.
“She also knows that I initially never supported her for the position of deputy VC. Oh, well, we never really recovered from that.”
(Lange declined to comment when approached for her side of the story.)
As Phakeng walks me down the driveway on my way out, I can’t help thinking a filmmaker should use Phakeng as the model for an endearing African manga, a super-villain/heroine.
I am tempted to ask more questions, but she says with a twinkle: “You should go now. Because you will come back here again soon, no?”
- Madondo is an award-winning essayist and author of, among others, books on punk culture, God, black magic, the black bourgeoisie and artists. He writes on poetry, photography and power dynamics in society
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