About 150 of the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s staff have put their names to a petition calling on education minister Naledi Pandor to intervene in an long-running dispute at the university over academic freedom. The argument, reported on in earlier editions of Tertiary Update, has pitted the university’s vice-chancellor, Malegapuru Makgoba, against some of the 4000 staff members, of whom 1960 are academics, and international scholars.

Ms Pandor said at the weekend she could informally meet Professor Makgoba to discuss the issue and the negative publicity it has been garnering for a university she described as one of South Africa’s better-performing higher-education institutions.

The petition was also signed by about 60 academics from other universities in South Africa and other countries, as well as alumni. They joined 34 international academics from universities including Stanford, Oxford, Chicago, New York, London, and Denmark’s Roskilde University, who last month signed a letter of protest addressed to Professor Makgoba and the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s council chair, Mac Mia. They warned that the incident could hinder research-collaboration and staff-development programmes between that institution and international universities.

Although there have been rumblings about the status of academic freedom at the university for quite a long time, the issue reached a head a few months ago when the university’s management instituted disciplinary action against two of its top academics who criticised Professor Makgoba in the media. He has put out a communique to staff warning that “academic debates and arguments, unlike political ones, are not won through the mass mobilisation of troops but by the presentation of simple facts and the simple truths”.

From Sue Blaine in Business Day