The report released this week by an independent panel investigating governance failures at UCT in recent years excoriates former vice-chancellor Mamokgethi Phakeng. It paints a picture of a narcissistic and thin-skinned leader who exploited and encouraged racial divisions – talking up a narrative of racial empowerment in public while saving some of her worst abuse for black women in private.
An independent panel tasked with investigating governance failures at the University of Cape Town released its long-awaited report on Wednesday.
It is scorching in its condemnation of both former vice-chancellor Mamokgethi Phakeng and former UCT Council chair Babalwa Ngonyama, stating: “To conclude that Ngonyama and Phakeng’s conduct during this period amounted to a governance failure would be understatement”.
The report released this week by an independent panel investigating governance failures at UCT in recent years excoriates former vice-chancellor Mamokgethi Phakeng. It paints a picture of a narcissistic and thin-skinned leader who exploited and encouraged racial divisions – talking up a narrative of racial empowerment in public while saving some of her worst abuse for black women in private.
Phakeng “repeatedly conducted herself unprofessionally by engaging in activity that is prohibited in the UCT workplace, including using threats, intimidation, ethnic slurs, personal insults and also posting racially offensive material on social media”, the report concludes.
Her behaviour was aided and protected by former UCT Council chair Babalwa Ngonyama’s multiple breaches of good governance. The report finds “Ngonyama’s conduct in failing to perform her fiduciary duty to UCT” sufficiently concerning that it recommends the businesswoman “be reported to the appropriate regulatory authorities”.
In total, the findings of the independent panel both vindicate and greatly extend the October 2022 report from Daily Maverick initially exposing the governance crisis within the University of Cape Town.
Read more in Daily Maverick: Inside UCT’s governance crisis
Independent panel included two judges
The report was produced by a panel chaired by retired judge Lex Mpati, joined by Judge Azhar Cachalia, Dr Patricia Hanekom and Dr Bernadette Johnson. It heard the transcribed equivalent of 3,825 pages of oral evidence from 27 witnesses, read 1,671 pages in evidence from written statements from additional witnesses, and considered a further 478 pages of documentary evidence. The period it looked at in UCT governance ran from January 2018 to December 2022.
The catalyst for the report was the circumstances around the departure of deputy vice-chancellor Lis Lange, together with an exodus of other senior staff members under the leadership team of then UCT vice-chancellor Mamokgethi Phakeng and Council chair Babalwa Ngonyama. Adding to the concerns was the fact that a number of the departing senior staff members had been made to sign non-disclosure agreements, an unusual feature for a university environment which traditionally favours freedom and openness.
After Phakeng reached an agreement to vacate her term early, the terms of reference of the panel were amended to “no longer [require] a specific focus on the VC’s conduct”. It is a sign of how deeply and widely Phakeng’s leadership affected recent years at UCT, however, that her malign impact on the institution remains a major preoccupation of the report.
Tellingly, the report’s preamble notes: “Most witnesses felt comfortable with their names being mentioned, more so after the fear of reprisal had receded with the departure of the VC and the Chairperson of Council”.
Phakeng “encouraged racial division”
The report finds that the issues with Phakeng at UCT pre-dated her appointment as vice-chancellor, beginning with when she took up a post as deputy vice-chancellor (DVC).
“Soon into Phakeng’s term as DVC, problems arose with her leadership,” the report states. Phakeng had poor relationships with other members of the leadership team and was hostile to any criticism or comment from her peers, no matter how well meant”.
The report states that Phakeng “appeared to encourage racial division”, at one stage congratulating former UCT Ombud Zetu Makamandela-Mguqulwa for “taking on a white man” after a minor disagreement between the Ombud and former DVC Danie Visser. The Ombud “differed” with Phakeng’s interpretation, explaining the interaction with Visser as essentially benign.
Despite a number of accounts from witnesses of Phakeng breaking down into tears – or as one witness put it, “crying and screaming uncontrollably” – the former VC would leave the investigating panel nonplussed when she informed them that “black women don’t cry and white and coloured women are taught to cry to evoke sympathy”.
The panel summarises testimony it heard from multiple witnesses as follows:
“Phakeng insisted that she was the only ‘real’ black person in the executive because she had kinky hair, dismissing the claim by others, who identified themselves as black because they too had suffered racial discrimination in the past. Phakeng said openly there were too many Coloured and Indian people in executive positions.”
The report details the experience of numerous black women who suffered at the hands of Phakeng, including the director of the International Academic Programmes Office, Dr Beata Mtyingizana, who told the panel how Phakeng had “humiliated” her to the point of tears in front of colleagues.
“Mtyingizana stated that Phakeng’s behaviour towards her began to affect her health. She left UCT in 2018, less than a year after her appointment,” the report states.
With Phakeng as VC, the real problems begin
Phakeng was appointed to the UCT top spot despite misgivings – and one of the unofficial conditions imposed upon her was that she would work with a coach to improve her leadership style. Phakeng resented this, and on this point the panel sides with the former VC, writing: “That the appointment of a VC can be made subject to a condition that a mentor be appointed to overcome a major leadership deficit was unwise”.
Although Phakeng would repeatedly claim that the institution at large was against her, the panel reports that it “heard repeatedly that everyone wanted Phakeng to succeed. As one witness put it, If she succeeds, we succeed.”
Indeed, Phakeng faced little overt criticism due to fear. The usual response to Phakeng, witnesses testified, was to “back off because it was at best unproductive and at worst career-limiting to be opposing Phakeng”.
Phakeng continued to direct members of the administration who identified as black that they could not do so if they were not African, telling one: “[Y]ou’re not Black … you don’t have hair like me, you don’t smell like me, you don’t look like me and you don’t taste like me.”
In one incident reported to the panel, Phakeng opposed the appointment of a black external candidate in favour of a white internal candidate because she was reportedly convinced the black candidate was being “pushed…as a possible replacement for herself”.
The panel took a dim view of this incident, writing:
“Disregarding established processes of good governance, especially in regard to the appointment, promotion, and termination of senior academics and staff, including the irregular granting and refusal of performance bonuses became a feature of Phakeng’s leadership, particularly during Ngonyama’s Council, which aided and abetted her actions.”
Barely two months into Phakeng’s tenure, former DVC Loretta Feris formally wrote to Phakeng, copying the leaders of Council, to ask her to put an end to “multiple encounters of private and public humiliation and disrespect” that Feris had experienced at Phakeng’s hands.
Attempts to hold Phakeng accountable were well nigh impossible; the report notes that she resented, for instance, attempts to “justify some of her personal expenses, such as her use of an Uber to and from her official residence”.
Exodus of senior staff
The panel found that the subsequent resignation of Feris and multiple other individuals were “directly attributable to the conduct of the VC and multiple governance failures of Council”.
Both Ngonyama and Phakeng acted improperly and unlawfuly in handling the termination of Feris’ contract, in addition to creating a work environment for Feris which became “intolerable”.
The report supports the account previously given by Lis Lange that Ngonyama and Phakeng in effect colluded to push her out of her position. In the panel’s words, “[Ngonyama’s and Phakeng’s] malign interest in wanting to push Lange out converged”. Phakeng’s subsequent account to the UCT Senate about why and how Lange was leaving her position was “untruthful”.
The panel also supported the testimony of former Communication and Marketing Department executive director Gerda Kruger, who termed Phakeng’s leadership style “extraordinarily problematic and the most trauma-inducing manager I have ever experienced in my 40 years of work”. Kruger was pushed out of her job for having authorised the production of a farewell gift for Feris, which the panel found was “driven by [Phakeng’s] dislike for both Feris and Kruger”, with the actual disciplinary charges having “no merit”.
Another almost-exit directly related to Phakeng was that of registrar Royston Pillay, who told the panel that his relationship with the VC had become “intolerable”. As an example of the “improper pressure” Pillay was placed under by Phakeng, he cited the fact that he was instructed by her “to approach media houses for information regarding the source of leaks from the Council meetings that were reported in the media”. Pillay’s possible continuation of tenure, post-Phakeng’s departure, is still being negotiated.
Other resignations in which Phakeng was cited as one of the primary factors: UCT’s COO Reno Morar, Dean Linda Ronnie, HR head Miriam Hoosain, and director of the Office of the VC Judith du Toit.
UCT Council in the firing line
The UCT Council in place at the time when Phakeng was appointed, led by Sipho Pityana, comes in for criticism for having supported her appointment despite “serious concerns about her leadership”.
Pityana subsequently failed to take decisive action against Phakeng, in the panel’s view at least partly because “he was reluctant to act against a black female VC because he feared a backlash from her supporters and elsewhere”.
Ultimately, the panel finds, “Pityana and his Council neglected their fiduciary duty to UCT by failing to take reasonable steps to discipline the VC or terminate her contract”.
It is Pityana’s successor, businesswoman Babalwa Ngonyama, who is the greater target of the panel’s ire, however. In addition to Ngonyama being implicated in several other serious governance issues, the former Council chair “misused her position as chairperson to stymie discussion of matters in which she was personally implicated”.
In another shocking incident, Ngonyama instructed Registrar Pillay to send the Minister of Higher Education a report on a Council meeting which she had dishonestly amended.
Deputy Council Chair Pheladi Gwangwa also comes in for heat in her chairing of Council meetings during the worst moments of crisis in late 2022, having let Ngonyama and Phakeng vote on resolutions which directly affected them in a way which was “scarcely believable”.
Gwangwa, writes the panel, was “clearly on a mission to secure her pre-planned outcome”, and later also released a statement on events at Council which “Gwangwa knew was false”.
UCT Council apologises
A statement accompanying the release of the report, from UCT Council Chair Norman Arendse, stressed that the once-divided Council had agreed that the report was both “substantively” and “procedurally” fair.
The statement included an unreserved apology from the current Council, which recognised the truth of the panel’s conclusion that “had the Council at the time fulfilled its governance role as required, the events that unfolded and emotional trauma to many individuals could have been avoided”. DM