WHAT IS SWAZILAND UNIVERSITY FOR?

Swaziland’s only independent daily newspaper has called for a probe and audit of the kingdom’s only university.

The Times of Swaziland in an editorial says the University of Swaziland (UNISWA) spends millions of emalengeni a year, and asks whether Swazis are getting ‘value for money’.

The Times goes on to ask, ‘Are some of the unemployed graduates unemployed because they are no longer relevant for the job market or are they victims of a government that is failing to provide employment despite knowing very well what it needs to do to lure investment our way?’

Memories are short in Swaziland. A Commission of Inquiry into UNISWA reported in 2006 (it was widely covered by the Swaziland media at the time). The Commission set up by the Swaziland Minister of Education (Constance Simelane at the time) investigated a wide range of issues, including the relationship between the university administration and students, the qualifications held by teaching staff, the transparency of decision making in the university and the accountability of the university’s governing council.

UNISWA’s administration refused for three years to take part in the inquiry because it said the Commission would support students in their grievances against the university.

Eventually (but reluctantly) the administration took part.

In its report, the Commission said the university administration tended to believe that its students were militants and therefore needed a firm hand, which fuelled conflict between the two (Swazi Observer, 7 March 2006). The Commission called on the university administration to improve channels of communication and to open dialogue with the students.

Anyone who has been following events at UNISWA since that report was published will know that nothing changed. Throughout 2007 and 2008 the students were in dispute with the university’s administration over the implication of a semesterisation programme at UNISWA. After class boycotts and violence, the Swaziland High Court ruled that the university administration was wrong to implement semesterisation and instructed it to consult with students.

Only yesterday (18 January 2009), the Times Sunday reported that students accused the Vice Chancellor of going ahead with an inquiry into circumstances that led to vandalism of property during a boycott by the students last year — and the students are opposed to the inquiry.

So, the Times can have its probe if it must, but we shouldn’t expect anything to come from it. In Swaziland the best way to ignore a problem is to have an inquiry into it. This takes time (years in the UNISWA case) and takes the heat away from those under investigation. When the report is eventually published it gets publicity for a day or so and then gets hidden in a cupboard.

There are some real questions that need to be asked about UNISWA. It is a government-run institution with King Mswati III as its Chancellor and the King’s brother Prince Phinda is the unelected chair of the university council. With such a set up it is unsurprising that the university is often criticised for its lack of academic freedom. If you are an academic at the university and you upset the powers that be you are finished.

The Times of Swaziland thinks that UNISWA may be a waste of money. The newspaper may have a point. In October 2008 the King in his address to graduating students told them they should go abroad to find jobs because there were none available for them in Swaziland. That was a damning (unspoken) admission that UNISWA is not operating in the interests of Swaziland. What is the point of educating people at university level when there is nothing for them to do once they graduate?

In the past year we hear news that two independent universities may be opening in Swaziland. According to reports both should be operating by now, but neither is. I have my doubts that either of them (one a ‘Christian medical’ university and the other a ‘business’ university) will contribute much to the needs of Swaziland.

That said, I think this does give us an excellent opportunity to debate what a university in Swaziland ought to be doing and how best to achieve it.

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UNIVERSITY OF SWAZILAND

NO CHANGE AT SWAZILAND UNIVERSITY

Swazi media have been full of the dispute at the University of Swaziland (UNISWA) over the past four months.

For those who haven’t been paying attention here’s a recap of what’s been going on. The students are in dispute with the UNISWA administration over the way the academic year has been reorganised into semesters. The campus was closed in December after some university buildings were damaged during a protest. Armed police still occupy the campus. Classes have resumed, but we await a ruling from the Appeal Court of Swaziland before the matter is finally put to rest.

I was surfing around the Internet when I came across a newspaper report from the UK about UNISWA. It told of the closure of the UNISWA Kwaluseni campus after unrest among students. Authorities claim the students are not thinking for themselves but are being led by outside political organisations. The vice chancellor is attacked for poor handling of the situation. The deputy Prime Minister is worried about the situation. The Swazi Government is thinking of cutting the amount of money it gives the university each year.

It didn’t seem that the newspaper report said anything new. The Swazi media have been reporting similar stories since September last year (2007).

Then I looked a little more closely and saw the report was dated 24 March 1995 – nearly 13 years ago. I swear that if you changed the date of the report from 1995 to 2008 you would hardly tell the difference. Nothing much has changed at UNISWA or in Swaziland more generally during that time.

The report was from the Times Higher Education Supplement, a weekly newspaper in the UK aimed mainly at people who teach in universities and institutes of higher education.

The original report headlined Student unrest rocks Swaziland royal rulers can be found here.

The University of Swaziland has become the focus of a political storm which has little to do with academe but may jeopardise future government funding of higher education in the small kingdom.

Virtually the entire student representative council has been expelled and several other students suspended for periods of one to two years for their role in the disturbances that led to the closure of the Kwaluseni campus last November.

While most students seemed relieved to resume their studies when UNISWA re-opened at the end of January and claimed to have had nothing to do with the unrest, the political controversy behind the students’ actions is still simmering.

The dispute dates back four years to what has become known as Black Wednesday. On November 14 1990, the Swazi government dispatched armed police and military units to the campus to disperse boycotting students. It was a crackdown of unprecedented violence in the history of the university. In the ensuing melee several students were crippled for life, hundreds injured and one woman successfully sued the government for an out-of-court settlement of 225,000 Lilangeni (Pounds 40,000) for the loss of an eye.

The reason why the students staged the boycott is still the subject of debate. Their grievances ranged from the poor quality of food provided in residence to extremely low allowances. Among their demands was that a student and lecturer who were members of the banned political organisation, Pudemo, and who had been charged and aquitted of high treason, should be reinstated at the university.

Following the crackdown, the government, under pressure from parents and political organisations, established a commission of inquiry to determine who was responsible. The hearings were held in camera and only the findings and recommendations have been released. According to lecturers, parents, past and present students, the wounds will fester while the report remains secret.

The minister of education, Prince Khuzulwandle Dlamini, said it was unlikely the report would ever be released because witnesses testifying to the commission had been guaranteed confidentiality. Legally, he explained, his hands are tied. This lack of transparency has fuelled a major public controversy extending well beyond the confines of the university.

The government believes the students are being used by political activists to advance their own agenda for multi-party democracy in Swaziland. The kingdom is ruled according to the Tinkhundla system which embraces traditional structures and enables a degree of democracy at the grassroots level. However, political parties such as Pudemo, which is banned from operating openly, are increasingly frustrated at the slow progress towards what they perceive as real democracy and the continued involvement of the royal family in political life.

Both Pudemo and the Swaziland Youth Congress have attempted to enlist the support of students, and have partially succeeded.

One moderate student said that over the past couple of years the students council had been ‘hi-jacked’ by these political organisations, leading to increasing militancy.

Since 1990, Black Wednesday has become the point of conflict between the students and university administration leading to disruption of lectures and the suspension or expulsion of several students. However, in the view of Vakashile Simelane, an economics lecturer at UNISWA for the past 16 years, the government's attitude is a little too self-serving. She believes the students are very well aware of the political realities in the region and make their own decisions without necessarily being manipulated by activists. And she says the senate acted too hastily when it closed the campus.

‘I think that if the students were allowed to commemorate Black Wednesday it would be better, because we would only lose one day, instead of the weeks and weeks we have lost now.’

Parents mainly feel the same way, and the columns of Swaziland’s only independent newspaper The Times have been filled with angry criticism of vice chancellor Lydia Makhubu’s handling of the whole affair. To root out the culprits responsible for threatening lecturers, intimidating students and destroying university property last November, she convened an informal inquiry and summoned each of the 2,150 students to her office for questioning.
The process dragged on throughout Christmas and New Year and evoked such strong sentiments that Professor Makhubu’s home became the target of a fire-bomb attack.

She refused to meet or discuss the issue with a crisis committee composed of concerned parents, who then took their grievances to the cabinet instead.

Deputy prime minister Seshayi Nxumalo, who also has a child at UNISWA, met the committee but says he was perturbed by the number of representatives of organised political groups. ‘This immediately raises the problem of who the government is dealing with, the students, or the political groups who are attempting to get some form of recognition?’ The government has left matters to the university senate and Professor Makhubu. However it could call for a wider inquiry if there was gross injustice.

But there is political fall-out. Swazi students are fully funded by government, unless they fail a year in which case they have to support themselves. Most also enjoy the benefits of campus accommodation. By contrast, primary and secondary school pupils are paid for by their parents.

There is a groundswell of feeling that privileged students should take their studies seriously, and if they paid their own way, maybe they would not be so preoccupied with politics.

The minister admitted that he had already started considering whether the 20 million Lilangeni earmarked for the university in the next budget could not be better spent elsewhere.

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SWAZI UNI TRIES TO MISLEAD MEDIA

LEAKS AT UNIVERSITY OF SWAZILAND

Somebody is having a laugh at the expense of the University of Swaziland (UNISWA).

A report in the Times Sunday yesterday (27 January 2008) reveals that the University Registrar is upset about documents leaking from the UNISWA Senate. He thinks too much unauthorised information is making its way to lawyers representing students in the ongoing dispute over the introduction of semesterization at the university.

And how do we know this? Someone (the newspaper variously calls him/her a ‘mole’ a ‘spy’ and a ‘traitor’) has leaked a letter sent by the Registrar to the university’s lawyer to the newspapers.

As they used to say about good theatre back in the UK ‘this one will run and run’.

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SWAZI UNI TRIES TO MISLEAD MEDIA

SWAZI UNIVERSITY PR DISASTER

The continuing dispute between students and the University of Swaziland (UNISWA) over semesterization is turning into a public relations disaster for the university’s administration.

UNISWA has decided to suspend the examinations due to start today (Monday 21 January 2008). But the way the university announced the decision has failed to diffuse the situation and left students and the public confused.

Last Thursday police brutally attacked students at the gates of UNISWA’s Kwaluseni Campus and shot one defenceless by-stander in his own home

Following this violence from police (who were meant to protect the university community) and angry students the UNISWA Senate met on Saturday (19 January 2007) and decided to suspend the exams.

So far, so positive. It was clear to anyone who has been paying attention that the police of all people could not guarantee calm on the campus, so the move by the Senate was welcome.

What happened next was the public relations disaster.

I wrote on Friday (18 January 2008) about how UNISWA senior management communicates with its students, staff and the world at large, through paid-for advertisements / press statements. This means that the management doesn’t have to explain itself to journalists or anyone else.

True to form such an advert was sent off to the press. It appeared in the Times Sunday yesterday (20 January 2008). This is what it said in part. ‘… the examinations for undergraduate programmes scheduled to begin on Monday 21st January 2008 be deferred pending further advice from the Senate.’

When journalists approached students on Saturday who were holding a meeting at a venue away from the university (UNISWA has banned students from meeting on campus) about the contents of the statement the students were understandably confused about what it meant. The Times Sunday reported students asking for clarification ‘because they did not understand it.’

The confusion was about what happens next. If the examinations are suspended does that mean that semesterization is also cancelled? When would exams be held? This statement talked about undergraduate programmes, what would happen to the postgraduates?

Many students interviewed saw the statement as a trick to divide them, rather than as a way forward towards a solution to the dispute.

A badly written statement was the first part of the PR blunder. The second came when the UNISWA Registrar contacted by the Times Sunday for clarification ‘confirmed the suspension but declined to comment further.’ So, a genuine confusion could have been cleared up if a senior administrator of the university had wanted it to be. It remains a mystery as to why he stayed silent.

As a result tensions on the Kwaluseni campus remained high over the weekend and there were more scuffles between police and students. Today (Monday 21 January 2008) could be a very tense day at the university.

There was no need for any of this confusion. What went unreported was that at its meeting on Saturday the UNISWA Senate decided that the exams should be suspended because of the problem over safety. It resolved that all academic faculties should meet today (Monday 21 January 2008) to discuss what happens next. It was stressed that student representatives should be invited to the meeting. Time would also be given to them to consult with their fellow students and the ban on student meetings would be lifted. After faculties had met they would forward their recommendations on the way forward to the Senate for deliberation.

Why on earth didn’t UNISWA tell the students, staff, media and the world at large any of this? Students are now being consulted on the way forward. This is a major step forward in the dispute, but the chance may have been lost because UNISWA seems incapable of explaining its intensions in a clear manner.

Let’s hope all is not lost, because it is generally believed now that the only way this semesterization mess can be cleaned up is through discussion.


See also
SWAZILAND POLICE ON RAMPAGE

SWAZI UNI TRIES TO MISLEAD MEDIA

SWAZI UNI TRIES TO MISLEAD MEDIA

Senior managers at the University of Swaziland (UNISWA) have been attempting to manipulate the Swazi news media during the present disruption at the university.

At first their tactics seemed to succeed but now they are losing the fight for public opinion.

What UNISWA did was to issue public statements on the dispute and rather than subject themselves to questioning by journalists they issued these statements as paid advertisements. What this meant was they could say anything they wanted without having to explain themselves to the public.

An added dimension to this was that the university has been using these press statements as the main way of communicating with its own students and staff.

For readers outside of Swaziland who do not know the background to this dispute, let me sum up its history briefly.

In August 2007, UNISWA changed the way it organised its academic year and introduced a system called semesterization which meant that students who previously only took examinations in May each year would now have to take exams in December and May.

Students believing that they had not been consulted properly on the changes (and also believing that they would be at a disadvantage under the new system) protested.

UNISWA senior management would not consult with students and a series of class boycotts took place. Then on the night of 9 December 2007, the night before exams were due to start, some students caused extensive damages at the university’s Kwaluseni campus. The examinations were cancelled because the university senior management felt that the safety of students and staff could not be guaranteed.

Examinations were rescheduled to start on 21 January 2008 and students said they would not write them. UNISWA continues to refuse to consult with students and has banned students from meeting (which almost certainly violates their rights under the new Swazi Constitution).

Since early January armed police, often dressed in full riot gear, patrol the Kwaluseni campus. Razor wire surrounds the examinations venues.

In January 2008, the UNISWA academic staff association ALAP fearing for their members’ safety if the exams went ahead discussed a possible boycott of the examination invigilation. Lecturers discovered, through one of UNISWA’s press releases / advertisements, that if they didn’t invigilate ALAP would be taken to court and staff members would face dismissal.

That brings us up to date, so let’s get back to the main plot.

The UNISWA management’s attempts to avoid discussing the situation have worked to an extent because they were the only side putting out information. But it didn’t take long for the students to catch up and overtake the university in the public relations stakes.

Student leaders have been appearing on radio and television and writing in the newspapers outlining their point of view.

Compared to UNISWA, they come across as the voice of reason. All along they have said they are not against the semesterization system, but they object to the way it has been introduced. They also say that they want talks with UNISWA management, but it is the university that won’t meet with them.

A typical example of the students’ views appeared in the Times Sunday, 13 January 2008 in which student leader Nqoba Mabusa sets out six major concerns the students have.

By being heavy handed in the way it issues information on the dispute the UNISWA management has alienated first its own students and then its own staff. That looks like two own goals that could have been avoided.

UNISWA has also managed to alienate public opinion generally in the kingdom as trade unions and civil society organizations added their support to the students.

The problem at UNISWA now extends beyond the university’s campus into the Ministry of Education and also the Swaziland government’s Cabinet. The Minister of Education was quoted in both Swaziland’s dailies on Thursday (17 January 2008) calling on the students to write the exams.

Even though it was probably making a good deal of money from the UNISWA adverts, the Times of Swaziland called for the dispute to end and for the January exams to be cancelled while the Minister of Education intervenes in the dispute.

In an editorial comment the Times (14 January 2008) wrote, ‘[... ] students could now be spectators of a clash between security forces and lecturers being frog-marched into the examination rooms with guns pointed to their heads.’

The comment goes on to say that UNISWA is ‘an institution that should boast of the most highly qualified academia expected to educate others in good leadership, management and problem solving. What are we going to learn from this; that guns will now rule at the institution?’

Although the Times editorial shows a commendable spirit of independence, the news media in Swaziland have to a large extent let the public down on this issue. They have been quick to print reports about student violence on campus and they have published the paid-for adverts. But what is ethically unacceptable is that they have extracted sections from the advertisements and published them in the news sections as if they were independently written reports from the newspapers’ journalists.

Also, journalists have not been very good at giving the background to the dispute. It is constantly stated that the issue is about ‘semesterization’ but the first time I saw an attempt by any news media at giving a clear definition of semesterization came in the Swazi Observer today (Friday 18 January 2008) and that was written not by a journalist but by a law lecturer at the university. It also came about four months into the dispute.

The article although welcome was incomplete as the writer failed to recognise that semesterization has failed in many universities across the world and as a result those universities decided to ditch semesterization and revert to their previous status.

It was nonetheless a brave attempt by the Observer. Now would someone tell us why UNISWA considered it necessary to introduce semesterization into Swaziland? Since the introduction of semesterization is at the centre of the dispute this is a very serious omission.

The news media have also mostly failed to call to account those in power. Even the Times in its editorial could only come up with the suggestion that the Minister of Education should intervene or if this was beyond his abilities then King Mswati III should ‘come to the rescue of both students and lecturers who are now learning and teaching under a state of emergency’

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised that journalists are failing in their duty to their readers. There are three possible reasons for this present failure. The first is that journalists don’t themselves understand what ‘semesterization’ is all about and they don’t have the research skills to go find out.

The second reason is that they don’t possess the analytical skills to, for example, look at the paid-for advertisements and realise that their contents raise issues that need to be debated. I don’t recall any journalists questioning UNISWA senior management’s decision to ban student meetings at the campus, even though this looks like a clear violation of the students’ constitutional rights.

The third reason is a deeply set cultural one. Swazis do not question people who are in power. To journalists the Vice Chancellor is a big cheese and his word carries at least the same weight, if not more, than any chief in Swaziland. The Chancellor of UNISWA is the king and the chairman of the UNISWA governing council is the king’s half-brother and we all know what happens to newspapers that dare criticise the king.


See also
SELF-CRITICAL SWAZI JOURNALISTS