Letters in the Mail and Guardian
UKZN: concern is mounting
The Mail and Guardian published a series of letters in response to Dasarath Chetty’s lies and misrepresentations. Here are the four that were published.
The Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa has become increasingly concerned about the academic freedom crisis at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
A long list of incidents gives grave cause for concern, including the dismissal of Fazel Khan, an academic internationally respected for his work with the shackdwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo.
We have looked carefully at the transcript of the hearing that led to Khan’s dismissal, and it is clear that the basis of the charges against him was extremely dubious and that the judgement bears little relation to the evidence led.
UKZN spokesperson Dasarath Chetty’s claims (May 14) that this is not an academic freedom matter are disingenuous. Worldwide, academic freedom is acknowledged to include the right to make statements critical of university management.
The ongoing scandals around the state of academic freedom at UKZN, which have become internationally known, will abate only when management recognises that academic freedom is a fundamental principle of any university, and that it extends to the right to criticise university managers. — Nigel Gibson, Cafa Chetty writes about Khan’s dismissal as if it has been ratified by an irrevocable Labour Court judgement. He knows that Khan was dismissed by an internal disciplinary hearing, where he was denied the right to legal representation.
The sentence was based solely on a charge that Khan leaked university documents to the media. As the hearing transcript clearly shows, there is no proof of this and Khan denies it. He is likely to successfully challenge the dismissal at the CCMA.
Khan led a successful union strike against UKZN management last year. He fought for the right of shackÂdwellers in Banana City to remain on university land after UKZN vice-chancellor Malegapuru Makgoba applied for their eviction. In December 2005 the Durban media reported that Makgoba told Khan, before witnesses, that eThekwini mayor Obed Mlaba had told him that there was National Intelligence Agency evidence that Khan and two other academics were guilty of “inciting shack dwellersâ€, and that he would present this evidence to the University council with a view to charging them.
This is union and leftist bashing, and not something university management should gloat over in the M&G.– Anna Weekes, Woodstock, Cape Town Chetty breezily asserts that Khan was “complicit†in cropping himself from the photograph in the university newsletter when no evidence for this was led at Khan’s disciplinary hearing.
Khan never denied having stumbling on a copy of the doctored photograph on a colleague’s desktop before it went to print, but he and the colleague agreed he did not know its purpose.
In any event, advance warning of an act against oneself hardly amounts to complicity.
Chetty also ignores the troublesome fact that Khan gave a written interview for the article in question, but was then excised from both the photograph and the text.
University management has never provided a reasonable explanation of why Khan was removed from the photograph and the text in Chetty’s newsletter. Khan’s theory, that it was due to an intimidatory climate that targeted critics of an authoritarian management, remains the best available. — Richard Pithouse, Durban Two people gave evidence against Khan. One was the former vice-president of Comsa, the UKZN union of which Khan was an office-bearer, who claimed Khan told her he leaked the document.
Khan had previously called for the suspension of this person from the union, and, by their own admission, they were not on good terms. As Khan pointed out at the hearing, it is preposterous to believe that he would have told her such a damning thing.
Khan was fired on the basis of the highly suspect evidence of a person who bore a grudge against him.
A petition has been set up calling for Khan’s immediate reinstatement (http://fazel.shackdwellers.org), which has already been signed by 300 people. A hundred of the signatories are directly associated with the university.
Given the current climate of fear at UKZN, some of these people have chosen to remain anonymous. But many have spoken out openly about what is going on at the university, and what needs to be changed. That includes Chetty’s arrogance, as displayed in his letter to the M&G. — Anne Harley, lecturer, UKZN