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On 9 March 2015, a postgraduate student at the University of Cape Town (UCT) poured human waste over the campus statue of the colonialist Cecil John Rhodes. In the weeks and months that followed, a series of student demonstrations erupted across the historically English university campuses of South Africa, such as Rhodes University and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). Shortly after the dousing of Rhodes, on 26 March 2015, a statue of King George V was defaced at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Howard campus, the home of the original University of Natal.

The main focus of this first phase of student protests was against the colonial character and content of the old, long-established universities, and the general failure of transformation evident in indicators such as the very small numbers of black professors in these former white institutions. In time the call for transformation, a term associated with the increasingly unpopular ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), was replaced with the more radical demand for decolonisation of the universities, including their ‘colonial’ curricula.

A protest moment in the long history of student activism in South Africa became a movement which, by May 2015, would spread to the historically Afrikaans universities, where the demand of the protestors was the dropping of Afrikaans as a major language of instruction. The release of a video titled Luister (Listen), in August 2015, captured the deep discontent among black students at the University of Stellenbosch as one student after another recited his or her experiences of racism and exclusion within the university. These sentiments spread quickly to the University of Pretoria (UP), where again Afrikaans was targeted as the primary instrument for the marginalisation of black students in this large urban university.

Then things started to fall, consistent with the protestors being labelled ‘the Fallists’ as they promoted and made use of the hashtag #RhodesMustFall. On 9 April 2015, the gigantic bronze statue of Cecil John Rhodes was removed from the UCT campus exactly a month after the protestors’ first action against what they saw as a symbol of their alienation and exclusion on former white university campuses. A month later, on 27 May 2015, the University of Stellenbosch removed a campus plaque honouring the notorious apartheid prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd and replaced it with the flag of the new South Africa.

Over the next few months, buildings would be renamed and institutional policies changed as university leaders scrambled to accommodate the incessant demands of the Fallists during 2015. Processes of renaming already under way – such as at the University of the Free State (UFS), where a men’s residence named after the racial ideologue JBM Hertzog had already been renamed after struggle hero Beyers Naudé – were accelerated. Policies already under review, such as changes to the parallel-medium (English and Afrikaans) language policies of the universities of Pretoria and the Free State, were now claimed as Fallist victories by the growing student movement for change at former white institutions. University councils rushed to approve complex measures that would make English the primary medium of instruction at these universities – a trend already under way given the growing majority of black students at some former Afrikaans universities (UFS) and gradual changes in favour of English at others (UP). The new language policies would be challenged in the courts by conservative Afrikaans bodies, such as AfriForum, but gradually the law came down on the side of changes in favour of English-language instruction.

The student protest movement did not, however, start at UCT. In response to #RhodesMustFall, students at the historically black universities expressed frustration around the fact that they had been protesting for years about financial exclusion, but were never taken seriously until the protests began at the former white universities. Indeed, in the months preceding the attack on the Rhodes statue, there were continuing protests at institutions such as the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) and the Durban University of Technology (DUT). These protests were not about transformation (or decolonisation) but about financial exclusion. It is true that student discontent only made the headlines with the outbreak of protests at the former white universities in March 2015. But financial exclusion was about to become the next major rallying point for student activism.

As the first phase of the student movement appeared to fizzle out, a new wave of protests started at Wits University, this time focused on leaked information that the Johannesburg university was about to increase its 2016 fees by 10,5 per cent. On 14 October 2015, this second phase of the student protest movement was promptly dubbed with the enduring hashtag #FeesMustFall. On the day this protest started, Blade Nzimande, the minister of higher education and training, was hosting the Summit on Transformation in Higher Education in Durban with university stakeholders, including students. There were clear signs of trouble ahead with regard to the financial affordability of higher education for poor students. Those present reported a rather dismissive attitude towards students on the part of the minister and his senior bureaucrats when these concerns were raised. At Wits, in the meantime, the protests were gaining steam and the vice-chancellor, Adam Habib, hastily left the summit to meet with students.

The focus of the student protest movement had largely shifted from transformation and the affordability of higher education, and would gradually evolve into more radical demands for decolonisation and free higher education for all. By this time the higher education minister, and indeed President Jacob Zuma, had realised that what they now faced was much more serious than #RhodesMustFall. While universities were the sole targets of symbolic reparation, the purse strings that determine financial inclusion lay within the state.

Small steps were taken to try to alleviate the pressure. The minister thought he was being responsive by capping the fee increase at 6 per cent for all institutions – an illegal act, since only university councils could make that determination. That decision seemed to inflame the protestors. The president then stepped in and, under huge pressure, declared a zero per cent fee increase for 2016. As the 2015 academic year drew to a close, there was a lull in protest activity. But a realignment in student politics for the new academic year led to an eruption of the most violent protests on university campuses in the country’s history.

For the rest of 2016, university leaders were literally fighting fires. The student protestors, however small their numbers, took fire to lecture theatres, cars, libraries, computer laboratories, statues, university paintings, administration buildings, residences, and the offices of vice-chancellors. What was once a largely peaceful and broad-based student protest movement had become increasingly disruptive, violent and even racist in its character and demands.

As the 2016 academic year came to an end, leaders in government, universities, the private sector, and civil society scrambled once again to find ways of meeting the demand for free higher education without creating a serious financial crisis for the country and its public institutions. The general thinking in these quarters was to fully fund poor students, provide aid to middle-class students who fell between the cracks (the so-called missing middle, not rich enough to pay their way and not poor enough to qualify for state funding), and to require the wealthy to pay their keep. To many student leaders this was playing games. The demand was for free higher education, period.

Soon it became clear that for some of the more vocal and violent elements in the protest movement, the radical change agenda went far beyond the demand for free higher education to include the destruction of ‘colonial institutions’ and even a change of government.

What is going on?

I wrote this book for two related reasons. As the student protests escalated on South African campuses starting in early 2015, there were many questions in university quarters such as why, why now, and why in some institutions and not others. What was going on? It did not help that in the print and online media, everyone seemed to know exactly what was going on and what needed to be done. On every campus there were seminars, workshops, and conferences which almost without exception hailed the student voice and extolled the protest movement. Any university event convened outside the authority of the protestors was interrupted and condemned. The problem was clear and the remedies straightforward. The first academic books on the crisis emerged within record time even as the protests were still gathering steam. The line between victim and villain was drawn clearly and quickly.

Working inside the turbulence, I was not at all certain that we had a deep enough understanding about what at root was driving the increasingly violent protests of students and, later, workers on our public university campuses. The quest to understand more deeply the origins, character, and consequences of the student protest movement of 2015–2016 is my first reason for writing this book.

Writing about student activism is inevitably a political activity. This book charts, even applauds, the direction of a movement or institution or nation, but also warns of consequences. My approach to the student protests is therefore both empathetic and critical. It is empathetic in that I recognise the two main fault lines in the attack on public universities after apartheid: cultural alienation and financial exclusion. I appreciate the power and the authenticity of student voices, especially in the 2015 period, and the need for leaders to listen and attend to what is being expressed by courageous student leaders.

At the same time my approach is critical in that I question and interrogate some of the main lines of attack on the public university, especially in 2016 – from simple untruths that billions of rands are being hoarded away by the state and universities, to the more dangerous position that violence against individual persons and public property can be justified by some theory of revolution, or by the logic of justified retaliation, or by no theory at all.

The account of leadership in this book does not accept the outright dismissal of student protests nor does it condone the unconditional celebration of student behaviour. If anything, the leadership stories that emerge from the interviews I held with vice-chancellors draw attention to the complexity in trying to explain these sustained and destructive protests. What the voices of leaders in this book reveal is that the solutions to the complex crisis appear to be quite simple in a rational world. But the operational world for higher education leaders, as will be demonstrated, is hardly rational. Thus, an engagement with the political dimensions of the student protests takes centre stage in this account.

What we do not know

My second reason for writing this book is to address a gap in the literature on university leadership by providing the perspectives of sitting vice-chancellors in the context of nationwide crises in higher education. There are, of course, retrospective accounts of the general experiences of retired university leaders in South Africa, and ample biographical accounts of the lives and ambitions of vice-chancellors on the job.1 But none of these publications captures the ambition and anxiety of leadership practice during a period of sustained crisis. That is what this book offers.

The paucity of relevant research is also evident in the international scholarship on leaders and crisis. Over the past two decades there has been an explosion of literature on education leadership, but that work is focused largely on the work of school principals and superintendents. Studies of university presidents (as the leaders are called in the US) or vice-chancellors (the title used in the UK and its former colonies) are less common. And even in these rare studies, research on the heads of universities in times of crisis is often reported by those at a distance from institutional calamities. There is, of course, a burgeoning literature on business leaders in times of crisis, but this tradition focuses almost entirely on the role of chief executives.2 Moreover, it is a literature that is largely descriptive, often autobiographical, and almost always prescriptive in nature.

What constitutes a ‘crisis’ in much of the literature outside of Africa is also in question. Scholars write about ‘tragedies as crisis’, such as a mass shooting on a campus (Virginia Tech, for example),3 the crashing of a plane carrying campus citizens (Oklahoma State University),4 the uncovering of a serial child molester among the football coaching staff (Pennsylvania State University),5 allegations of sexual assault by members of a campus sports team (Duke University),6 or the torture and killing of a gay student (University of Wyoming).7 This first category of crisis is typically a single, tragic event requiring an emergency reaction or a disaster management response and for which the immediate responsibility lies with a small group or even a single individual.

The second category of crisis, the kind that this book focuses on, includes those cases in which the institution turns on itself; that is, when students mobilise to disrupt university operations through both peaceful and violent means over lengthy periods of time. In this category of crisis, there is no single individual to call to account, but rather an often amorphous mass of protestors priding themselves on the fact that there is no one leader.

In the first category, the critical incident is short-lived, intensive, and contained, even though institutional and personal effects may last well into the future. In the second case, the incidents are many, complex, and open-ended,8 so that the institutional leadership finds itself perpetually stressed and drained as the crisis continues over days, weeks, months, and even years. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that two very different kinds of leadership persona are required, and that different leadership effects emerge from each of the two crisis scenarios.

In any case, the higher education literature desperately needs a base of knowledge on crisis leadership. In particular, we need to know how university leaders are affected by and respond to crises in a sphere of work that, in the post-independence context, has become known for its chronic instability. The stakes are high. A serious crisis can be cataclysmic for both individuals and the university as a whole. ‘One event,’ holds an authoritative source on the matter, ‘can change the course of a campus, alter the reputation of a leader, and forever change the external perception of an institution.’9

The negative impact on university leaders can be devastating for institutions as leaders resign or find themselves effectively fired for mismanaging a crisis. Trust relationships between students and staff or staff and management can break down irrevocably in a stand-off protest. The academic credibility of an institution can go downhill rapidly when, for example, there is evidence of graduate certificate fraud. Donors might reconsider funding, with lasting reputational damage to a university. Prospective students might look elsewhere when extreme initiation practices result in injury or death. Both the public and university leaders therefore have a vested interest in understanding what a crisis means, how to manage it, and, ideally, how to prevent it from happening in the first place. On the positive side, effective leaders can teach us much about how to turn crisis into opportunity. Either way, we need to know about the relationship between leaders and crises, and especially the effects of crisis on this most valuable and often well-paid resource, the university principal.

Insider research

The period covered by this study of university leaders and campus crisis is roughly March 2015 through September 2016. Between June and August 2016, I met with eleven vice-chancellors from South Africa’s most troubled universities and interviewed them in depth. The objective was to ascertain their understanding of the university crisis, their managerial and personal responses on their own campuses, and their view of the future of the country’s higher learning institutions. As the rector of the University of the Free State since 2009, I am therefore the twelfth vice-chancellor in this study of the origins, meanings, and longer-term effects of the crisis on universities. In writing this book, I have interspersed my own leadership experiences among those of my eleven colleagues. Based on my direct experiences with students, I bring in the relational aspects of the university leader and students in the years leading up to the crisis and in the period of turmoil up until I resigned as vice-chancellor at the end of September 2016.

Of course I am emotionally and intellectually invested in this study. I do not stand outside the turmoil of 2015–2016. I approach the inquiry with empathetic commitment to my fellow vice-chancellors but also to my students. I am not unaffected by what I hear both from poor students as well as from struggling university leaders. Like all vice-chancellors, I recognise that the students have a point to their struggle, although my own sense of how to achieve their goals is very different from theirs. Clearly I do not enter this study as the detached, clinical, independent outsider; the book will reveal my own passions and commitments, and my ‘being implicated’ within the research process. And yet truth matters, not simply experimental truth but narrative truth: the heart-and-mind accounts of real leaders in crisis situations in which their very lives, and those of their followers, are on the line. This book is not the whole truth – there is no such thing – but a perspective on the truth, and an important one from the rare and relatively unstudied vantage point of the university leader.

Following the approach I took in writing my book Leading for Change,10 I decided to dispense with unnecessary jargon and to focus on communicating what are sometimes complex ideas in everyday language. The crisis in and future of South African universities is too important a topic to cloud or conceal important issues behind the shroud of academic pretence. The use of everyday language does not make research less scholarly; it makes it more accessible, and helps contribute towards public scholarship as well as academic debate.

The sample

All but one of the sample of eleven vice-chancellors were men, of which only two were white. There are too few women leaders of South African universities, and among the few approached for inclusion in this study only one responded positively or at all. The institutions themselves are richly diverse in terms of age, origins, region, racial demographics, politics, and resource profiles. And as indicated in the table on the next page, the status of these university leaders was changing even before this study was completed.

None of the traditional black universities were included in the sample since the purpose of this study was not to investigate those institutions where routine protest cycles were well established and which were bypassed, for the most part, by the violent protests of 2015–2016. For example, the issue of decolonisation would not come up in any serious and sustained manner on the historically black campuses. What happened at the sampled institutions was that their leaders were confronted for the first time by a scale and intensity of protest not seen before and which required extraordinary leadership and management responses. This is not, however, a study of the institutions themselves, but of the leaders of those universities and how they managed and led within their particular environments.

Although the vice-chancellors themselves represent a variety of personality types and a range of leadership styles, they all carry a deep concern and a heavy personal burden in relation to the future of South Africa’s 26 public universities. This concern prompted the vice-chancellors’ engagement with questions such as the following: What does this analysis of the student protests foretell about the prospects for vibrant and viable institutions of higher education in the southernmost region of the continent? Given that so many African universities lost their intellectual vibrancy and social value in the post-colonial period, can South Africa expect to be different? South Africa is home to some of the world’s leading research and teaching universities, attracting more and more African students from north of the Limpopo. Will the student protests destroy or enhance these institutions of higher learning? That is the key question that should be kept in mind in the course of reading this book – and to which the final chapter hazards a response.

University and leader	Total enrolments(2014)	Black*	White
Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) Professor Prins Nevhutalu (placed on leave)	33 186	29 024(87,5%)	4 162(12,5%)
Durban University of Technology (DUT) Professor Ahmed Bawa (resigned)	26 472	25 707(97,1%)	765 (2,9%)
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) Professor Derrick Swartz (stepping down, 2017)	26 510	20 162(76,1%)	6 348(23,9%)
North-West University (NWU)Professor Dan Kgwadi	63 135	45 354(71,8%)	17 781(29,2%)
Rhodes UniversityProfessor Sizwe Mabizela	7 519	4 830 (64,2%)	2 689(36,8%)
Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) Professor Lourens van Staden	56 785	54 027(95,1%)	2 758(4,9%)
University of Cape Town (UCT) Dr Max Price (end of term, 2017)	26 357	18 120(68,7%)	8 237(21,3%)
University of the Free State (UFS) Professor Jonathan Jansen (resigned)	31 032	22 040(71,0%)	8 992(29.0%)
University of Johannesburg (UJ) Professor Ihron Rensburg (stepping down, 2017)	49 789	44 427(89,2%)	5 362(10,8%)
University of Pretoria (UP)Professor Cheryl de la Rey	56 376	32 215(57,1%)	24 161(42,9%)
University of the Western Cape (UWC)Professor Tyrone Pretorius	20 582	19 473(94,6%)	1 109(5,4%)
University of the Witwatersrand (WITS)Professor Adam Habib	32 721	25 152(76,8%)	7 569(23,2%)

Source: Enrolment data from Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS). Available at: http://chet.org.za/data/sahe-open-data.

*‘Black’ includes African, coloured, and Indian students. The total enrolments include students in distance education, almost exclusively black, offered by institutions such as NWU (47% contact white in 2012) and UP (52% contact white in 2012) in which the contact numbers are more white. The racial distribution of students also does not reflect campus-specific racial numbers or dynamics. For example, the Potchefstroom campus of NWU is largely white, and the Bloemfontein campus of UFS is more integrated than its virtually all-black Qwaqwa campus; such differences relate to the 1990 mergers and incorporation of former black and white colleges and universities.