My response to Prof Mumba ‘s response
Yesterday I wrote on this page that the challenges facing the University of Zambia (UNZA) were twofold. The first is persistent underfunding from the government coupled with a huge debt to statutory bodies and employees in the form of unpaid gratuities and pension. The second is poor leadership at management level, led by the Vice-Chancellor Prof Luke Mumba. In the same writeup, I suggested possible solutions: adequate allocation of financial resources to our leading public university, dismantling the debt that the university owes to various institutions and individuals, and replacing the current management of the university with an effective team that can run UNZA in a better way.
In the comments section of the posted story, Vice-Chancellor Mumba, using his Facebook account and speaking in his official capacity, responded by stating that he agrees with my views on the first challenge that the university faces. He however took issue with my diagnosis of the second challenge – poor leadership from him and his team in management. Ignoring the substantive premise upon which I made the point – that he and his team have for a long time run the institution with arrogance and threats, without much consultation with the unions, and in a manner that does the bidding of the political authorities – Prof Mumba cherrypicked what suited him and turned those into the main subject.
Prof Mumba does not dispute the fact that he and his team have been leading the university in a unilateral way, represented most notably by the noted coordinated removal of unions from the University Council, their attempt to introduce stringent conditions for payment of gratuities to eligible employees without the consent of the unions, and their imposition of the prohibitive h-index and the punitive Code of Conduct, again without the support of the unions. Instead, the Vice-Chancellor sought to absolve himself and his team of responsibility for the problems at UNZA. This attitude is expected but rests on falsehoods deliberately meant to mislead the public. Let me demonstrate this by addressing myself to the three issues that Prof Mumba chose to focus on.
- The auditing of UNZA
In my writeup, I asked the government to institute an audit into how UNZA management has been using public funds. I expressed confidence that such an undertaking is likely to reveal glaring mismanagement of funds. In response, the Vice-Chancellor stated that UNZA has been audited annually by the office of the Auditor General. This is false. The truth is that UNZA has not been audited by the Auditor General since 2018 when the last audit was carried out. Ideally, audits should be annual. That is the ideal situation. But UNZA has never had them annually. Currently, the university is preparing statements for the financial year ending December 2019. The Auditor General’s office is yet to move in.
If what I am saying is not true, I challenge Prof Mumba and the university to publicly publish the audits from the Auditor General’s office for UNZA for the years 2019 and 2020. The university administration will not do so because there are no such audits.
- The blatantly partisan behaviour of UNZA management under the previous regime
In my writeup, I stated that ahead of the August 12, 2021 general election, Prof Mumba and his team in management acted like hired guns for Mr Edgar Lungu and the then ruling Patriotic Front (PF), taking many unprincipled positions that undermine academic freedom and raises fundamental philosophical and policy questions about the character and functions of the university. I qualified this point with an example of how the university administration ill-treated Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa, who I said is a lecturer at the institution, on two incidents. The first was on how they disowned him in a public statement dated 27 April 2021 after he wrote, in his personal capacity, a newspaper article that was highly critical of Mr Lungu’s leadership. I have attached the statement to this post for ease of reference. In the said statement, Vice-Chancellor Mumba and his team in management suggested that Dr Sishuwa was masquerading as an employee of the university when in fact not. Here is what they wrote in April 2021: “UNZA management would like to clearly put it on record that Dr Sishuwa is currently not in active employment of the University of Zambia. Since 2018 he has been and continues to be on an unpaid leave of absence outside the country. Therefore, his opinions and views in the mainstream and social media do not represent the official position of the University of Zambia.”
Today, after Mr Lungu and the PF are no longer in power, the same Prof Mumba and his management team are claiming the same person they previously publicly disowned as their employee, saying “Dr Sishuwa retains his position in the University and…is still an employee of Unza” and was on paid special leave of absence approved by the same leadership which not long issued a misleading statement that suggested he was not employed by the university and that “since 2018 he has been and continues to be on an unpaid leave of absence outside the country. Since the previous statement dated April 27, 2021 has not been retracted by the same management that issued it, what exactly is the truth? Who is lying between Dr Brenda Bukowa and Vice-Chancellor Mumba?
In the Mail and Guardian opinion piece, Dr Sishuwa never claimed to ‘represent the official position of the University of Zambia’, yet Prof Mumba and his clique in management found it necessary to distance themselves from his article. Why? Because they wanted to appease Mr Lungu and the PF, which explains why the university administration disowned their employee only after the PF government complained against the critical article and accused him of sedition. The flipflopping behaviour of UNZA management on this incident shows the cost of taking unprincipled and partisan positions aimed at supporting the interest of one political grouping. When the people that one was supporting to sycophantic levels lose power, one ends up contradicting themselves.
The second incident I referred to in my writeup to demonstrate the partisan behaviour of UNZA management ahead of the August 12 elections relates to how the Vice-Chancellor tried to have Dr Sishuwa sanctioned for petitioning the eligibility of the PF candidate, Mr Lungu, in the Constitutional Court. When Dr Sishuwa, in his capacity as a private citizen, sued Mr Lungu, management of the University of Zambia quickly sought legal opinion on the institutional regulations they could draw upon to have Dr Sishuwa dismissed from his job for suing the PF’s nominated presidential candidate. This is what I meant when I said Prof Mumba went out of his way to have Dr Sishuwa dismissed from UNZA. I did not say that he fired Dr Sishuwa and I am surprised that the Vice-Chancellor could not grasp this elementary difference in sentence construction between the two. To prove that Prof Mumba wanted Dr Sishuwa fired, I attach evidence of what stopped him in the form of legal opinion from the University’s own legal counsel who told him that Dr Sishuwa, who was simply defending the constitution, had done nothing wrong; citizens have the right to sue. The question is: how did Dr Sishuwa’s decision to sue Mr Lungu affect UNZA management? What was Prof Mumba’s interest in the matter?
I must say that I do not understand why Prof Mumba wants to turn Dr Sishuwa into the main subject of my writeup when the issue was about the Vice-Chancellor’s poor leadership and the blatantly partisan behaviour of his management under the previous regime. It is almost as if Prof Mumba is trying to use this opportunity to clean the mess they created when they disowned their employee in April. I maintain that one of the solutions to UNZA’s challenges is removing the current management and replacing it with a professional one that does not hire itself as agents of the party in power, including the current one or the Socialist Party when it forms government.
- The supposed ‘unprecedented multi-million-dollar infrastructure development projects’ that UNZA management has built over the last five years.
In his response, Prof Mumba listed a number of what he calls ‘unprecedented multi-million-dollar infrastructure development projects’ that his management has built over the last five years. These include the:
(i) Special Education Needs Centre
(ii) New African Centre of Excellence Building in the School of Vet Medicine
(iii) New Lecture theatre at the School of Public Health.
(iv) New lecture theatres in the School of Engineering
(V) New Graduate School of Business Complex
(vi) UNZA industrial printer;
(vii) New Teaching and Learning Complex
(viii) Ongoing construction of a 3KM perimeter wall fence around the [Great East Road Campus] GERC; and
(ix) 100,000 cubic litre water reservoirs at the new residences.
The truth is that Prof Mumba and his UNZA management had very little to do with these projects. As I show below, most of these projects were constructed at the initiative of hardworking UNZA lecturers and using grants from the United States, the World Bank and other donors after the lecturers applied for them. If anyone deserves credit for these projects, it is the lecturers, the same people that Prof Mumba and his team are busy mistreating. In stating this, I am not trying to take away any accomplishments that belongs to Prof Mumba and his team but simply to give credit to those to whom it is due – the same academics that Prof Mumba and his team are constantly antagonising.
For instance, the Special Education Needs Centre was an initiative of lecturers – led by Prof Beatrice Matafwali, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Educational Psychology, Sociology and Special Education – who successfully applied for a grant from a named European organisation for its construction. The New African Centre of Excellence Building in the School of Vet Medicine was an initiative of lecturers led by Dr Andrew Phiri who successfully applied for a grant from the World Bank for its construction.
The New Lecture Theatre at the School of Public Health was an initiative of lecturers – led by Charles Michelo, Professor of Epidemiology and Founding Dean at UNZA’s School of Public Health – who successfully lobbied his extensive public health networks in the United States, including Vanderbilt University, to the to finance its construction.
The New lecture theatre in the School of Engineering was financed and constructed by the government through the Ministry of Education as part of a wide effort to improve infrastructure in public universities. Similar projects are running in other universities. The New Graduate School of Business Complex was a self-financing initiative of the UNZA School of Humanities and Social Sciences led by Dr Bennett Siamwiza, who was then Dean, and a committee that included Professors Manenga Ndulo, Felix Masiye and Dr Stephen Mphuka. Prof Mumba was not even Vice-Chancellor when the project took off in 2012.
The 100,000 cubic litre water reservoir project at the new residences is an initiative of academics led by Professors Mweene (late) and Prof Bernard Mudenda Hang’ombe from the School of Vet and is supported by the Africa Centre of Excellence for Infectious Diseases of Animals and Humans (ACEIDAH), an Africa-wide research group funded by the World Bank.
The new wall fence at UNZA was part of the Lusaka decongestion project led by the government. UNZA was given the money for the fence in exchange for land on which to construct a road that would connect Kamloops and Thabo Mbeki roads. This project has little to do with UNZA management.
Prof Mumba is right to claim credit for the purchase of the not yet operational industrial printer. What he did not say is that the money for the same came from the controversial and possibly questionable extension of the lease of the East Park Project from 25 to 50 years. As Lusaka lawyer Mr Elias Chipimo once publicly did, I challenge the Vice-Chancellor to provide documentary evidence in support of how the East Park lease was extended for peanuts from 25 to 50 years? The public deserves to know the details of this project, especially the extension.
I can go on. The point is that Prof Mumba can take credit as head of the institution, but the real heroes are the lecturers who initiated most of these projects. They may be under his supervision, but they are the architects of these projects who deserve enormous credit.
So who is misleading the public?
Fred M’membe
