HACkers blog

Since the attack on Prof Caira, crime on UCT Campus has become "public interest". At least, this is what I was told when I unsuspectingly answered my phone and found a journalist on the other side.

Three UCT staff members had been attacked within a period of two years, he reminded me. One had died and one resigned. "Do UCT staff feel safe under such circumstances?" he demanded.

Not knowing the details of the attack on Prof Caira, I was hesitant to answer. Certainly I didn't see any "trend" between the other two incidents - one of which took place in the context of a relationship between former colleagues, and the other which appeared to be an act of random misfortune - and I wasn't sure that these kinds of numbers over this period of time constituted a "trend". But then, I'm not a statistician.

Or a journalist. With newspapers to sell.

I seem to remember, though, that last year one staff member was killed on Campus, and two - that I know of - off Campus. That one was held up on Campus, and several elsewhere. That stuff disappeared from offices, the Library, or bags left unattended - as it did elsewhere. I wasn't quite seeing the newsworthiness here, unless it was that UCT Campus was in someway a microcosm of the society in which it was located. And wasn't that, in some way, what we were being nudged towards - being more integrated into the community, no longer "in the world but not of it", less of the ivory tower on the hill?

But this wasn't what the journalist wanted to hear. He wanted to know what steps the Union was taking to ensure that this didn't happen again. A million images flashed through my mind - Schwarzenegger clones with large toothed dogs patrolling the passages; retinal scan access control on all the buildings, offices and common areas, with metal detectors and X-ray machines; prison walls and towers on the perimeter; a moat and drawbridge, like the US embassy in Westlake; uniforms and cards with smartchips, allowing surveillance and mapping and instant location of any authorised person at any moment on some central system; CCTV cameras everywhere, watching... A bit like the 80s on steroids. (Though the image of the whole peninsula gridlocking because UCT had installed access control, backing up the M3 in both directions for lightyears, did provide some measure of amusement.)

"Don't you think," continued the journalist - clearly having been taught the value of the leading question - "that the institution is losing skilled people due to insecurity?" Well, two that we know of (one death, one resignation). Then again, I know of many others we've lost due to frustration at career prospects, unhappiness with the rate of Transformation, outrage at the levels of bureaucracy, displeasure at continual restructuring, boredom with mindless jobs, unhappiness with salary levels, frustration with bad line management, or - not through their own choice - retrenchment. "Insecurity" wasn't often cited in my presence as a reason for moving on. I'd heard only of the one case, in fact.

I was rather more concerned with what the media were already making of the recent incident. Each report made much of the alleged accomplices of the alleged perpetrator being "suspicious people" and thus easily identified, tracked and arrested. What constitutes a "suspicious person" is usually "someone who doesn't look right", which usually translates into some physical manifestation of prejudice... often, "someone who doesn't look like us". I'd like to think that our student and staff profile aspires to be truly representative, so that no one stands out particularly as not belonging, but clearly we're a long way from that if some people do.

Still, the interplay of collegiality, team work and persistence that saw the arrests happen so quickly speaks positively about the response of people on Campus to this kind of thing, and Prof Caira's return to the saltmine so soon after the attack demonstrates that the "trend" isn't as pervasive as the journalist wanted to believe.

Be safe, people, and keep an eye out for each other. Arb criminals looking for stuff to steal or people to mug are less likely act if someone's watching them.

Unless they're really stupid. And really stupid people _should_ stand out at a University, right?

Graduates embarking on administrative careers are likely to be bored out of their skulls. Teachers, on the other hand, likely not. And even accounting promises more excitement than a career in media.

At least, this is what a survey conducted by the Training and Development Agency for Schools in the UK revealed (full results below).

According to The Guardian, reasons given for 60% finding their jobs tedious were the lack of challenge, and not using their knowledge or skills.

At UCT, one sees more and more graduates being employed into administrative careers. Aside from those already there, studying - often higher degrees - on the side. But whereas the likes of Castells point to underemployment as the driver of the knowledge economy, through people with more capacity than the job demands thinking of better ways of doing things and redesigning / adding value to their work - an over-rigid, bureaucratised environment restricts autonomy and flexibility and inhibits the kind of control over one's work that that requires. And each manilla envelope that arrives, each tweaked form, each new piece of software and each additional article from Harvard Business Review or Sloan Management Review that some member of the Senior Leadership Group reads, reduces that flexibility just that little bit more.

Anyone for a nice exciting career in banking?

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I can't be the only one who's curious about who visits my blogs, surely? There must be others who wonder how someone landed up reading their blog, rather than... say... the sports round-up or their horrorscopes.

Looking at the statistics, though, is rather disappointing. The bulk of the visits are from spam bots. Frustrated spam bots, no doubt, but persistent too. A bit like your average lottery punter, I suppose.

Of more interest were the referrals from search engines. Google.co.za narrowly beats Google.com and Google.ro, with others coming in way lower. Search terms included:

• warm + air + hand + dryer
• affirmative + action
• archives + phentermine
• Stellenbosch + porn
• how + much + electricity + light + overnight
• afrikaanse + blog
• lions + in + the+ street

In my next life, when I have a little more time to spare, I'm going to apply my imagination long and hard as to what this might mean...

"Why do all these UCT lecturers get beaten up?" I was asked by someone off-Campus. I didn't know Prof Caira, or the circumstances of his attack, and wasn't sure that two attacks constituted a trend, anyway, but I was rather disturbed at the suggestion that staff on academic conditions, as a group, might be seen as a legitimate target for violence because of something about them, something they did, or something they represented.

A couple of conversations on Campus, this morning, brought this other conversation to mind. Both of these conversations involved staff on conditions other than academic, who were black. Both conversations highlighted treatment of staff on conditions other than academic, by staff on academic conditions - treatment which they viewed as disrespectful, and which was hard to conceive of any other way.

Race wasn't foregrounded in any of the incidents mentioned - although it may well have been a factor in at least one. What was foregrounded was the taking for granted, the lack of regard, the treating of the staff on conditions other than academic as some kind of servant class, there to do the bidding of the academic class, at the convenience and behest of the academic class, with no acknowledgement of shared humanity, never mind collegiality. Some of the incidents reported were experienced, some witnessed, but all were deeply felt. An injury to one as an injury to all.

The "academic" staff in question probably had no idea that they were perceived in this manner. At least one of them would certainly view himself as progressive, and would be no doubt be surprised that his behaviour had given offence. And so... he's unlikely to change it.

Whose responsibility is it to bring about change? Is it for those on the bottom of the power dynamic to speak up and demand respect - and face the very real risks that entails? Or is it for those advantaged, whose interests are unconsciously being protected, to examine their behaviour more self-consciously and consider how it might be affecting others - when they're unaware there is a problem?

Is it up to women to educate men about sexism, or black people to educate white people about racism? Is it up to the subordinate estate to educate the academic estate about the small oppressions committed unthinkingly every day, which perpetuates the apartheid which remains in universities?

How I came to be Googling myself is a long story, needing ample quantities of whisky for the telling. But I did. And, as I didn't find what I was looking for, I Googled myself with my name misspelled. I didn't find what I was looking for either, but I did find something really odd.

One of my poems that had appeared some time back on LitNet, turned up on a Norwegian blog. Not once, but twice, the second post fully a year after the first.

Despite my recent excursion to Oslo, my Norsk isn't quite up to translating the page, and BableFish doesn't do Norsk either. So what was said, outside of the English, remains a mystery. I'm rather hoping it's defamatory, so that I can enlist Jacob Zuma's lawyers and sue for millions.

(And, while we're on the subject of "odd" - notice the similarity between the Norwegian blog template and this one? Hmmm....)

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I was surprised to find myself having mixed feelings on reading about Frank Ellis's early retirement. On the one hand, I found his ideas profoundly distasteful, and the fact that he was in a position to do real damage with these toxic ideas was abhorrent to me. Academia is a fierce battle ground when it comes to issues of power and ideology, and one fewer racist, one fewer sexist, to have to waste one's time discrediting and "neutralising" could not but be a good thing, could it?

But, then again, perhaps it could. It wasn't that long ago that we found ideas - and people - being suppressed because they were deemed offensive or unacceptable - to a very different order. In those days we fought fiercely for the right to dissent, the right to hold views that differed from the mainstream, the right to diversity of views and voices. And now, because we don't like - abhor, even - what those voices are saying, we wish them silenced.

I'm still glad Frank Ellis is no longer using his academic freedom to nurture his poisonous perspectives. But I can't help feeling troubled and mournful over the sacrifice of the principle that should have me fighting for his right to have the space to do so.

Francis Sedgemore raises the question why students should study science, if the jobs available are "mostly low-level technical jobs for young geeks and lab rats, with poor salaries, and little scope for advancement". Students are acting quite rationally in choosing to study subjects other than science, he argues, and challenges the notion that there is - or will be - a shortage of scientists and engineers to fuel the "knowledge economy".

Rather, he writes, "most technical jobs are IT-related, and such positions require little or no engineering knowledge. Employers expect universities to churn out graduates not educated in science, engineering and the liberal arts, but trained in the use of software technologies with limited shelf lives, and already possessing project-management and accountancy skills."

The economy in the UK is clearly very different to the economy in South Africa, though both are subject to the same global market whims, the same neoliberal discourse from politicians, and the same "rational" behaviour from students choosing courses of study.

Perhaps not everyone shares the same morbid fascination for the continuing saga of the British DPM which keeps me glued to the Guardian, but an interesting development has been the role of blogs in the latest Scandalous Revelations.

Suddenly, it seems, MainSteam Media (commonly referred to on blogs as MSM) are waking up to the role of blogs in challenging, or even changing, power dynamics on political and other playing fields. Much space has been devoted, in MSM from television to print to radio, to harrumphing about the "Black Art of Blogging".

Sometimes, ironically, on MSM Blogs themselves. (A search on "Prescott" on the Guardian's Comment is Free blogspot produced ten hits. By the time you're reading this, the number is certain to be greater.)

Most people really don't enjoy paying tax. While I don't mind it, really - as long as the money gets spent sensibly - I really don't enjoy the annual ordeal that is submitting an income tax return.

Assuming one remembers where one put one's tax form by the time the IRP5 arrives from Bremner, and has on hand a functional pen, stapler and calculator, one is suddenly beset with memories of why one didn't do accounting at school, distracted by more interesting possibilities like scrubbing the kitchen floor, or overcome with panic at the thought that someone somewhere might have made a mistake which would make the numbers refuse to add up... a mistake which was unlikely to be in your favour!

But someone somewhere took pity on me, and made things a whole lot better. SARS have introduced e-filing, which allows you to submit your tax return online! A brief registration process, and 24hrs later, your tax return has been issued online and you're ready to go! The entire process of submission took about ten minutes, and it's all available online in a history file should you need to go back to it - unlike the act of faith putting it into the mail entails.

There's still time, for anyone who has yet to submit - visit the SARS site for more information.