HACkers blog

UCT should import Zimbabwean electoral officers to assist with internal elections. It can only improve...

Some time back, staff were asked to collect (in their various employment categories) nominations - duly seconded by a couple of dozen colleagues of like employment category - for Council, for Senate, and for various selection committees. In addition, some of these nominations required the nominee to provide biographies, statements of candidature, blank cheque with three specimen signatures and their fully sequenced DNA. (OK, that's an exaggeration. Partially sequenced DNA.)

Deathly silence ensued. Followed, after long enough for most people to have forgotten, by white election slips calling on people to vote for one (of a list of several) candidates to be Their Representative on the Council (another convoluted process requiring sealed, signed envelopes and secret handshakes).

After several further geological ages, pink voting slips asked staff to vote for up to four (of a list of eight) candidates for the Senate. Candidates were listed by initial and surname only - no first names, no indication of department, and certainly no sign of the biographies or statements they'd been asked to supply. Which made it a little difficult to guess which A Adams, out of a possible several, one was being asked to elect (or not). Additionally, 25% of the list of candidates had subsequently resigned or been retrenched from the University. Once more, a convoluted process of sealed and signed envelopes, nudges and winks, followed by deathly silence.

Then today someone happened across the UCT website's news page, and discovered that Gary Gabriels had been duly elected to represent non-academic staff on Council, and Kit Vaughan to represent academic staff. 

After a week, international condemnation rained down on the Zim electoral commission for not releasing the election results. After 10 days even their children no longer spoke to them, and their chances of ever getting sex from their spouses again had dried up permanently. Whereas at UCT, no outcome was deemed a good outcome, and news being leaked by the media will surely be punished somewhere along the line. 

Then again, perhaps the piece of bureaucracy responsible for all this is itself still trying to figure out which A Adams we've just elected to what, and whether the secret message spelled out by the DNA sequence is the directions to the Kruger millions, or a guitar chord sequence for the latest Steve Hofmeyr song...

 

 

Please see below for a call for volunteers to assist with a second site assessment survey this Thursday.  The training is today 28 May at 15h00 at 122 Longmarket St (between Adderley and St. Georges Mall) on the 4th Floor. These site assessment surveys are of critical importance in directing appropriate assistance to the more than 60 holding sites across the greater Cape Town area.

Dear Colleagues:
As some of you may know, on Sunday, working with UCT medical students
through SHAWCO and a number of individual physicians, we conducted a
rapid site health assessment survey of 33 different locations
sheltering displaced persons around the Cape Town metropolitan area.
We shared our data with the city and the province and they have taken
our questionnaire (developed by MSF) and database and are using these
instruments for their own work.
We've met with city and provincial health officials and are supporting
their work to address the current crisis by continuing to collect
reports on the now approximately 60 sites around the city as well as
soliciting health professionals for volunteer deployment around the
metro area through the health departments.
In order to get an independent assessment of the state of relief
efforts and the state of the city's and province's responses, we'd
like to conduct another site survey on Thursday 29 May.  This will be
done the same way as Sunday's survey, with teams of two going out to
the now 60+ sites, and reporting back to us within 3-4 hours, and with
us compiling data by 18h00 on Thursday evening.
THUS, TOMORROW AFTERNOON  Wednesday 28 May at 15h00 at 122 Longmarket
St (between Adderley and St. Georges Mall) on the 4th Floor, we'll be
conducting a training for those who would like to assist with Thursday
survey. It will be a one-hour training to brief you on the survey
methodology, the tasks we're asking of the teams, as well as to
allocate team assignments and instructions.  We're looking for anyone
who can devote much of Thursday to this project--it will take a few
hours to collect the data at the sites and then return to 122
Longmarket for data entry. We would hope teams would be at sites by
09h00 on Thursday and back to 122 Longmarket St by 15h00.  While it is
largely a health survey, it doesn't necessarily require medical
training at all, but it would be good for people to have some
familiarity with health issues.  We need people with cars, since the
survey work requires driving from site to site in the morning.
If you are interested in assisting us, please show up tomorrow
afternoon Wednesday 28 at 15h00 at AIDS Law Project, 122 Longmarket
Street, 4th Floor for the training.
Gregg

--
Gregg Gonsalves
AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa
c/o AIDS Law Project
Westminster House, 4th Floor
122 Longmarket Street
Cape Town, 8001
South Africa
Mobile: +27-78-456-3848
Landline: +27-21-422-1490
Email: gregg.gonsalves@gmail.com
Skype: gregggonsalves

Perhaps the truest tragedy is the way some politicians are using the situation for their own personal politicking. The press is full of accusations, finger-pointing, and attempts to score points off political opponents. And general WTF?!?

The Soccer World Cup LOC dude who shrugged off the issue, saying it would have blown over by 2010. Oh, so that's fine then.  

The mayor, who wants refugees out of churches, so that they can be used for weddings. Nice - when people's lives are at risk, let's focus on the truly important stuff, like parties.

Was it coincidence that the evening after reports of the mayor told a drug vigilante group that the attacks were linked to drug dealing, that the violence spread to this city? Perhaps, but that makes inflammatory statements no less irresponsible. 

Is this really what we've sunk to - a bunch of smug bigots who can't think beyond parties and ball games?

 

A working group has been established to coordinate the University's response. Communications will be part of the mandate. For now, please note the following:

• Donations needed: Warm clothing, baby goods (nappies, nappy cream, infant feeding formula), toiletries (soap, sanitary towels), non-perishable food (not just baked beans! but bearing in mind limited cooking facilities), blankets and mattresses  - these can be dropped off at SHAWCO (5th floor Steve Biko Buildling, Upper Campus, or the Medical School office, or at any residence. Off Campus, through the Treatment Action Campaign, or Rondebosch United Church (Belmont Road).
• Contact numbers:
  
  • transport assistance:  John Critien, 082-828-4972
    
  • student and staff needing assistance: Moonira Khan, 082-887-3926
  • SHAWCO contact: Jonathan Hoffenberg,  084-626-1270

There are a number of other initiatives underway, such as establishing a register of staff who can provide emergency accommodation for staff and students who may be displaced by the violence, the issuing of statements beyond simple expressions of outrage, the harnessing of analytic, intellectual and professional skills residing in the University community and the mobilisation of networks to bring political pressure to bear. In addition, students and staff are asked to raise issues of xenophobia among peers and in other contexts where challenges to attitude and practice can be effected.  

 

Fuller information, and updates, will be provided shortly.

 

Edit: There will be a mass meeting at the Mowbray Town Hall, Main Road, Mowbray, at 13h00 on Monday 26 May 2008 on the issue.  

 

 

My local village has a thriving international community. And so the absence was marked in the supermarket - no foreign accents, no foreign languages, no football dribbling outside the entrance, no laughter. It felt like after the Rapture, or the Holocaust.

"Perhaps they're just sleeping late," the cashier said nervously.  

 

News certainly does travel fast! My departure is being celebrated / mourned in parts of the University I didn't even know existed. Meantime, carrying on with the theme:

Things I will miss about UCT:

 2. Winnie's whipless mocha. For the mocha (where would we be without caffeine?), for Winnie - the only person on Campus whose job is to make one's day better, not worse - and for the rare opportunities it affords to connect with people, to engage in intelligent discourse and to spark creativity.

Though, sometimes, Chantel's affogato is a good alternative... 

 

Things I will not miss about UCT: 

 2. Management. Leadership is in short supply, so UCT compensates with administration. Eight years ago the Shattock Report famously stated that UCT was "over administered and rather seriously under-managed" and characterised by "[an] absence... of comment on academic issues and [a] concentration of concern over the mechanics of the budget process and the interfaces between various parst sof the bureaucracy. The machinery seemed to have become more important than the product." And strategic thinking is stamped out as quickly as it is discovered. 

But even on an operational level, things could be better. In 11 years in this position, I have had 13 line managers. Some were good, some truly dismal, others well-meaning but constrained in their ability to fulfill their mandate because of antipathy higher up. 

But perhaps the most worrying aspect of this is the celebration and advancement of mediocrity.