Is state capture metamorphosing into higher education capture?

Even though I do not know the full extent of the allegations againstProfessorsSakhela Buhlungu and Nokuthula Sibiya, their cases may well fall squarely in this category of flimsy allegations. TheZondoandMadlangacommissions have helped to lay bare state capture in South Africa. With some of it dramatised on TV through many witnesses, only a few could claim not to know what it is.

On 23 March 2026, Universities South Africa (USAf) held aseminal webinaron institutional governance, focusing on what was termed institutional capture in the higher education sector. Evidently, state capture inspired this webinar. The jury is still out on what institutional capture, if separate from state capture, really is.

There is ample evidence, though, that these two concepts overlap and even coalesce, as some of the external and internal protagonists are of the same ilk. From the presentations and discussions, it became apparent that both internal and external forces are at work. Because it takes two to tango, the familiar external players — consisting of politicians, so-called business forums, convocation factions and criminals — collude with some internal staff with the sole intention to capture and gorge.

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For all we know, the higher education sector might even have some senior managers who aid and abet institutional capture, just as the Madlanga commission has outed some high-ranking police officers alleged to have facilitated police capture. When state or institutional capture rears its ugly head, it brooks no opposition and nobody may stand in its way. If one resists, one will be shoved aside, no matter how flimsy or trumped-up the allegations may be.

In my 20 years as a vice-chancellor, at least three attempts have been made to remove me for daring to stand up against power, corruption and malfeasance. This occurred in 2012, when I was at the Central University of Technology — where I served for 10 years as vice-chancellor and principal. Similar attempts to remove me have since occurred two more times, at the Durban University of Technology, where I am in my 10th year as vice-chancellor and principal.

The most recent, and perhaps the most desperate attempt, was in September 2024. It would be laughable if it were not such a tragic illustration of ongoing attempts to capture higher education institutions. For my first 10-year tenure as vice-chancellor, I was without a bodyguard.

But I might not have survived the last eight years without bodyguards — thanks to the clear, present and continuing danger to my life amid the raging waves of institutional capture. Part of the genesis of the last attempt against me is a meeting I had with some members of convocation in 2018, when they directly accused me of not giving them tenders — as if giving tenders were part of my job profile, authority or competence. It is not a coincidence that all those convocants had once been in the SRC and their comrades were in council until recently. In South Africa, being in the SRC often connotes deep political roots aligned with political parties that practise what they call democratic centralism — clearly a warped and corrupt understanding of the original meaning of the concept.

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