Two assassinations, a VC of steel and the remarkable...

PROFESSORS AND CRIMINALS

Two assassinations, a VC of steel and the remarkable ‘uncapturing’ of Fort Hare

The University of Fort Hare is finding its way out of a heaving quagmire of fraud, corruption and mismanagement. The man uncapturing the university from organised crime and other crooked interests is vice-chancellor Sakhela Buhlungu. Two weeks ago, he survived an assassination attempt that claimed the life of his bodyguard, yet he remains resolute and refuses to go into hiding. ANNELIESE BURGESS tells us more about the remarkable ‘uncapturing project’ which could be a blueprint for every other state institution in South Africa, if only they had men of steel like this VC.

THE first indication to the outside world of how deep and vicious the fightback against the University of Fort Hare (UFH) renewal programme had become was on a Friday afternoon in May 2022.

Peet Roets, the university fleet and transport manager, was on his way home from the Alice campus through rush-hour traffic in East London. As he peeled off the N2 towards Gonubie, the seaside suburb where he lived, two men opened fire on Roets' vehicle, killing him, then sped off in a dark blue VW Polo with tinted windows.  

It was a dramatic escalation of an increasingly fraught standoff with the organised criminal networks that had sucked UFH's coffers dry and whose tentacles vice-chancellor Sakhela Buhlungu was determined to cauterise in his ambitious plan to “renew" the university. ..

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