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17 September 2018 Photo Lerato Moloi
New Principal for Qwaqwa Campus-Dr Matin Mandew
Dr Martin Mandew believes that the biggest challenge currently facing the higher-education sector is the lack of adequate and appropriate student housing

The University of the Free State (UFS) Qwaqwa Campus has a new Principal. He is Dr Martin Mandew, former Campus Director of the Durban University of Technology’s Midlands Campus in Pietermaritzburg. He has extensive experience in higher education, having cut his teeth in the academia as an Academic Development Tutor with the then University of Natal (now University of Kwazulu-Natal). He then went on to complete both his Master of Theology (cum laude) and Doctor of Philosophy at the same institution in 1993 and 1997, respectively.

“During my early days in the academia, we did some interesting educational experiments and pioneered exciting foundation programmes. I also taught Systematic Theology in the mainstream programme,” said Dr Mandew, a trained Catholic theologian holding a Bachelor of Sacred Theology (magna cum laude) from the Urbaniana Pontifical University in Rome, Italy.

His academic interest shifted after he was appointed as Assistant Vice-Chancellor: Student Services at the ML Sultan Technikon in 1998. “My time at ML Sultan helped me develop a keen interest in the theoretical foundations and practice in the field of student services and affairs. This interest abides to this day,” he said.

Coming from a multi-campus background, what challenges does he think the UFS would be better placed to avoid?

“Multi-campus universities have their own unique challenges. However, what often seems to be a frequently recurring issue, is the sense of disconnectedness often felt by the far-flung smaller campuses. This can be overcome through regular contact – real and virtual – between the campuses through senior leaders and managers, and through a structured exchange of academics and lecturers between the campuses,” said Dr Mandew, who was born and brought up in the multilingual and multicultural neighbourhood of Aliwal North in the Eastern Cape.

He believes the biggest challenge currently facing the higher-education sector, is the lack of adequate and appropriate student housing.

“This problem is worse at rural campuses such as Qwaqwa where there is a scarcity of private accommodation that meets the norms and standards as prescribed by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). We have to find ways of persuading private student-accommodation providers to invest in the provision of accommodation that meets the prescribed norms. This is not only their civic duty, as there is a return to be had on the investment.”

“A related challenge,” he added, “is how to better integrate commuting or day students, who constitute the majority of our students, in university life. We have to design co-curricular programmes that reach the wider student body and invest in the establishment of day houses to better respond to the needs of commuting students.”

What is his vision for the campus and what are his first impressions of the broader UFS?

“I have been very impressed by some of the important, though very difficult conversations currently taking place at the UFS. Like other universities, the UFS has to find effective ways to contend with the scourge of gender-based violence. I hope we can succeed in finding practical ways to put the Integrated Transformation Plan (ITP) at the centre of our endeavours in Qwaqwa, in order to realise this rather exciting and challenging vision. Needless to say, students have to be at the centre of these endeavours,” he emphasised.

News Archive

The failure of the law
2004-06-04

 

Written by Lacea Loader

- Call for the protection of consumers’ and tax payers rights against corporate companies

An expert in commercial law has called for reforms to the Companies Act to protect the rights of consumers and investors.

“Consumers and tax payers are lulled into thinking the law protects them when it definitely does not,” said Prof Dines Gihwala this week during his inaugural lecture at the University of the Free State’s (UFS).

Prof Gihwala, vice-chairperson of the UFS Council, was inaugurated as extraordinary professor in commercial law at the UFS’s Faculty of Law.

He said that consumers, tax payers and shareholders think they can look to the law for an effective curb on the enormous power for ill that big business wields.

“Once the public is involved, the activities of big business must be controlled and regulated. It is the responsibility of the law to oversee and supervise such control and regulation,” said Prof Gihwala.

He said that, when undesirable consequences occur despite laws enacted specifically to prevent such results, it must be fair to suggest that the law has failed.

“The actual perpetrators of the undesirable behaviour seldom pay for it in any sense, not even when criminal conduct is involved. If directors of companies are criminally charged and convicted, the penalty is invariably a fine imposed on the company. So, ironically, it is the money of tax payers that is spent on investigating criminal conduct, formulating charges and ultimately prosecuting the culprits involved in corporate malpractice,” said Prof Gihwala.

According to Prof Gihwala the law continuously fails to hold companies meaningfully accountable to good and honest business values.

“Insider trading is a crime and, although legislation was introduced in 1998 to curb it, not a single successful criminal prosecution has taken place. While the law appears to be offering the public protection against unacceptable business behaviour, it does no such thing – the law cannot act as a deterrent if it is inadequate or not being enforced,” he said.

The government believed it was important to facilitate access to the country’s economic resources by those who had been denied it in the past. The Broad Based Economic Empowerment Act of 2003 (BBEE), is legislation to do just that. “We should be asking ourselves whether it is really possible for an individual, handicapped by the inequities of the past, to compete in the real business world even though the BBEE Act is now part of the law?,” said Prof Gihwala.

Prof Gihwala said that judges prefer to follow precedent instead of taking bold initiative. “Following precedent is safe at a personal level. To do so will elicit no outcry of disapproval and one’s professional reputation is protected. The law needs to evolve and it is the responsibility of the judiciary to see that it happens in an orderly fashion. Courts often take the easy way out, and when the opportunity to be bold and creative presents itself, it is ignored,” he said.

“Perhaps we are expecting too much from the courts. If changes are to be made to the level of protection to the investing public by the law, Parliament must play its proper role. It is desirable for Parliament to be proactive. Those tasked with the responsibility of rewriting our Companies Act should be bold and imaginative. They should remove once and for all those parts of our common law which frustrate the ideals of our Constitution, and in particular those which conflict with the principles of the BBEE Act,” said Prof Gihwala.

According to Prof Gihwala, the following reforms are necessary:

• establishing a unit that is part of the office of the Registrar of Companies to bolster a whole inspectorate in regard to companies’ affairs;
• companies who are liable to pay a fine or fines, should have the right to take action to recover that fine from those responsible for the conduct;
• and serious transgression of the law should allow for imprisonment only – there should be no room for the payment of fines.
 

Prof Gihwala ended the lecture by saying: “If the opportunity to re-work the Companies Act is not grabbed with both hands, we will witness yet another failure in the law. Even more people will come to believe that the law is stupid and that it has made fools of them. And that would be the worst possible news in our developing democracy, where we are struggling to ensure that the Rule of Law prevails and that every one of us has respect for the law”.

 

 

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