Tribute to Professor Lindsay Mitchell 

Professor Lindsay Mitchell, the former Head of Accounting at the University of Natal and at UKZN, post-merger, passed away on 4 December 2023 after a long illness.

Professor Mitchell was one of South Africa’s pre-eminent accounting academics and a renowned authority on tax, being the author of textbooks widely used at institutions around the country. His Graded Questions on Income Tax in South Africa is still the prescribed text at many South African universities. His Tax Workbook, until recently also translated into Afrikaans and updated annually, has been in print since 1980. He published more than 70 books and over 1000 peer-reviewed articles. He was an editor of two well-known accounting journals, Income Tax Reporter and Tax Planning: Corporate & Personal.

He was a superb administrator who knew how to get the best out of staff and towards whom he would show the utmost loyalty, as long as they showed similar loyalty towards students, the department and the University. He did not hesitate to crack the whip if anyone failed in their duties and obligations.

His management style was based on a set of well-thought-out systems and controls, with a lot of authority delegated to trusted colleagues. He would police these sporadically and then use the systems of probation and staff evaluation to weed out under-performers. Adding to this management style was his knack for identifying talent and attracting this to the university.

This helped to make the Department of Accounting at the University of Natal – Durban (UND) one of the top accounting departments in the country, attracting students from inside and outside of the province, all with ambitions to become chartered accountants.

Small in stature, highly intelligent, confident, fearless – diplomacy was not in his vocabulary - and yet loving and affectionate, with a strong sense of Ubuntu. All this made him a true character on the UND campus. Thousands of students remember him with great affection as shown by the reaction to his passing. Even some ex-colleagues who might have had uncomfortable encounters with him could not deny that he was a giant in academia and in the accounting profession.

There was widespread acknowledgement that he ran a highly efficient operation at UND with exemplary results in the external board exams. But as can be imagined, his management style did not always go down well with some within the close-knit accounting fraternity, where, as is the case with most professions, there is a strong tendency for members to look out for one another. What did not help was that to many he came across as extremely confident, serious, aloof and projecting a sense of authority that would make some staff members fear him. And yet behind that façade was a real softie.

Lindsay had a strong sense of duty and obligation towards the department, the university and academia in general. This philosophical outlook would have a profound impact towards the end of his career when it clashed with a very different culture, which would turn his last years at the university into a nightmare. This clash of cultures and what happened to Lindsay has broader significance in present- day South Africa, because it goes to the very heart of why so many of our government departments and other public institutions have become dysfunctional.

Lindsay subscribed to the notion of Edmund Burke that persons are like flies of a summer, whilst principles transferred through institutions are intergenerational. It is a philosophical outlook that is normally extremely difficult to cultivate, because persons are flesh and blood whilst principles and institutions are abstract.

Lindsay employed these aspects of his philosophical outlook to great effect in his managerial and professional life. This meant that he could build and maintain strong and efficient structures that would be the envy of any institution. However, it also set him on course to clash with those who deemed persons more important than abstract principles and institutions.

Lindsay David Mitchell was born on the 22nd of January 1952 in Pietermaritzburg where he grew up. His father was the legendary Springbok hockey player and captain, Claude Mitchell and his mother Jean was a renowned gardener, floral artist and for many years the gardening columnist for The Witness. From his father he inherited a love for sport and from his mother an interest in gardening as well as horse racing. He and his five siblings were exposed to an array of interests in a household that was a magnet for numerous members of the extended family and friends.

He attended Harward Boys High School from where he matriculated. At one stage he contemplated a career in the horse racing industry, but fortunately for the accounting profession as well as academia he decided to pursue a career in accounting. He completed his B Com degree at the University of Natal – Pietermaritzburg in 1973 and did his articles at Ernst and Young, between 1973 and 1975, becoming an audit manager by 1976. He completed his master’s degree in 1996 and on the strength of his substantial number of publications was awarded a senior doctorate in economics in 2003.

Lindsay started his academic career at the University of Durban-Westville as a lecturer in 1977 and was promoted to senior lecturer in 1979. He started giving part-time lectures at UND in 1981 and the following year moved there permanently. Promoted to Professor in Taxation in 1988 he took over as head of department 10 years later. He headed the department at UND, and after the merger with UDW, the School of Accounting at UKZN, for a total of 16 years.

His formative years were filled with numerous interests, with sports high on the list. From an early age he was exposed to the social fabric of various sports clubs, as his Dad was a member of Pirates Soccer Club, Zingari Cricket Club and Wanderers Hockey Club, where well-known cricketers, such as Jackie McGlew and Roy McLean, as well as a number of Springbok hockey players were also members.

It was a process of socialisation that inculcated into Lindsay a deep respect and loyalty towards institutions as well as a striving for excellence. Indeed, his loyalty towards his hockey club might have cost him higher honours, because if he had joined the University of Natal Hockey Club in his prime, he probably would have had more opportunities at the highest level. He did later - between 1983 and 1986 - go on to become the player-coach of the University men’s hockey team.

One of the highlights of Lindsay’s sporting career was a memorable cricket tour with the Grasshoppers Cricket Club to the United Kingdom in 1986. It was a tour that also exposed him to that wicked sense of humour that permeates parts of the British upper class. The tour was at the height of the sanctions campaign against South Africa and an all-white cricket team visiting the UK provided ample opportunity for entertainment along that political theme, but in a subtle way.

The team was scheduled to play a McAlpine XI on the estate of the well-known McAlpine family in Wales. It just so happened that at the same time the West Indian Cricket board had sent over a group of young players to gain experience in England. Whoever drew up the McAlpine XI clearly decided to turn these white South Africans into cannon fodder, in a cricketing sense, using the young guns from the West Indies. One of those youngsters was Curtly Ambrose who would go on to become one of the all-time cricketing greats.

Lindsay opened the batting and this was how he recalled this encounter with Curtly Ambrose:

I have never before faced a bowler as fast as Curtly Ambrose. He was almost seven-foot-tall and it felt that he was delivering the ball from only fifteen yards away. A few deliveries flew past my head. I could hear the sound of the seam as they went past my ears. He hit me five times on the chest. He then pitched up a delivery and I unsuccessfully attempted to drive it through the covers. But I missed and it removed my off stump. Most of his deliveries were in-swingers to a right hander that followed you as you tried to sway away. I departed for 9 painful runs. I was dismissed in Curtly Ambrose’s final over.

…After being hit by Curtly Ambrose I was in extreme pain. On removing my shirt, I had five bright red welts on my chest. It reminded me of a number five domino. One bruise was almost on my shoulder. (It had actually burst a blood vessel and a few days later I had a purple bruise running down most of the length of my right arm.) My arms were extremely painful at the luncheon. I could hardly move them. One of the courses being served was a spectacular bright red lobster. They looked delicious. But my arms were to sore to lift them up to eat them. Also, I felt nauseous following my bruising.

Universities were put on a reform path when the political changes finally came about in South Africa in the early 1990s. All universities were required to transform by changing their racial profile. In the commerce faculty at the University of Natal, transformation was looked upon as an opportunity to help soften the impact of the downward trend in state funding, by setting up programs that could provide extra income to staff, thereby keeping them at the university.

Lindsay and his colleagues set up a distance learning program, primarily aimed at increasing the number of non-white accountants entering the profession. Again, the systems and controls put in place by Lindsey and executed by trusted colleagues, were brilliantly designed and it became a great success. As an example, of the 225 black African candidates who successfully wrote the SAICA examination for the Certificate in the Theory Accountancy in 2004, the largest number came from UKZN. Here are the national figures:

Instead of the program being widely celebrated, it attracted the worst and basest of human attributes: envy, jealousy, and spite. Those teaching on the program had to frequently fly around the country as well as to Namibia to give lectures. They often had to sacrifice weekends and holidays. But they were extremely well remunerated.

This did not go down well with other academics. In addition, this sudden increase in the number of students passing the SAICA exams broke a cardinal rule of all guilds that rely on barriers to entry to protect the income of their members. The result was that not long after the merger the program was summarily closed down, despite its notable contributions towards transforming the accounting profession.

While transformation at the University of Natal was handled with great care in order to maintain public trust as well as retain quality academics, this was not the case at the University of Durban- Westville. By the early 2000's UDW had experienced more than 10 years of transformation and it could only be described as a disaster. Both its reputation and its finances were in dire straits. To deal with this mess the National Ministry of Education decided to merge UDW with the University of Natal in the hope that under the managerial and administrative influence of the latter the situation could be rectified. The idea was also sold as a way to bring about equality and equity.

There was a great deal of scepticism about this plan and people like Lindsay immediately saw the dangers, which were twofold. First, that any loss of confidence would see large numbers of the brightest students leave the province, which would have an impact on university finances and quality. Simply put, the middle class would send their kids elsewhere to study. The second danger was that the most able and experienced staff would leave in their droves if that were to be the case. Sadly, for KwaZulu-Natal that was exactly what happened

For Lindsay there were other concerns. Many of those who fell victim to his weeding activities at UND were now employed at UDW, and merging the two accounting departments was never going to be easy. Adding to his woes was the fact that staff in the department at UDW were in the habit of extensive moonlighting, often running large businesses from off campus.

Lindsay, during the merger talks, made it clear that he would not allow such behaviour, which set the scene for confrontation after the merger, especially when he became head of the new School of Accounting. Confront it he did and very successfully too. Within a relatively short period, the moonlighting came to an end with Lindsay using his weeding tactics to ensure that the worst culprits disappeared from the University.

Despite this success in the School of Accounting the merger would be the start of a nightmare for Lindsay and from which he never really recovered. His philosophical outlook founded on principles and loyalty as well as respect for institutions would come into conflict with a culture in which persons and personal connections as well as race meant everything.

On the 25 March 2005 the Vice-Chancellor of the newly merged University of KwaZulu-Natal, Malegapuru Makgoba, published an article in The Mail and Guardian entitled ‘Wrath of the dethroned white males.’ In it he likened white males to male baboons or bonobos who had been dethroned from their prominent position. He wrote that:

The dawn of the new dispensation has retired a segment of previously dominant and ambitious white males prematurely. This segment has lost its power, authority and a sense of purpose in society. Whether intended or unintended, conscious or unconscious, a sector of white males has an adaptation problem.

They have become bitter; but this also has become a serious problem for our society and a major obstacle to our democratic transformation. Some members of this group, which is out of kilter with the mindset of liberated African society, have become spoilers — across a wide range of activities. It has become not only ungrateful but also oblivious to Ubuntu. This group does not seem to understand the word “reconciliation.”

This article shook Lindsay and many others from the old University of Natal, who were hoping to use their expertise and experience to build the new University of KwaZulu-Natal. I met Lindsay, still extremely agitated and upset, not long after the article was published and he wanted to know if I thought that the Council would sanction the Vice- Chancellor over the article. I duly informed him that there were probably many on the Council, if not the majority, that might actually agree with the article. It was like the metaphysics of the new reality had finally revealed itself to Lindsay as he looked at me with absolute astonishment.

As expected, UKZN saw a flood of its most able academics and administrators leaving the university soon after the article’s publication. It was something that the new University definitely did not need so soon after the merger. Lindsay persevered but by that time had lost much of his influence at faculty level and one could observe that he was starting to lose his confidence when navigating the structures of the university. But that “White Baboon Article”, as he called it, was just the start of his nightmare.

Lindsay was asked in 2006 to be an examiner for a Master’s dissertation that was supervised by the Dean of the Faculty, the candidate being a senior member of the university executive. He found the dissertation to be of such an appallingly low standard that he sent it back, marked as failed and also concluded in his comments that no one with any integrity would pass the dissertation.

However, the senior executive was mysteriously awarded the Masters degree, which came as a shock to Lindsay who decided to investigate the matter and report it to the Registrar’s office. It was here that Lindsay’s ethics and principles came into full confrontation with powerful individuals which eventually saw him being suspended.

The whole saga of the supervisor and the master’s student took a dramatic turn when a scandal erupted also involving the Vice-Chancellor and the Chair of Council. The screenplay of this soap opera included money, extramarital affairs and sexual harassment and played out under the glare of publicity with journalists from national media houses having a field day.

Lindsay’s principles as well as sense of duty and obligation thus opened up an enormous can of worms. He was eventually vindicated when Senate revoked the degree and he was allowed to return to campus. But he never received a public apology even though the episode did great harm to his reputation as well as to the mental state of a very proud man. Lindsay was never the same after that episode. Sadly, this episode in Lindsay’s life is very similar to what has happened to so many others within our society who have tried to uphold ethical standards within our public institutions.

Lindsay’s last journey into university-wide affairs was through his opposition to the College structure, which aimed to merge different disciplines into larger schools. While the stated objective was to encourage interdisciplinary cooperation, the real aim was to accelerate transformation by radically altering the racial profile of those leading university structures. The structures of the new model could therefore be populated, using the criteria associated with transformation. Very little thought went into the financial implications and even less into the impact that it might have on academic programs.

Lindsay together with some other colleagues, most notably Prof Trevor Jones, saw the weaknesses and dangers inherent in the proposed College Model. They opposed it for a number of reasons. First, that the model would erode the power of established disciplines. Second, that it would establish an expensive and elaborate bureaucracy in which undue power were consolidated. And third, that the model had limited oversight to protect the content and status of degrees.

It has taken a decade for the university to realise the huge financial cost of the College Model as well as the devastating impact it has had on established disciplines and general degrees in particular, as indeed the Vice-Chancellor admitted in a university wide circular on 30 October 2023. The result is that that the new buzzwords around the university have become rationalisation and restructuring. Lindsay would have replied “I told you so.”

While others loudly trumpet their Transformation and Ubuntu credentials, Lindsay, who was a very private person, went about contributing to Transformation and Ubuntu more effectively than those shouting via loudspeakers. The contribution to transformation of the distance learning program is an example. But it was his contribution through Ubuntu that gave him the greatest joy during the last 30 years of his life.

Lindsay never married and did not have children of his own. He took on the task of a single parent when he took in three boys, Kanya, Bantu and Lethu. He also supported their sister Lihle. Lindsay set out to give them a lifestyle and an education that few children in South Africa enjoy. They all went to St Henry's Marist College in Glenwood - Lihle only finishing off there this year. He sent all three boys to Hilton College to receive a high school education at one of South Africa’s finest private schools. He exposed them to the joys of playing competitive cricket, rugby and football. They received a privileged upbringing that he himself never had and, in the process, set them up for life. Nothing made him prouder than his beloved kids

From left to right: Kanya (22), Bantu (29), Lihle (13), Lethu(20) and Lindsay

Lindsay David Mitchell was an honourable man and above all else an ethical man who believed in truth and doing the right thing. He respected institutions and the principles on which they were founded and he did not hesitate to act against individuals who tried to undermine those principles. If that is the characteristics associated with those “white males” so despised in that infamous 2005 article, then we certainly need more of them at a time when those characteristics are so badly needed in our public institutions. By successfully taking on the role as a single parent to children that were not even his own, he demonstrated the true meaning of Ubuntu.

Lindsay was truly a remarkable man who lived an extraordinary life during which he contributed so much to knowledge, to institutions and to the lives of individuals. He was summed up by his longtime colleague Rob Scott as follows: Forthright, truthful, caring, direct … an educator of the highest order known for detail, consistent application and well thought out answers.

Devon Windvogel, School of Accounting, Economics and Finance – UKZN (He was the last Chairman of the Institutional Forum at UDW)