IT really does appear as if the universities are locked in a race to the bottom and the apprehension and unease over the calibre of inquiry at these once-great institutes and the quality of leadership they’re turning out is, even here, at the Mahogany Ridge, quite palpable.
First there was Chumani Maxwele, the University of Cape Town politics student who, armed with little more than a pink hard hat and a bucket of soupy crap, launched the #RhodesMustFall campaign.
This smelly business, supposedly driving a transformation agenda at the university, quickly spread across the country, compelling the Minister of Arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa, to make bleating, ubuntuist noises about a new heritage and fast-forwarding the reinvention of the past.
Not to be outdone, the president of the student representative council at the University of the Witwatersrand, Mcebo Dlamini, has now boldly commandeered national attention with his professed admiration of Adolf Hitler.
Although much has already been said of the matter, it is Dlamini’s stubborn and increasingly outrageous attempts to justify his veneration that continues to appall.
Dlamini’s position first emerged on his Facebook page. It was a stance he vigorously defended when approached by the student newspaper, Wits Vuvuzela. “What I love about Hitler,” Dlamini said, “is his charisma and his capabilities to organise people. We need more leaders of such calibre. I love Adolf Hitler.”