Who are the students Fort Hare has booted: Premier's office and university stay mum

Eastern Cape government spokesperson Mvusiwekhaya Sicwetsha has ducked questions regarding Premier Oscar Mabuyane’s registration as a postgraduate student at the University of Fort Hare (UFH), after the university confirmed two unnamed students were deregistered because of irregularities in their admission.

The deregistrations follow ongoing internal rumblings related to the tenure of controversial former economics professor Edwin Ijeoma. Both the deregistered students were being directly supervised by Ijeoma at the time he was suspended by the university administration

Mabuyane has also confirmed that he was registered for a master’s in public administration and was being supervised by Ijeoma, a public administration professor at UFH.

Ijeoma was previously implicated in the irregular registration for an honours degree programme of former health MEC Sindiswa Gomba. He was suspended in October 2020 but quit the university after home affairs officials revoked his citizenship and naturalisation. He was found to have married a South African woman in 2001 to obtain citizenship, although he was already married to a woman in Nigeria.

At the time, Ijeoma was a newly qualified PhD and he pursued a successful career in academia, first at the University of Pretoria and then at UFH.

UFH appears to be acting firmly to root out the remnants of Ijeoma’s tenure.

Following a faculty of management and commerce review, the senate approved a recommendation to deregister the two students — who were being supervised by Ijeoma before his suspension — “for not complying with minimum admission requirements for the degree”, the university said in a statement to the Dispatch.

The students were advised of the decision in letters written by the secretary of the senate on March 15.

“The university cannot, and will not divulge details, particulars or names of the deregistered students,” UFH said, adding the two could reapply for admission to their respective programmes “once they demonstrate they meet the minimum requirements”.

Mabuyane’s spokesperson Mvusiwekhaya Sicwetsha initially responded to a Dispatch request for comment and then broke off communication.

“On second thought, please contact the university in this matter. We will not comment on this. I retract all the previous text I sent to you on this matter. The university must communicate on this matter as they are the ones who told you about this matter.”

Sicwetsha repeated his deferral to UFH when asked why Mabuyane would remain silent and allow an inference to be drawn from his silence instead of asserting the truth, if he had done nothing wrong, and especially if his registration remained valid in terms of the university’s policy and rules.

In comments previously reported by a Gauteng newspaper regarding the claim that his registration was irregular, Mabuyane relied on UFH’s “recognition of prior learning” (RPL) policy, presented and defended his proposal before the higher degrees committee.

The university’s RPL policy is a broad statement of principles to be applied in assessing someone without a formal prior qualification for admission to a university academic programme.

DispatchLIVE sent further questions to UFH regarding the university’s inconsistency in communication, given that it stated it could not reveal the names of the deregistered students when it had previously disclosed Gomba’s irregular honours registration.

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