You’ve heard of state capture? Welcome to a new term making the rounds in Mzansi, institutional capture. It’s what happens when public and private interests collude to commandeer university resources for corrupt ends. In a study of dysfunction in 12 South African universities over 25 years, I have found a disturbing pattern of corruption that causes and benefits from chronic instabilities in those institutions. The provisional title of the forthcoming book is Bewitched?, a reference to a recent headline in a Sunday newspaper that asked: “Is the Vaal University of Technology an institution bewitched?”..