Grant Abbot: Corruption & capture & victimisation of whistleblowers at SA universities

Bad governance involving collusion between councils and management is enabling corruption and capture at some of South Africa’s historic universities. That is the charge from National Tertiary Education Union Secretary General Grant Abbott who says: “We've coined the term, you use the Corruption Mafia and that's a very good term. We've also coined the term University Capture in the line of State Capture that we see a lot of that unfortunately happening.” Abbott describes the “systemetic targeting” of whistleblowers and union leaders, including his union president who was kidnapped and tortured before being dismissed. “…it had happened one Sunday night, 12 men arrived at his house. We later learned that three of them were police officers. They did not produce an arrest warrant or anything like that, but you can imagine 12 men arriving at your house and he's at home on a Sunday evening with his wife and children. And they have AK-47s and big rifles and dressed in police uniform, and tell him he must come with them. They proceeded to then take him to an undisclosed location and tortured him for seven hours, allegedly trying to get him to confess to involvement somehow in the attempted assassination on the Vice Chancellor back then.” The CCMA has now overturned the dismissal and ordered his reinstatement. Abbott also comments on the case of the corruption-busting lawyers who now find themselves in the dock alongside some of the people they had investigated. He outlines the union’s proposals to stop the corruption at and capture of higher education institutions.