DURBAN — On February 8, the third day of their strike, 2000 University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) staff marched in defiance of management's ban on mass action on campus. All four unions at the university called the action.
Staff at UKZN are on strike because wage negotiations deadlocked when management only offered a 4% annual increase. In addition, unions accuse UKZN management of an "increasingly authoritarian style of management" and of "eroding academic freedom".
UKZN management has been at the centre of a national and international furore over its political ban on the employment of Ashwin Desai, a well-known and respected radical activist. UKZN activist academics have also been harassed by the National Intelligence Agency and police. Management has further infuriated the local poor communities by attempting to remove the Banana City informal settlement from the grounds of the Westin Road campus.
Students are also protesting over academic exclusions and high registration fees. All these issues are flowing together to shine a spotlight on UKZN as a model of a neoliberal university, where concerns of openness, accessibility and freedom are sidelined in order to emphasise the power of management and "market-based" principles.
[Adapted from a South Africa Indymedia report. For ongoing coverage the UKZN struggle, visit <http://southafrica.indymedia.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 15, 2006.
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