MEDUNSA UPGRADE - University of Limpopo

ON – HE HAS PLAYED HERE BEFORE
t‘THERE’S A DEFINITE SENSE,’ SAYS PROFESSOR
MBUDZENI SIBARA, ‘THAT THE UNIVERSITY HAS
FOUND ITSELF AND IS BEGINNING TO MOVE
FORWARD. The institution has got beyond the
complexities and confusions of the merger process,
and we’re asking in a really penetrating way what it
is we’re supposed to be doing and how well are we
doing it. In other words, our attention is turning from
the administrative complexities of merging Turfloop and
Medunsa, to questions of performance and quality.’
Sibara is the newly appointed Deputy Vice-
Chancellor Academic and Research of the University of
Limpopo, a position he assumed in May this year when
he replaced the outgoing DVC, Professor Peter Franks.
‘It’s a remarkable road that higher education has
travelled,’ he went on. ‘So many of us have been –
and still are – involved in institutionalising the changes
for which in the 1970s and 1980s we and thousands
of other students protested. As protesters we were
concerned with the democratisation of our universities,
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ON
with new and relevant missions, and with curricula to
match. Twenty five years later, these are certainly our
current concerns and pre-occupations at the University
of Limpopo.’
Sibara (now 58) knows what he’s talking about.
He studied with Steve Biko at Fort Hare in the early
1970s, and was twice expelled from that troubled
institution. He has had extensive experience in senior
administrative positions in South African universities,
and he has spent time at universities abroad pursuing
a brilliant academic career as a biochemist and
microbiologist. His experience includes deep involvement
with the many higher education mergers that
occurred in South Africa throughout the first decade of
the 21 st century. If these things were counted alone,
his arrival at the University of Limpopo would be an
important acquisition. But one other factor renders his
acquisition invaluable. He has been here before.
‘This is homecoming for me,’ Sibara says.
‘Throughout the 1990s I worked at Turfloop, first as an