Alven Makapela

The Odyssey of a Vice Chancellor Alven Makapela

The Odyssey of a Vice Chancellor is about the physical and academic journey of Professor Alven Makapela back to South Africa after forty years of domicile and intellectual growth in the United States. The theme of the book centers on the politics of conflict and the culture of parasitism at the Eastern Cape Technikon where he was its first vice chancellor (president). Having left South Africa when African institutions like Fort Hare, despite apartheid, had nurtured and produced Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe, Oliver Thambo, and many others, the new vice chancellor assumed his responsibilities with great optimism and expectations. Although the book does not directly address the current debate on the transformation of higher education in the country, it does however provide meat on elemental issues germane to the debate. How for instance would fiscal discipline and financial stability be realized by merging two or more disadvantaged institutions as recommended by the minister of education without enormous capital invested and without legal constrains to regulate outrageous labor demands and parasitic student behavior? The book also challenges educators by asking whether it is wise to make institutions of higher learning in South Africa clones of each other by adopting curricula that is composed exclusively of science and technology. The other issue that is questionable is the theory that the Third World sector in the country will develop only when technology is introduced. The theory is based on false assumptions, for if the theory and its assumptions were correct, the Transkei would not be underdeveloped. After all, it has some modern technology in its urban centers and has a technikon and a university which are well-equipped with modern technology and also teach modern ideas on development. Yet the region is neither improving nor developing.