Jannie Rossouw has been granted a reprieve. In an interview two weeks ago, Wits Business School’s interim director said he had been advised to be ready to empty his desk "at a moment’s notice" to make way for a permanent replacement.
The appointment has duly been made. After a final round of interviews last Thursday, Wits University has appointed Maurice Radebe, executive vice-president of Sasol’s energy division, as its next full-time director. He will take over in January, which means that Rossouw can enjoy another five months in the school’s impressive director’s suite while he completes his "back-to-basics" task of tidying up the school’s administrative and academic processes in readiness for new leadership.
Rossouw took residence in January after retiring as head of the university’s school of economic and business sciences. He plugged the gap left by Sibusiso Sibisi, who left the business school early by mutual consent at the end of 2019.
Radebe is in the vanguard of a new set of leaders tasked with steering SA’s senior business schools through an uncertain, Covid-clouded future.
The University of Stellenbosch has appointed an English academic, Mark Smith, to run its business school when incumbent director Piet Naudé leaves at the end of this year on a pre-retirement sabbatical.
The University of Pretoria has appointed Morris Mthombeni interim dean of its Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) while it seeks a permanent replacement for Nicola Kleyn, who left at the end of June.
The University of Cape Town (UCT) hopes to announce soon a permanent director of its Graduate School of Business (GSB) following a two-year hiatus.
Meanwhile, Unisa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership and the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Graduate School of Business & Leadership are both continuing the prolonged search for their own leadership.
Smith, 49, who will move to Stellenbosch in October for an extended handover from Naudé, is at present dean of faculty at Grenoble Management School in France. His research specialities include youth employment policy, business ethics, labour market gender issues and the role of business in social innovation.
Foreign academics have a mixed record at the head of SA business schools.
Naudé says: "Running a business school is a complex job. To be director of a school with an international profile like ours, you need to be an academic, have business experience, know how universities work, understand international education, and be able to create and maintain collegial spirit among academics and students alike.
"And that’s before you deal with all the politics — both national and within the university — that come with the job.
"It’s hard enough for a South African to cope with all these challenges. For an outsider, unfamiliar with the country’s unique environment, it’s twice as hard. Not everyone has managed to cope."
Foreign travel regulations permitting, Naudé will spend most of next year in Munich, at the Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence. He also plans to work on an executive education project with the Brussels-based European Foundation for Management Development and to write a book on management education. He will officially retire at the end of 2021.
Naudé says 52 people applied to succeed him at Stellenbosch. Of 16 who progressed to the second round, only one was black, and he missed the final shortlist. "It was a great disappointment to the university that there was not stronger equity representation," says Naudé. "We were also disappointed there were no strong female candidates."
Mthombeni still hopes the Gibs permanent deanship can be his. First, however, he must raise his academic status from doctorate to professorship. Unlike most SA university business schools, which operate within commerce faculties, Gibs is a faculty in its own right, so subject to unbreakable leadership qualifications.
Mthombeni, who joined Gibs in 2014 after 28 years in the financial services industry, says he intends to become a professor and has applied for the permanent deanship, but "I can’t expect the university to wait for me".
However temporary his status, he says he will enjoy full leadership responsibility. "Whether I’m here in one year or not, I have the full authority of a permanent dean," he says. "I’m not here to hold the fort but to position us for the future."
Cape Town’s GSB has been without a permanent director since Mills Soko left in mid-2018. Kosheek Sewchurran was the first interim replacement, but gave way to Hugh Corder in January this year.
Corder, a former UCT professor of public law, dean of law and acting university deputy vice-chancellor, retired at the end of 2019 but, like Rossouw at Wits, was immediately drafted into business school action.
His contract expires in September, after which he expects to return to his law interests. He says the university has a preferred candidate for permanent director but "statutory requirements" must be met before an official appointment is made.
He says: "Let’s just say I am justifiably optimistic that a permanent director will be appointed in the next couple of months."
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