For three months now, TAWU has been trying to get an appointment with the ministry to discuss the transformation of Tlokweng Brigades Centre into a business university but to no avail. Thanks to a court order that was handed down by Justice Christian Diwanga on Wednesday, that meeting will finally materialise.
Convinced that the ministry was hell-bent on carrying out the transformation process without its involvement, the union filed an urgent application with the Industrial Court Two to stop such transformation. However, some minutes before Diwanga could hear the matter, the litigants were hurriedly crafting a draft order which the judge latter helped knock into shape and hand down as a court order. The order binds the ministry to finally sit down with the union on Tuesday at 1430 hours and discuss how the transformation will be carried out. TAWU wants to talk about redundancy and retrenchments, transfers, redesignations and redeployments that could come as a result of the envisaged transformation.
The issue goes back to August this year when the ministry announced that it had struck a PPP deal with the Tertiary School in Business (TSiBA) of South Africa through which TBC would be turned into a university and start operating as such in January, 2013. A private institution, TSiBA provides business education to underprivileged youth who would otherwise have trouble accessing tertiary education. At a time that some of Botswana’s university graduates walk the streets because of incongruence between what they learnt in school and what the workplace requires, TSiBA promises to be an antidote to that problem. Speaking at an MoU signing ceremony, TSiBA’s chief executive officer, Andri Marais, said that as a result of an international benchmarking exercise, the school had developed a market-compatible syllabus in order to produce work-ready graduates. The transformed TBC will offer a bachelor’s degree in business administration and some 130 students will enrol for the first intake next year.
As part of the transformation process, TSiBA (which is headquartered in the Cape Town suburb of Pinelands) wrote the ministry a letter about its plans of refurbishing TBC to meet both its own standards and those of the Tertiary Education Council. The exercise will include branding, extensive renovation of physical infrastructure, setting up an ICT network and acquiring new lecture-room furniture and equipment. The court papers say that TSiBA’s technical staff visited TBC twice “to take pictures of buildings and to enquire about the Centre’s floor plan.”
The problem though was that all this occurred with no formal involvement of TAWU in the process. In terms of labour law, the union is mandated to protect the interests of its members when organisations they work for are made over as is the case with TBC turning into a university. That is the point that TAWU made to the ministry and in its response, the latter said that “transformation is a process and in the process the Trainers and Allied Workers Union (TAWU) like other key stakeholders will be consulted.” That consultation did not take place despite the fact that TBC’s management addressed staff on the issue without TAWU’s involvement. Court papers allege that when staff asked questions about the transformation, they were intimidated by management and notable in that regard is the role played by the acting principal, Keineetse Moirapula. When asked to explain the implications of the takeover, Moirapula allegedly “became emotionally charged, casting TAWU members of being unprofessional, immature in taking the issue to TAWU head office.” Minutes of the said meeting quote him as saying: “Ke bomatla go tsaya kgang le isa ko boTAWU e be lo tla go mpotsa. Ke a ipoeletsa ka re, ke bomatla.” This translates as “It is stupidity to report this matter to TAWU then ask me questions. I repeat: it’s stupidity.”
The minutes make apparent the fact that the TSiBA letter was supposed to be confidential and that Moirapula was not happy about it being leaked.
“He was indignant, resentful and incensed by the fact that a TSiBA refurbishment proposal document had been given to junior staff, further stating that somebody gives out or leaks information that is meant for school management team only. He commanded the house to respect his person and his office.
He reminded the house that if it was not for his effort, some would not have been employed in Tlokweng Brigade. He also said that if it was not for his effort, some would not have gone to school/further studies. He said he should be left in peace because he never troubles anyone. He later, and after a long tongue lashing, after his emotions had cooled down, advised us to write a letter to the Director and UFS him,” minutes of the meeting read.
The letter did not bring the desired result and TAWU took the matter to the Industrial Court in order to get the ministry officials to the negotiating table.
