Bongani Mayosi, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town [in South Africa], died by suicide on 27 July 2018, less than two years after he had become Dean. Professor Mayosi had been a successful Head of the same university’s Department of Medicine for nearly a decade.

His ascent to the deanship coincided with a period of criminal activity by student protesters. He was treated in abysmal ways by those protesters over an extended period, during which his office suite was occupied, he was belittled, and accused of being a “coconut” and a “sellout”. His descent into depression was visible to all around him. At his funeral, his sister, Advocate Ncumisa Mayosi, said that:

The vitriolic character of student engagements tore him apart. The abrasive, do-or-die, scorched earth approach adopted by students in navigating what was a legitimate cause, completely vandalised Bongani’s soul. Put simply, this unravelled him. To be clear, Bongani believed in the students’ cause but the personal insults and abuse that were hurled at him without any justification whatsoever, this cut him to the core. This manner of engaging was inimical to everything that Bongani was about. It was offensive to his core values, how he had lived his life up until that point, his vision as a leader. And so he became withdrawn, his personality changed, he spoke less.

The Faculty of Health Sciences and the University of Cape Town more generally has learned none of the lessons it should have learned from this tragedy. The institution has an anti-bullying policy. However, this, like a Dean signing off his emails to the Faculty with the words “with care and compassion”, is mere talk. The Faculty of Health Sciences and the University of Cape Town have repeatedly failed to walk the walk.

First, the students who harassed Professor Mayosi were not called to account for their actions. They have not been subjected to any disciplinary action. Their names are not (yet) part of the public record. Among the academic staff who aided and abetted this harassment is at least one person who has been promoted to a senior academic leadership position.

Moreover, the bullying continues to be rampant (including multiple accusations that the [now former] Vice-Chancellor herself has been a bully). I have detailed many examples of this in a recent book, The Fall of the University of Cape Town. One such instance took place during a meeting of the third-year medical class on 27 August 2019. The students who called that meeting, used much of it to berate some of their classmates, claiming (falsely) that those classmates had been insufficiently compassionate.

At least a dozen members of the academic staff were in attendance. None of them spoke out against the bullying (in at least some cases because they knew the cost of doing so). Representatives from the university’s “Office of Inclusivity and Change”, who had been invited to facilitate the meeting, left early, evidently because their presence as facilitators was being ignored.

I had received advance notice of the meeting, because one of my bioethics lectures to the medical students had been cancelled (without consulting me) in order to schedule the meeting. I was not present at the meeting, but I did hear a recording.

Because the Faculty of Health Sciences and the University could not be counted on to do anything about this bullying, I wrote about it. The perpetrators and victims were left unnamed, but the shameful episode was exposed.

This elicited an uninformed response from the Health Sciences Students Council, to which I responded. The co-Chairs of the Faculty of Health Sciences’ Transformation and Equity Committee then approached their interim Dean, asking for me to be removed from the teaching of Bioethics. In response to this, the Interim Dean asked the Dean of Humanities to find an alternative lecturer for Bioethics. The Dean of Humanities wisely refused to do so.

These and other subsequent developments are recounted in The Fall of the University of Cape Town. In that book I noted that the matter had not ended and that I suspected that plans were being hatched to remove me from the teaching of Bioethics to the medical students. That book was published in November 2021.

In February 2022, my suspicions were confirmed by an email from a Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Health Sciences. I was told, at the eleventh hour, that I would no longer be teaching Bioethics to medical students – after more than thirty years of doing so. It was patently obvious that this was in response to the calls to have me removed.

In other words, the Faculty which had failed (again) to act against bullies, preferred to bully the whistle-blower who was exposing the bullying. The ironies of this were obviously lost on them, but not on me.

I lodged a grievance complaint against the Dean and one of the Deputy Deans. According to the University’s own policy, such complaints should be heard and resolved within a matter of days. It took nearly a month. However, the Vice-Chancellor’s nominee delivered a deeply flawed report, finding that I had not been victimized, despite the Dean having openly admitted that my article on the bullying had played a role in their decision. (That admission was an understatement of the role that this had played, but it was not insignificant. It is clear that a Dean can now retaliate against an academic for exercising the academic’s free-speech rights, then be quite open that he has retaliated, and yet get away with it.)

I appealed the decision within two days. Again, according to the relevant University policy, the appeal should have been heard and resolved within a few days. This time, it took ten months, and even that was not without much cajoling.

In her report, the Vice-Chancellor’s nominee who investigated the complaint said that she decided not to address the question of whether I had been victimized. In other words, she decided not to adjudicate on the very issue at hand (even though the victimization continued in other ways). Instead, her report is replete with factual errors and abundant obfuscation.

Universities can teach ethics in the curriculum. Ethics, in this context, is the academic philosophical study of morality. But universities also teach through example. That is one feature of what has sometimes been called “the hidden curriculum”.

The axing of an ethics lecturer for acting ethically and calling out unethical behaviour, is itself unethical. This, like the institutional failure to respond appropriately to its own failings, also teaches exactly the wrong lessons. The lessons that the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town is teaching include the lessons: (a) that certain people who engage in bullying can do so with impunity, and may even be rewarded; but (b) those who call out such unethical behaviour will be bullied, also with impunity; and thus (c) if you are not going to bully, at least remain quiet while others are being bullied.

(As an aside, what are we to make of the moral integrity of any ethics lecturer willing to take on the lecturing responsibilities of a previous ethics lecturer who was unethically axed? What ethical lessons does such a lecturer impart through his or her complicity?)

It should come as no surprise to those running such a university if its students – and staff – imbibe these lessons and act accordingly. Nor should it be surprised if there are further suicides among those who decline those “lessons”. The hidden curriculum is not so hidden that it cannot teach.