Marika Sboros: UCT under scrutiny over POPI breach it can't explain (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series, investigative journalist Marika Sboros looked at the internecine battles behind the University of Cape Town’s latest power struggles and its habit of reaching for the cloak of confidentiality as its superpower whenever accountability rears its inquiring head. In Part 2, she examines a similar pattern in the university's response to alumni and staff who wrote privately to leadership, objecting to an honorary doctorate awarded to Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, the controversial founder and CEO of Gift of the Givers..By Marika Sboros*.The University of Cape Town (UCT) and its attorneys of record, Fairbridges, can't seem to stay out of the public spotlight. This time, it’s over leaked emails and a breach of alumni’s personal information months ago that UCT still cannot, or will not, explain.It began on March 30, 2026, after four of UCT's top leadership – Vice-Chancellor (VC) Prof Mosa Moshabela, Council Chair Adv Norman Arendse SC, Interim Registrar Prof Kathy Idensohn and Sarah Archer, Executive Director of Development and Alumni Department – received a private letter via email.The roughly 300 signatories objected to UCT awarding an honorary doctorate to Gift of the Givers founder-CEO Dr Imtiaz Sooliman during its autumn graduation ceremonies on that day. Though marked "Open" in its subject line, the letter went nowhere near the public.Most of the signatories were alumni. Not all were Jewish or Zionist. They might just as well have been, since the backlash that followed treated them as if they were.The signatories did not object to Gift of the Givers' well-documented humanitarian record but rather to Sooliman's public rhetoric. They say it sits uneasily with the values UCT invokes when conferring its highest honour.More than 190 of the signatories are alumni, a small fraction of UCT's more than 100,000 alumni worldwide. UCT's own Convocation Special General Meeting on August 17, 2026, drew fewer people online and in person combined.Three hundred is clearly not a number UCT can dismiss as noise. And while UCT alumni have published open letters before, almost always with names redacted, this one was not published by signatories. Sworn statements by two signatories before the Information Regulator confirm that it went only to the four recipients named above..On March 30, in a News24 article by journalist Marvin Charles, headlined “Inside the backlash over UCT awarding Sooliman an honorary doctorate”, the letter was described as “seen by News24”, its content quoted extensively but not published fully. On April 1, on X, founder of Mothers4Gaza Ayesha Bagus directly asked News24, “Why don't you publish the actual list”. Bagus found the list “(i)nteresting, considering it’s only nine current academic staff members, and the list includes sisters and wives of alumni.” Her post clearly reveals that she had seen the signatories’ names. The list is believed to have been circulated on Whatsapp to UCT pro-Palestinian alumni. News24 duly published the letter on April 1, naming a handful of signatories' stated religion or politics as "Jewish" or "Zionist". The published document was not just the 300-signature letter. Someone had folded it into a single PDF, with three separate private emails UCT academic staff sent in their personal capacities to specific leadership recipients. .Marika Sboros: Inside MFF’s boardroom war — answering affidavits fail to bury it.The three objected to Sooliman’s honorary doctorate award. One raised another concern. Two UCT Council members who approved the award "have documented financial and professional ties to Dr Sooliman and Gift of the Givers" without a known declaration of interest or recusal.UCT alone held all four documents together. That narrows the field of possible sources of the leak to a very short list. Yet it still claims not to have a clue who that person is.When Charles first approached a signatory for comment, he was asked not to publish the names. The signatory warned that experience pointed to a high risk of reprisals against signatories. Charles published them anyway. And when the backlash to the unauthorised disclosure came, it was swift and ugly.UCT Renewal, the alumni body representing most of the signatories, gathered screenshots from Gift of the Givers' Facebook, X and Instagram pages. Predictably, it showed open Jew hatred, including admiration for Hitler, and calls to boycott signatories' businesses and careers.Pro-Palestinian lobbyists online called the letter a “list of Zionists … exposing their hate". They seemed not to notice or care that not all signatories on the “list” were Jewish or Zionist.On April 3, UCT Renewal called publicly for an independent investigation and formal discipline of whoever leaked the letters. By mid-April, UCT's leadership had not replied..On April 14, UCT Renewal sent a formal letter demanding an independent inquiry, disciplinary consequences, transparency about the outcome and evidence that UCT had reported the breach to South Africa's Information Regulator.The reply on April 17 showed that UCT had lawyered up. It came not from UCT but from Fairbridges Managing Director Adela Petersen. Petersen said that the “independence” of an investigation into the leak was still "under consideration". She asked UCT Renewal to hand over the signatories' private email addresses, citing UCT's obligations under the very POPI (Protection of Personal Information) Act that had just been breached.UCT Renewal saw immediate problems.Fairbridges already acts for Arendse in the ongoing "Mendelsohn matter" in the Western Cape High Court. UCT History Department head Prof Adam Mendelsohn filed the review application in August 2024, challenging the legality of UCT’s adoption of the “Gaza resolutions” in June 2024. Court papers show that Petersen had to depose to an affidavit in the face of allegations of Fairbridges tampering with witness affidavits. Arendse was one of the four original recipients of the leaked letters. He also published an opinion piece defending the Sooliman award on News24, the platform that hosted the leaked PDF, 11 days after it appeared. If UCT investigated its own leak properly, UCT Renewal argued, Arendse might be a subject of the inquiry, not a bystander. It also raised Petersen's conflict on April 24.UCT did not respond..On April 29, UCT Deputy VC Prof Brandon Collier-Reed informed staff, students and alumni via email that a "data security incident" had occurred. That was a month after most of South Africa had already read about it. Collier-Reed did not address anything material that UCT Renewal had raised five days earlier in this “Important Information Security Notification”.On May 11, Idensohn wrote to UCT Renewal, recusing herself as a recipient of "the document that was subsequently leaked". She added that Moshabela was "in the same position" and copied Fairbridges.On May 20, Collier-Reed replied to UCT Renewal, claiming that Fairbridges' role was "confined to providing legal advice". He rejected conflict objections to Petersen as "misplaced". That’s the same word Petersen used before to wave away criticism of the many roles she and Fairbridges hold at UCT.He said that UCT had reported the leak to the Information Regulator in accordance with its obligations under POPIA, and that receipt was acknowledged on April 28, 2026. He also said that an “external, independent, forensic investigation” with unnamed investigators appointed through UCT's insurers had concluded that the leak "could not be attributed to any specific individual"..Marika Sboros: The ‘ghost’ in the machine - high-profile ‘betrayal’ stakes at the Mauerberger Foundation Fund.On June 5, UCT Renewal sent 10 follow-up questions, including on who conducted the investigation, on what terms, who was interviewed, if UCT Council Chair (Arendse) and members of its Higher Degrees Committee were among those interviewed, and what the “forensic” work actually established.There was another small matter. Collier-Reed had referred several times in correspondence to an "alleged unauthorised disclosure". Yet, in the same letter, Idensohn said she "was herself a recipient of the document that was subsequently leaked". That raised the question of whether the leak was alleged or actual, according to UCT. Collier-Reed’s second letter, on June 14, settled that. "The University does not dispute," he wrote, that a consolidated PDF had been "disseminated beyond the persons to whom it had originally been provided". And that it had since appeared online and through other channels. He declined to disclose anything further, citing confidentiality. He declared the matter “closed”, adding that withholding the report into the leak "should not be interpreted as a lack of transparency".UCT had closed its own investigation while refusing to disclose anything about it. Those whose names are still circulating online and living with the fallout of a leak that no one at UCT will own, disagree that the matter is closed. And rightly so. If that’s UCT leadership's idea of transparency, its idea of secrecy in action must be something to behold. But then, secrecy appears to have become as much a part of UCT’s leadership landscape as the greenery on facades of the historic buildings on its upper campus. Nearly five months after the leak, no one in authority at UCT has named who moved a private letter and three staff emails from an inbox into a newsroom. Signatories to the letter have been left with an investigation into a leak of special personal information that UCT now admits happened, conducted by investigators it won't name, under auspices of insurers who’d be responsible for paying out in the event of any claims made, on terms it won't share, and a conclusion all stakeholders were expected to accept on its say-so. Call me cynical, but that’s not an independent investigation. It’s a verdict handed down from a locked room, not even provided to those who hold the keys. Questions remain about whether UCT Council is even aware of the "independent investigation" into the leak.Patterns appearing are similar to those traced in Part One of this series.Fairbridges respectively represents UCT and Council in the review application brought by Moshabela on August 5, 2026, and in Mendelsohn's separate challenge in June 2024. Both professors were effectively handed over to lawyers rather than defended or heard by their own institution.Nearly 300 alumni, whose views on Sooliman put them at odds with UCT’s views, have been treated similarly. They heard from a law firm before hearing from UCT's own leadership and were treated as adversaries, not stakeholders and partners. However, when people write to their alma mater expressing views on an action of that institution, that’s freedom of expression, not an invitation to suppress stakeholder engagement with doxxing consequences.Arendse, who chaired Council through adoption of the "Gaza resolutions" and defended the Sooliman honorary-doctorate award in print has faced no comparable scrutiny over a leak exposing people writing to a universityOne of the letter's signatories has since sworn an affidavit and filed a Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) request that UCT has declined to answer voluntarily and lodged a complaint with the Information Regulator.Neither filing accuses Fairbridges or Petersen of the leak itself. The question is the paper trail of how UCT handled a breach affecting nearly 300 people's personal information and why that trail keeps leading back to the same law firm.UCT's Interim Policy on Privacy and Data Protection, in force since December 2021, lists alumni explicitly among the "data subjects" whose trust the university claims to value. Under that policy, alumni may reasonably expect UCT to share their information only where legally and ethically justifiable, to keep it secure, tell them with whom it has been shared and respond when anyone objects.On all four counts, by UCT's own written standard, the latest leak falls far short..Marika Sboros: A very dark side to Sooliman’s Gift of the Givers.UCT's General Rules and Policies 2026 promise respect for "individual privacy, dignity and the right to personal choice", and "open governance" with full accountability. The Constitution's Bill of Rights and the Higher Education Act of 1997 anchor those obligations in law, not just policy.Fairbridges already faces two conflict-of-interest complaints before the Legal Practice Council over an unrelated matter involving another UCT Council member, Dianna Yach. Yach is alleged in court papers also to be conflicted. Council’s role in both Moshabela's litigation against UCT and the Mendelsohn review matter remains separately, heavily contested.None of this proves wrongdoing by UCT or its lawyers. It’s the context against which UCT's handling of this leak must be read.The Information Regulator and PAIA process may yet force open a record that UCT has refused to hand over. UCT still claims that refusing to show its paperwork is not a lack of transparency.Perhaps. But there's another word for what UCT owes here. It’s a word that rests on recognised principles of good governance, including the King Code on Corporate Governance that UCT claims to follow. That word is accountability..Follow *Marika Sboros on X and on Substack..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

Marika Sboros: UCT under scrutiny over POPI breach it can't explain (Part 2)

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