Unless it can improve its universities, Africa risks losing out in a globalised knowledge economy. Yet many African universities, including South Africa’s, are under threat with policies and management styles too frequently inimical to academic quality. Focusing on recent developments at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), RW Johnson is scathing about “nationalist fundamentalism” and the “Big Man” syndrome. A hard-hitting look at the state of African and South African higher education.