I got to know Martin as a respectable "opponent" DVC Student Affairs - always trying to 'outwit', 'outplay', 'outlast' SRC members - that was while I was as a SASCO member in the SRC of the University of Cape Town. Slogans like "West, look East!" and so on in student politics at UCT in the 1990s were common, indicating his liberal leanings which were typically seen by us comrades as too conservative and not supportive enough of a radical transformation agenda. He was seen as a staunch defender of the institution - UCT First! - and thus highly critical of anything that came from "pretoria"; and he was always sure of being able to employ and invoke institutional processes to get his way; call on established values; insist on treasured traditions and rituals. He was, what in political science we would call an 'institutionaliser'; and that is perhaps why he never gained much of a national profile (nor seems to have been interested in that).
When in 2005 I started a PhD I learnt to respect Martin as an academic manager and Vice-Principal with all the complexities that this job entailed. He had the VC's back as far as the institution was concerned; perhaps a bit too much. For my thesis work, he was certainly supportive of my strange 'ethnography of UCT politics'; he was ready to share his wealth of knowledge (even if much of it was put into different light and perspective by documents in the adminstrative archives and interviews with others). He was certainly interested in the study I was doing: doctoral research into governance and student representation at UCT; he was after all a main player. Of course, we did not agree on a number of matters, but his critique was always fair even if he was captive to his institutional and personal location as a powerful 'UCT institutional apparatchik'.
His legacy is perhaps tainted by the rumor of his role in the second and third Mafeje affairs - those of the 1990s and 2000s. It would be Martin's most controversial doing - and perhaps a conflation of his role as one of the most powerful UCT manager-academics of the 1990s and 2000s and his investment in Anthropology and the Centre for African Studies, if it is true. Martin had become a professor of Anthropology at UCT at the tender age of 30; the youngest ever at the time. He had studied Anthropology in the Department of Monica Wilson in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and may have known Archie Mafeje personally; he certainly knew of him... Perhaps there was some rivalry between Monica's two star students - even if Martin was several years Archie's junior?
It can be assumed that there was certainly no love lost by the 1990s when, according to research conducted for the Mafeje 1969 commemoration by a UCT academic, West is rumored to have been instrumental in denying Mafeje a dignified return to UCT in the mid-1990s, Remember: Mafeje is the black SA academic who, in 1969, was offered a post at UCT in Athropology (he had done is UG at UCT and his PG at Cambridge), and then under pressure from the apartheid government, this offer was withdrawn. This had led to the 9 day sit-in at UCT (in Bremner) which was the longest such protest at UCT until the recent 'Rhodes Must Fall' protests and sit-in (again at Bremner, including in the now renamed: Mafeje Room / i.e. Senate meeting room). When in the early 1990s the celebrated Prof Archibald Mafeje was supposed to return to SA from his exile and take up the Professorship and Chair in African Studies, Martin West, supposedly as chair of the Selection Committee, intervened in the last minute and Mafeje - the favorite and most qualified candidate - was denied the opportunity (and never returned to an academic career in SA)รถ the chair was not filled only until later when Prof Mamdani briefly joined UCT, and crossing swords with West. This is one of the rumors that haunt Martin's legacy. If it is true, the question remains whether 1) the allegations that were leveled against Mafeje in the early 1990s were true and if so, 2) whether not offering him the professorship on this grounds was simply one of the various miscalculated, short-sighted "UCT First" policies or whether there was a personal element to it.
Anyway, truth be told, I assume it will all soon be clearer, hopefully. Until then, let rumor be rumor; and in any case, let us be thankful for having known Martin - even if it was only in a very partial way - and for all the good he has done.
When I took this picture with him at my UCT PhD graduation in 2009, Martin was extremely happy. I will forever be grateful for his support during my studies.
