But some other council members occupy gravy train seats that are scarcely less opulent. Motimele's rich pickings alone would comfortably fund bursaries for about 200 first-year Unisa students, each doing two full courses. All this is for duties that councillors at other universities describe as not particularly onerous, though certainly important. Sixteen of Unisa's 26 councillors are external members. Nine pay council members' costs of travel to meetings and four cover accommodation expenses.
Some councils return part of their remuneration to their institutions.
Repeated attempts to contact Melck for further clarification failed. The Democratic Alliance says the ANC s Dumisani Makhaye subjected its members to racial gestures on Tuesday. Downs, a social worker, had tabled a motion calling for an investigation into all places of safety run by the Department of Social Welfare. She had based her motion on the findings of a series of interviews with children placed in one of the care facilities. But the responses to her speech were interspersed with heckling and racial slurs, with other members laughing.