Governance and Student Leadership in South African Universities : Co-Governing With those to be Governed

The purpose of this article is to analyse the manner in which the South African university management governs with the student leadership. The internal stakeholders of a university governance structure should primarily involve executive management, academic staff, administrative staff and the unions. Thus far in the South African university environment the academic staff, administrative staff as well as the unions hardly co-manages with the executive management on the Universities business affair. Instead in South African universities, the university business appears to be run by the executive management and the student organisations. This article uses literature analysis methodology to argue that more often in South African public universities, other internal stakeholders of do not seem to matter within the governance paradigm, and it may seem that only student matters take precedence as they co-manage with the executive management. In such co-managing arrangement, students seem to have an upper hand which dictate the decisions executive management should take. The article therefore concludes that only if the South African universities' executive managements consider other stakeholders, then governance will yield good results for everyone in the university. The article recommends good governance which should ensure equal responsibility for all stakeholders in university education, at the limited co-governance of academic programme with student organisations, which results in poor academic output by student leadership in universities.