Some time back, staff were asked to collect (in their various employment categories) nominations - duly seconded by a couple of dozen colleagues of like employment category - for Council, for Senate, and for various selection committees. In addition, some of these nominations required the nominee to provide biographies, statements of candidature, blank cheque with three specimen signatures and their fully sequenced DNA. (OK, that's an exaggeration. Partially sequenced DNA.)
Deathly silence ensued. Followed, after long enough for most people to have forgotten, by white election slips calling on people to vote for one (of a list of several) candidates to be Their Representative on the Council (another convoluted process requiring sealed, signed envelopes and secret handshakes).
After several further geological ages, pink voting slips asked staff to vote for up to four (of a list of eight) candidates for the Senate. Candidates were listed by initial and surname only - no first names, no indication of department, and certainly no sign of the biographies or statements they'd been asked to supply. Which made it a little difficult to guess which A Adams, out of a possible several, one was being asked to elect (or not). Additionally, 25% of the list of candidates had subsequently resigned or been retrenched from the University. Once more, a convoluted process of sealed and signed envelopes, nudges and winks, followed by deathly silence.
Then today someone happened across the UCT website's news page, and discovered that Gary Gabriels had been duly elected to represent non-academic staff on Council, and Kit Vaughan to represent academic staff.
After a week, international condemnation rained down on the Zim electoral commission for not releasing the election results. After 10 days even their children no longer spoke to them, and their chances of ever getting sex from their spouses again had dried up permanently. Whereas at UCT, no outcome was deemed a good outcome, and news being leaked by the media will surely be punished somewhere along the line.
Then again, perhaps the piece of bureaucracy responsible for all this is itself still trying to figure out which A Adams we've just elected to what, and whether the secret message spelled out by the DNA sequence is the directions to the Kruger millions, or a guitar chord sequence for the latest Steve Hofmeyr song...