Crisis Communication at Higher Education Institutions in South Africa: A Public Relations Perspective

The higher education sector has undergone dramatic restructuring through incorporations and mergers. This restructuring has led to the breakdown of apartheid racial divides and provided a vision of a single coordinated higher education system. In addition to opportunities various challenges have also emerged from these mergers. One such challenge is that higher education institutions may find themselves in tensions with their partners which may result in disagreements that could lead to crisis situations. In crisis situations, the pace of the conflict accelerates dramatically. This means that the affected parties have to react very quickly or risk having their ability to protect their interests substantially reduced. Implicit in this is the importance of communication. Often in a crisis situation, communication gets distorted; as a result rumors often supplant real facts. Thus, clear communication needs to be pre planned and increased during a crisis. The aim of this research is to investigate the role of communication during the planning and management of a crisis at higher education institutions in KwaZulu-Natal. A qualitative methodology was employed in this study. It reports on the preliminary results of in-depth interviews that were conducted at the four public higher education institutions in KwaZulu-Natal. Themes emanating from the literature review were used to develop an interview schedule which comprised of open-ended and closed-ended questions.