Profile: Mills Soko — incoming director of UCT Graduate School of Business

There’s a lot riding on Mills Soko, who will be director of the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Graduate School of Business (GSB) from January 1. He has to unify an academic faculty often at war with itself during the rule of his predecessor, Walter Baets, and be a role model as that rarest of creatures: a local black head of a flagship business school.

Baets, who returned to Europe in June, did many positive things during his tenure. He raised GSB’s profile, made it a thought leader in innovation, brought in excellent black academics and forced it to confront its role in African society. But his bulldozing leadership style rankled and caused seasoned academics to resign.

Soko says: "[Baets] changed GSB for the better and made it a great school. But a lot of people were bruised. My role is to heal and consolidate."

That process has been started by Geoff Bick, who has been interim director since June, but Soko doesn’t expect an easy ride. "There is a lot of anxiety," he says. "People are wondering if there will be more changes and restructuring."

Soko joined GSB in 2006 as a senior lecturer before becoming associate professor of international political economy in 2010. As a black academic, he knows his progress will be followed more closely than usual.

Of SA’s "big four" business schools — GSB, Wits Business School, the Gordon Institute of Business Science and the University of Stellenbosch Business School — only Wits has flirted with local black leadership. Businessman Bheki Sibiya lasted barely five months and Wendy Ngoma also left early after failing to win support from the university’s leadership. (Mthuli Ncube, who led the school for two years, is from Zimbabwe.)

Soko says his appointment sends a message to black academics and students: "There is a perception that institutions like UCT and GSB are for the privileged few. It’s important for people to see that GSB is led by someone who looks like them."

Like Baets, he wants to bring more local black academics into the school. "We talk of creating new layers of leadership within SA. I want to create a new layer of leadership in the GSB."

Armed with master’s degrees and a PhD in international studies and politics from SA and UK universities, Soko has worked as a researcher for, among others, the Institute for Democracy in SA and the National Council of Provinces. He is also a research associate of the SA Institute of International Affairs.