Wits Review January 2012

January 2012 Volume 19

The magazine for ALUMNI and friends of the University of the Witwatersrand

January 2012 Volume 19

CONNECTINGENGAGING INVOLVINGWITSALUMNI

Wits gives you the edge

IN THIS ISSUE: Xolela Mangcu • Glenda Gray • Ahmed Wadee www.wits.ac.za/alumni alumni@wits.ac.za

Visit the alumni homepage for the latest news, information and happenings, find a classmate and connect

with Witsies on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Flickr or update your contact details

www.wits.ac.za/alumni

Editorial

Wits sharpens its edge at Welcome to 2012!

This year promises to be e special, not because of the summer Olympics or doomsday predictions of a geomagnetic reversal, solarr flares and black holes, but because Wits, established ed in 1922, 1922 celebrates its 90th anniversary this year.

Achieving this significant milestone gives us an opportunity to reflect on the accomplishments of our staff, students and alumni and the rich and illustrious history of the University and its contribution to Johannesburg, the country and indeed the world. It is also a time to look forward to the future, and our vision for the University when it celebrates its centenary.

Over the decades, Wits has weathered many storms and proven itself to be resilient, innovative, socially relevant and always at the cutting edge. It has built a solid and enduring reputation over 90 years as a leading University committed to academic excellence and nurturing and producing world-class research.

Whilst there is an abundance of achievements and past successes to be immensely proud of, Wits is far from having its best years behind it. Over the past few years Wits has undergone a phenomenal transformation that heralds perhaps the most excit-

January 2012

ing phase of its life as it embraces the opportunities that have come with the attainment of a democratic and free society and the challenges of globalisat sation.

T The University has been strengthened b by a massive investment in infrastructture in recent years and the current eestablishment of six new leading re research institutes will entrench Wits’ pos position as one of the world’s premier Univers University’s.

If you get the chance c and haven’t visited your alma mater in some time, I urge you to visit during 2012 to see the changes for yourself. I hope that many of you will be able to join us as we celebrate our anniversary with reunions, guided tours and excursions of Wits and the city, prestigious lectures, film festivals, exhibitions and displays. There will also be special opening times for all Wits museums and places of interest. Visit www.wits.ac.za/alumni/events regularly for updated information.

Come celebrate Wits 90 with us. Visit the campus, whether just to tour, picnic or attend an event. This is your campus and your University!

Peter Maher Director: Alumni Relations PS. A special happy birthday to all our alumni who also turn 90 this year!

WITSReview

1

Contents

6

28

4

Social

6

Research unusual Wits gets to grips with the science of change

12

Xolela Mangcu Quest for intellectual leadership

35

Achievers: Alumni with the Edge Exceptional Young Witsies Alumni with the Writing Edge Alumni Achievers

52

Photo Essay: Wits is beautiful

56

Places to visit at Wits

Anatomy of Glenda Gray and the war against HIV

58

Obituaries

22

Ahmed Wadee - Dean of caring

62

At Wits End

28

Heritage: Sunnyside – treasure trove of history, tradition and fond memories

18

2

WITSReview

January 2012

Contents

Editor Contributors

: Peter Maher : Deborah Minors, Heather Dugmore, Katherine Munro and Camilla Bath Design & Layout : Nicole Sterling Printing Ultra Litho (Pty) Limited Published by the Office of Alumni Relations, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

52

Tel : +27 (0)11 717 1090 Fax : +27 (0)11 403 4493 Address : Private Bag 3, Wits, 2050, South Africa E-mail : alumni@wits.ac.za Website : www.wits.ac.za/alumni Wits Shop : www.witsshop.co.za Update contact details : www.wits.ac.za/alumni/update Subscriptions International subscribers : R100 per annum Local subscribers : R80 per annum Payment Options Online payment using a Visa, Mastercard, American Express, or Diners Club credit card at: www.wits.ac.za/alumni/payment or by electronic transfer or bank deposit to First National Bank, Account No. 62077141580, Branch Code 255-005, Reference No. 1142 (+ your name) or by cash or credit card payment at the Alumni Office.

Cover: A Wits 90 collage of photos taken from the Facebook Page, Wits is beautiful, by Engineering student, Nikheil Singh. See Photo Essay on p52.

Letters to the editor are welcome and can be sent c/o the Office of Alumni Relations or e-mailed to alumni@wits.ac.za

January 2012

For assistance with any payment or delivery problems or to apply for a complimentary copy please e-mail alumni@wits.ac.za or call +27 (0)11 717 1090/1/3/5 WITSReview is a quarterly publication. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the editor, the Office of Alumni Relations or of the University of the Witwatersrand. Š Copyright of all material in this publication is vested in the authors thereof. Requests to reproduce any of the material should be directed to the editor.

WITSReview

3

Social

(L-R): Prof. Loyiso Nongxa, Dr Brian Bruce and guest speaker, Clem Sunter.

Clem Sunter calls for new balls at Founders’ Tea Despite unseasonably inclement weather in Johannesburg, the Highveld storms abated for the annual Founders’ Tea held on the Gavin Relly Green, West Campus on 23 November 2011.

Master of ceremonies Professor Katherine Munro updated the 400 Founders - alumni who graduated 40 or more years ago - on the progress of the new Wits Art Museum, Science Stadium and School of Public Health. She invited alumni to participate in campus tours. Vice-Chancellor and Principal Loyiso Nongxa welcomed the Founders.

Economist and scenario-planning futurist Clem Sunter delivered the keynote address, a fascinating talk peppered with insights on the global and local economy and possible future scenarios. He told the tale of a brilliant young South African engineer from rural KwaZulu-Natal, after whom NASA had named a planet; he offered sage advice (“new balls please” Sunter’s call on government and business to adopt innovative economic solutions); and he explored South Africa’s potential as either a “premier league player” or a “failed state”.

4

WITSReview

January 2012

Young Alumni and web mentoring launch

M

ore than 300 graduates 35 years old and younger attended the launch of the Young Alumni Programme and web mentoring platform held at The Bozz, East Campus, on 3 November 2011.

Ltd, delivered their insights and engaged in spirited debate with each other, alumni and the facilitator, Professor Tawana Kupe, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities.

Young alumni enjoyed welcome drinks and sunset socialising at The Boz, revamped as a stylish deck, before the introduction of the web mentoring platform and a panel discussion by eminent speakers on the topic of “Young professionals: Opportunities, challenges and responsibilities in the current SA context”.

Alumni Relations director Peter Maher explained that the web mentoring platform provided an opportunity for alumni to share knowledge and expertise in a oneon-one online mentoring relationship. The platform enables Witsies to mentor or be mentored by registering at www.witsalumni.mentorcloud.com.

Guest speakers Brian Joffe (CTA 1972), Chief Executive of Bidvest Group Ltd; Kuben Naidoo (BSc 1993, PDM 1996), head of Secretariat at the National Planning Commission; and Yolanda Cuba, executive director of development and decision support at SAB

There was no charge for young alumni to attend the launch, where delicious canapés and a cash bar were available. 5FM’s DJ Fresh provided entertainment later when alumni socialised under the stars late into the night.

Record number of runners in annual inter-faculty race The annual Lenn Smith race is an inter-faculty 4km run/walk around campus in which Wits staff members and postgraduate students participate. The race honours its namesake, a retired member of staff and running enthusiast. The 2011 race took place on 15 September. A new record field of more than 410 Witsies participated.

Lydia Monyepao (BCom 2001), from Sports Administration, was the first woman to cross the finish line, while Mathebete Mathabata, from the School of Social Sciences, was the first man. The Schools of Chemistry and Social Sciences respectively were the first men’s and women’s teams home. The Library was the unit with the most participants and Health Sciences the top faculty.

January 2012

WITSReview

5

6

WITSReview

Photos by Barend Erasmus

Research unusual

Professor Andrew Crouch is building an army to help save the Earth. The Dean of science at Wits University is assembling a team of revolutionaries from inside the academic world and beyond to combat an enemy common to us all, one that may see the planet’s very ability to sustain life come under threat.

Research unusual Wits gets to grips with the science of change

By Camilla Bath

January 2012

WITSReview

7

Research unusual

G

lobal change is a complex adversary, a multifaceted problem with no simple answer. It requires a completely new approach to problem solving in the academic world. The term was first coined in the late 1980s and refers to the startling large-scale transformations happening on the planet we call home. Climates are changing, habitats are being destroyed, species are being threatened, food security is increasingly at risk and non-renewable resources are drying up.

The issues that contribute to global change can’t be separated, and those trying to combat the phenomenon can’t hope to succeed by working separately.

Scientists have to change the way they tackle the problem: working across traditional internal boundaries and with non-academic experts to come up with solutions.

As the acting director of the R28-million Wits Global Change and Sustainability Research Institute (GCSRI), Crouch is at the forefront of this research revolution. The institute was launched in November 2011 with the aim of creating a better understanding of global change and providing a collective response to it. He says adaptation and innovation are its watchwords: “There is really a call for being innovative in the way in which we deal with the challenges of global and climate change. Innovation runs through all the things we do: whether it be developing new technologies to address some of these challenges, building new platforms or gaining new information.

“We are also learning to work in new ways. Adaptation is implicit in what we’re doing: by talking to a

8

WITSReview

Its effects are inescapable and relentless, posing challenges to all human beings in all parts of the world.

Research unusual

multi-disciplinary team, we can contextualise our own involvement in a far broader project. This institute calls for adaptation of the mind and of the intellectual project we’re busy with, but also adaptation in terms of the way in which we’re thinking about problem solving, the way we work together and the type of language we’re using with each other.”

Secretary-general of the International Social Science Council Dr Heide Hackmann delivered the keynote address at the institute’s November launch. She believes now is the time to act.

“Climate and broader, related processes of global environmental change confront us with an unprecedented situation, unique in its causes and consequences, its complexity and urgency. Its effects are inescapable and relentless, posing challenges to all human beings in all parts of the world,” she says.

“If science is to step up to the mark and play a leading role in meeting those challenges, then scientists have to get their act together. Research as usual is not an option. For the benefit of our common humanity and shared physical environment, working across traditional disciplinary and institutional boundaries, integrating multiple sources of expertise, and working with society in the co-production of solutions is not a choice but a simple necessity.”

Crouch says the main purpose of forming the institute was to consolidate the research strengths that Wits already has in the fields of the environment, global change and sustainability.

“We aim to bring together a team of scientists,

January 2012

engineers, social scientists, economists and businesspeople onto one platform, so that we can start to address some of the inter-disciplinary issues and identify the skills and knowledge we need to solve these problems.”

The institute will develop new channels and pathways for knowledge, focusing on and responding to issues around sustainable local development needs. Research will be conducted by partnerships and collaborations instead of people working in disconnected units.

Crouch says he’s been championing the cause of global change since he arrived at Wits in late 2008: “I was lucky in that there were already people doing excellent work in this area, but I think they were effectively working in silos. I immediately saw that the solution to the problem was to build bridges across the silos, or even break them down entirely, so that everyone could interact with each other.”

The process of breaking down those “silos” saw some 72 academics become involved in the process that led to the GCSRI being established. The number has since dwindled to around 17 or 18, but Crouch says many more people have shown interest in the institute.

Wits alumnus Dr Robert Scholes, who is a systems ecologist at the CSIR and also part of the GCSRI, believes South Africa is ideally positioned as the leader in Africa when it comes to analysing global change issues: “Our capacity to move beyond highlighting the problem, into generating solutions that are appropriate for our circumstances, will be determined by how well we are able to draw together

WITSReview

9

Research unusual

the many threads of this complex challenge. In particular, it requires the deep integration of climatological, ecological, engineering, economic and social expertise.”

Part of the shift in mindset that is needed requires the charting of new academic territory; one of the institute’s goals is to develop interdisciplinary curricula that critically examine global change and all its ramifications. The University believes new methods of research are needed to deal with the very complex type of problems scientists are now encountering.

10 WITSReview

The GCSRI is the first of six prestigious research institutes that Wits is establishing to harness the potential of its staff and students. The University has identified the strongest of its strategic research areas and has aggressive plans to build them with what it terms “focus and ambition”, so that by 2022 each institute will be a major intellectual player in its field. It is envisaged that, in the next decade, the institutes will employ around one hundred new academic staff, doctoral and post-doctoral students, and will be generously self-funded.

January 2012

Global change is going to be one of the

Research unusual

major research areas which the University will focus on in the next ten years.

The institute for global change has already secured funding for a permanent director, who will be appointed in the next six months, and Crouch says that in the meantime he will “steer the ship while trying to help this newborn baby through its first steps”.

“Global change is going to be one of the major research areas which the University will focus on in the next ten years. It's gratifying for me that the institute has been established and has support from industry and government, and also external funding to drive various projects.”

The dean says he draws personal satisfaction from the fact that he’s managed to bring together academics and people from the private sector to look at a common problem. He sums up the institute in one simple word: dynamism. “It’s linked to movement and change,” he says. “Hopefully the change will address the challenges we're facing, both within the academia and within society, so that we as a community are all in step.”

Crouch and his team hope the GCSRI will transform the way in which we deal with global change and sustainability. As the world changes, so will the way in which academics work with other experts.

The blinkers will come off, tunnel vision within disciplines will be corrected and knowledge will be shared and used in new ways - all in an effort to address the most fundamental of issues the human race is facing: the future of our planet.

January 2012

WITSReview 11

Xolela Mangcu

Quest for Intellectual Leadership

In this, t the second in a series of interviews in which WITSReview focuses on the role played by Wits and Witsies in the struggle against apartheid, Xolela Mangcu opens up to Heather Dugmore.

Photos by EYEscape

12 WITSReview

January 2012

Profile

I

f South Africa had evolved on Black Consciousness (BC) lines since 1994 under the leadership of a man like Steve Biko, our country would not be in chaos and confusion today. Xolela Mangcu is sure of this.

Now 45 and a successful author, political commentator and recently appointed Professor of Sociology at the University of Cape Town, Mangcu articulates the divide between the ANC and BC approaches to leadership and government. His words echo the views he espoused in his student days at Wits when he arrived from King Williams Town in the Eastern Cape to study law.

“What is missing in the ANC today is a self-assured, intellectual leadership that is tolerant of different ideas, capacities, skills and competencies,” says Mangcu. “Instead, we have a ruling party that rewards incompetence and mediocrity because it refuses to reach out to the vast pool of knowledge that exists in South Africa. It is a major problem that is leading us on the road to nowhere.”

In contrast, Mangcu believes a Biko-style leadership would not have degenerated into the “increasingly rudderless political culture” of the ANC because, he explains, the cornerstone of BC philosophy is education, intellectual strength and self-reliance.

“For this reason we were opposed to the school boycotts and the destruction of institutions in the 1970s and 1980s. We knew we needed all the education we could get,” says Mangcu, who matriculated from Nompendulo High School in King Williams Town in 1982.

January 2012

The principal at the time was his brother Mzwandile Mangcu and the school had an outstanding reputation for its culture of learning, as did other schools in King Williams Town, such as Forbes Grant High School, where Biko studied. “Of the 45 learners in my matric class, 43 passed and 25 achieved university entrance passes, many with A grades. That was the environment in which I was educated, but the school has gone down really badly, as has Forbes Grant High School, with hardly any university exemptions today.”

Mangcu is currently writing a book on Biko, who, as the founder of the BC movement in South Africa, would have fought against the decline of education.

“He constantly emphasised that black South Africans needed education to equip themselves with the intellectual self-assurance required to govern all the people of South Africa, black and white, with competence and authority.”

As part of this philosophy of competence and authority Mangcu maintains that a BC government would never have premised itself on “service delivery” as the ANC government does today. “It goes without saying that government has service responsibilities but the ANC government has created a situation where people no longer feel any sense of responsibility or self-reliance because the government must do it all for them. This perpetuates poverty and inequality,” he says, adding that the only way to overcome poverty and inequality is through education and the expansion of the middle class.

“You cannot overcome the inequalities we face without a foundation in a solid educational system

WITSReview 13

Xolela Mangcu

I want to inspire young people at university to do what we did in our day: actively imagine and fight for a different and better society.

14 WITSReview

January 2012

Profile

that will lead to a critical mass of a middle class population that can sustain the country. To achieve this, our fate as a society must not lie with the politicians, because if we allow this we will see greater and greater anarchy. As citizens, civil society groups and intellectuals, we need to generate new ideas and new ways of doing things in this country, with young people at university taking an active role.”

The post-1994 period at universities has largely been lacking in student political vigour because, as Mangcu puts it, “South Africa became a democracy, which is what we had been fighting for, so there was nothing really to fight for and the passion and vigour of student politics in our day faded away. It takes a while to come full circle and the current generation of young people and students at university are once again ready to take up the battle for a better society.”

So far this battle and the vigour it requires have only been visible among those who feel marginalised, such as the ANC Youth League. It provided fertile ground for people like Julius Malema to rise to power, but what is missing, Mangcu once again points out, is intellectual leadership. “Without this, whatever is boiling up is blamed on racism and risks getting out of hand because the leaders are not trained in dialogue; which is why universities have such an important role to play, to provide the space for debate and dialogue.”

This is where Mangcu comes in as an academic. “I want to inspire young people at university to do what we did in our day: actively imagine and fight for a different and better society. I want my students to argue with me and debate their philosophies with

January 2012

me, just as I did with my lecturers. One of my many wonderful lecturers was Raymond Suttner, who was jailed for almost 10 years for his ANC underground activities. We argued all the time because he was Marxist-ANC-aligned and I was BC.” The Wits years Heading back to that time, almost 30 years ago, we find a 17-year-old Mangcu insisting on studying law at Wits even though he was supposed to study at Fort Hare. He fought a protracted battle to get a permit to study at Wits, which was required by government until 1984, when the quota system was approved.

No sooner had Mangcu, young and full of fighting spirit, stepped onto campus than he and several likeminded students, including Linda Mtshizana, Mojanku Gumbi and Saths Cooper, launched a branch of the Black Consciousness Movement at Wits.

“We only allowed black students to join because we felt we needed to forge our own path and that it could not include white students because they tended to dominate,” Mangcu explains.

WITSReview 15

Xolela Mangcu

This led to vigorous, confrontational ideological debates on campus, especially with the formation of the non-racial United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983.

One memorable confrontation was with politics professor Tom Lodge, who was addressing a mass meeting on campus. “He was regarded as the authority on the liberation movement in South Africa but when he failed to include the Black Consciousness Movement in his address, I raised my hand and confronted him. He acknowledged the omission and I received huge applause from all the black students gathered.”

Mangcu attributes his forthrightness to his upbringing. “I come from a long line of intellectuals and educationists in the Eastern Cape who encouraged me to speak my mind.”

In 1980s South Africa, speaking your mind as a university student attracted the attention and harassment of not only the security police, but also the ANC underground, which was looking for suitable recruits. Mangcu was not interested, despite concerted efforts by the ANC to infiltrate the BC movement on campus.

By the mid-1980s a State of Emergency had been declared and Mangcu was preparing to go into exile after completing his BA in 1986. But there was something he felt he had to do before he could leave the country: return to the Eastern Cape and go through the traditional circumcision ceremony.

“It’s our cultural initiation into manhood which Xhosa men go through and which I value. I could not leave without doing this,” says Mangcu.

16 WITSReview

After completing the ceremony he decided he was not leaving the country and would instead return to Wits and register for his LLB. Which he did, but he soon changed lanes. “As black students we realised we needed to beef up our policy skills in order to be able to assume positions of authority in a future democratic country,” he explains. “Wits had a twoyear Masters programme in Development Planning, and to my mother’s eternal chagrin, I deregistered as a law student and signed up.” He completed his Masters in Urban Design in 1988 and pursued a career in city planning for several years.

Johannesburg has been his second home for many years. Now that he will be exploring the shores of Cape Town, he does not feel dislocated for, as always, he takes with him the books and thoughts of great thinkers.

He picks up a book on Steve Biko lying on top of one of the piles of books still to be packed into shelves. The cover offers this quote by Biko, whose life on Earth ended in 1977 but whose spirit is alive in the hearts of men like Mangcu: “We have set out on a quest for true humanity, and somewhere on the distant horizon we can see the glittering prize.”

Mangcu’s latest book, which he edited, is titled Becoming Worthy Ancestors and is published by Wits University Press. It asks what it takes for us to become worthy ancestors to the yet unborn.

Mangcu says that in a changed (and, some might say, degraded) environment of public dialogue, he hopes to inspire a re-thinking of the very essence of what it means to be a citizen of South Africa.

January 2012

newsbytes

Ancient art palette discovered in African cave Blombos Cave interior. Image: Magnus Haaland.

A team led by Professor Christopher Henshilwood of the Wits Institute for Human Evolution has discovered evidence of ancient artists dabbling in ochre-based paint chemistry as early as 100 000 years ago.

for decoration, painting and skin protection. Grinding and scraping ochre to produce a pigment powder was common practice in Africa and the Near East about 100 000 years ago.

This finding suggests that Homo sapiens evolved complex cognition 20 000 to 30 000 years earlier than previously thought. Respected journal Science published the discovery in October 2011.

“We believe that the manufacturing process involved rubbing pieces of ochre on quartzite slabs to produce a fine red powder,” explains Henshilwood. “This discovery represents an important benchmark in the evolution of complex human cognition [as] it shows that humans had the conceptual ability to source, combine and store substances that were then possibly used to enhance their social practices.

Henshilwood and his international team discovered an ochre-rich mixture inside two abalone shells, preserved in the Blombos Caves on the southern Cape shoreline. Ochre refers to earth or rock that contains red-yellow oxides or iron hydroxides.

The abalone shells contained ochre, bone, charcoal, grindstones and hammer stones, which may have been used Henshilwood excavating.

Image: Magnus Haaland

Abalone after removal of cobble with ochre.

Image: Grethe Moel Pedersen.

“It also demonstrates that humans had an elementary knowledge of chemistry and the ability for long-term planning 100 000 years ago,” concludes Henshilwood.

Members of excavation team 2008. Image: Birgit Stav

Blombos cave from coast. Image: Magnus Haaland

January 2012

WITSReview 17

Glenda Gray

Professor Glenda Gray of the Wits-affiliated Perinatal HIV Research Unit (PHRU) is a world authority on HIV. She says the next 10 years are going to produce vaccines, microbicides and even cures for HIV that were never thought possible.

18 WITSReview

January 2012

Profile

Anatomy of Glenda Gray

and the war against HIV

By Heather Dugmore

I

n 1993, when Professor Glenda Gray graduated as a paediatrician from Wits, a severe and horrific epidemic had emerged and she witnessed many HIV-positive babies and children dying in public hospitals in Johannesburg.

“There was no choice but to become involved in HIV because every third child in the ward at Bara was infected with HIV, and it was the most common cause of death in children admitted. It was a terribly depressing state of affairs and as a doctor you felt helpless because our goal is to help people live,” says Gray.

That year she started doing research into mother-tochild transmission and in 1996 she co-founded the Perinatal HIV Research Unit (PHRU) at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.

“The thing about researching HIV is that as a virus it is so elusive,” she explains. “Back then many people thought I was mad to make a career of clinical research in HIV, which was a very new field at the time.”

January 2012

Soon after it was established, the PHRU expanded its portfolio to include HIV prevention research such as vaccines, interventions to prevent heterosexual transmission, and HIV treatment. Under Gray’s directorship it is now a 400-strong unit which has achieved international recognition for its research and results in the care, treatment and prevention of HIV. Gray has received multiple awards for her work and was recently elected to membership of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies.

Members worldwide are elected for their excellence, commitment to service and professional achievements.

The PHRU is now in its 16th year, and Gray is hopeful that the long, dark years are behind them.

“It is a great relief to be where we are now because it was a battle for the first 10 years with antiretroviral (ARV) drugs not being affordable in South Africa and interventions still being researched.

WITSReview 19

We are going to see results we never thought possible.

“What is really wonderful today is that some of the children I delivered in 1993 who were born with HIV are now in matric and doing well on therapy.

If they keep taking all their medicines the sky is the limit and they will be able to lead full lives until they are old.”

She is equally positive about the HIV vaccines and interventions they are working on at present.

“Within the next 10 years we will have an HIV vaccine and/or a microbicide that women can use.

Scientists are also working on a cure through, for example, gene therapy. We are going to see results we never thought possible,” says Gray, adding that she is “very lucky to have a career in HIV because it offers you the opportunity to change the course of events in the lives of people all over the world.

It’s such a devastating epidemic and the more we understand it, the more we can control it and do good.”

The ultimate HIV control technology is a vaccine, she explains. It will be a lifesaver for women whose partners victimise them if they ask them to use condoms or to be tested for HIV. “With a vaccine no one ever sees it being put in your arm,” says Gray.

Her unit is looking at two HIV vaccine agendas and they are hoping that an actual vaccine can be submitted for licensure in South Africa by 2017.

20 WITSReview

Gallo/Getty Images

“We first got an inclination from a study in Thailand that an HIV vaccine could be effective. Based on this data, a group of scientists got together to replicate these findings and optimise the vaccine design. I became involved in the South African study because we need a vaccine that acts on subtype C, which is predominant in South Africa, where we have one of the worst HIV epidemics in the world.”

There are various subtypes of HIV that circulate across the world. Subtype C circulates mainly in South Africa, China and India. Subtype B dominates in America and Europe and subtype E in Thailand.

Gray is also working with Professor Helen Rees, from Wits on microbicides and they have just started a study that is looking to confirm the findings from the CAPRISA 004 study conducted in KwaZuluNatal and released in 2010. “The study conducted in Durban showed that if women apply a particular gel just before and just after sex, it was 44% effective in preventing HIV,” says Gray. “Now we want to license this gel for women, which is exciting because it’s the first time we’ve been involved in an HIV prevention licensure study and we are hoping to make the product available to women in three years’ time.”

January 2012

Profile

The same gel is being studied by the unit in another intervention that is looking at a once-a-day dose of the gel irrespective of sexual intercourse, but at R7 per application, it’s expensive. They are therefore looking at a “sex dose”. This intervention is also being studied in Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe.

While these interventions offer potential relief to millions of people, Gray emphasises the ongoing need to reduce risk-taking and to know your HIV status and your partner’s.

“I’m committed to improving survival, particularly among the children in South Africa,” says Gray.

She would like to see a time when the number of children dying in South Africa, currently 45-120 per 1 000 live births, is no more than the number of children dying in Sweden, which is 2.74 per 1 000 live births.

As a world authority on HIV, Gray travels extensively, presenting at conferences and collaborating in global HIV research. People from all over the world also come to study at the PHRU because Gray and her team are open-minded and collaborative, and they encourage people to use their data.

What all this means is that Gray leads an over-full and complex life, one that she has to balance with being a wife and mother of three.

“I make their lunches at 5am, help with their homework and discuss medicine with my eight-year-old son Joab, who enjoys browsing through Gray’s Anatomy and examining all the body parts.”

She counts herself fortunate to have a husband who is the rock of the family and who looks after the

January 2012

children when she is travelling. “He is wonderfully tolerant of my work as I frequently have conference calls in the evening with collaborators in other parts of the world.”

Her husband, Jacobus Kloppers, is a renowned South African artist.

“Artists and scientists work well together as creative thinkers,” says Gray. “Jacobus has incredible vision and he sees the world completely differently to me.

He offers insight when I’m dealing with problems at work and it is also so nice to just go home and be with him and our family and not talk about death and dying.”

To get away from it all they have a hideout in the Karoo village of Nieu Bethesda, where Kloppers lived for some years. Gray met him there in 2000.

“We liked each other instantly,” she says.

“Our home there is an old shepherd’s cottage and it’s incredible to spend time in this isolated desert where I can walk in the veld or ride my bicycle. If we feel like a meal out, we can go to the Three Goats Deli and drink their homemade beer and eat their homemade cheese and bread.

“On Saturday nights we attend the social at the tennis club with the locals and farmers. We chew the fat and drink lots of gin and tonic.

You also experience the seasons in the karoo - the snow in winter and the intense heat in summer. I always return from Nieu Bethesda refreshed. It gives me new perspective and new ideas come just from being there.”

WITSReview 21

Ahmed Wadee

Photos

by EYEscape 00 WITSReview

January 2012

Profile

“I’ve spent a lifetime at Wits; this is my home,” says Professor of Immunology Ahmed Wadee, who was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences in June 2011. He has been at Wits for 35 years, starting in 1975 when he came to Wits to do his Masters in Medicine (1979), followed by his PhD (1982).

Deancaring of

By Heather Dugmore

I

will always remember the hint of healing incense from the Himalayas when I think of Professor Ahmed Wadee. For when you enter his office at the end of a long corridor in the Faculty of Health Sciences building, your sense of smell tells you this is a different sort of Dean.

“I light incense first thing in the morning when I come to work,” says Wadee, who paints, draws, does tai chi and attends classical music concerts and who went to school in the Himalayan mountains.

“I grew up in Fordsburg, where my mother still lives, but my father did not want me to go to school there.

He wanted me to get the best education possible and he decided to send me to boarding school at Lawrence College in the Himalayas. It was based on

January 2012

the British education system and it was absolutely Dickensian, with harsh living conditions and routine canings.”

Wadee dreamed of the time when he would return home, and his memories of Fordsburg are captured in one of the drawings he did that he has in his office. It is of the house across the road from his family home in Fordsburg.

After completing his schooling he went to the University of Toronto to do his undergraduate studies in medicine, and finally returned to South Africa and Wits to do his Masters. It was here that he learnt the power of mentors, which underpins his approach to leading the faculty today.

WITSReview 23

Ahmed Wadee

He aims to get to the point where the Wits Health Sciences Faculty is the first choice for students and staff, based on its excellence and because they experience it as a warm and caring place.

Professor Arthur Rabson, who was the first Professor of Immunology at Wits, and fellow immunologist Professor Reuben Sher took Wadee under their wing and mentored him.

24 WITSReview

“They made me work like a dog but they were incredibly good to me and so enthusiastic about their work that it made me equally enthusiastic,” he recalls.

After completing his PhD at Wits, he headed to the Harvard School of Public Health for two years, after which he came back to Wits and became the second Professor of Immunology at Wits, in 1990.

He developed an exceptional bond with Rabson and Sher and named his daughter Reubina (who is now a pathologist in the faculty) after Sher. “Reuben has since passed away but I am in daily contact with Arthur, who is still my mentor today and who teaches at the age of 70 in Boston,” says Wadee.

January 2012

Profile

The Faculty of Health Sciences is blessed with a lineage of great scientists, teachers and mentors. Wadee believes that the University’s retirement policy does not serve the Faculty as it prematurely loses outstanding staff members who have so much to offer. He cites Professor Duncan Mitchell, Emeritus Professor of Physiology, Honorary Professorial Research Fellow in the Brain Function Research Group and a National Research Foundation A1-rated scientist as one example. Professor John Pettifor, former Head of the Department of Paediatrics, is another … and there are many others.

“We need to keep them for as long as possible because they define excellence,” says Wadee, whose vision for the Faculty of Health Sciences is based on excellence in teaching, research, scholarship and administration.

“Clarity on what excellence is will ensure that we deconstruct the notion that it has an association with race, gender, disability or socio-economic background,” he adds. “The definition of excellence should be used as the basis for appointments, promotion and the identification of individuals with potential, not only in our student body but in our staff across the board - from teaching to administration.

“We need highly qualified, productive staff with international recognition and we need to increase our research staff and postgraduate research students if we want to get into the top 100 universities’ list and to be recognised as the ‘Harvard of Africa’.

Towards achieving this we are offering several fellowships for graduates to complete their PhDs,”

January 2012

says Wadee, who has supervised many postgraduate students.

He aims to get to the point where the Wits Health Sciences Faculty is the first choice for students and staff, based on its excellence and because they experience it as a warm and caring place. This, he says, will give the faculty the edge required to become the leader in all aspects of its work, not only in South Africa and Africa, but also throughout the world.

Health Sciences currently admits about 600 undergraduate students a year. Last year it increased its first-year admissions from 160 to 200 students to include the 40 students funded by the Minister of Health as part of his planned development programme. The faculty also has many foreign students, who come from all over the world to do their electives here. “We hope the South African bug bites many of them and that they return to contribute to the health issues in South Africa and the continent,” he says.

While it is all-important to Wadee that the faculty attracts the best minds and produces committed healthcare professionals, it is clear from how he conducts himself that it is equally important to him that health sciences students emerge as caring and compassionate human beings.

Wadee’s compassion spontaneously reveals itself during the interview when a call comes through that a foreign student studying at the faculty has been injured in a road accident and taken to a private hospital. The hospital needs some form of surety before treating the student, and Wadee produces his own Discovery Health card and reads out the number.

WITSReview 25

Ahmed Wadee

As a faculty we see A ourselves as integral to the development of a public health service that can properly serve the people of South Africa.

26 WITSReview

January 2012

Profile

This leads us to the issue of public and private hospitals and Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi’s strategy for the health sector.

“Healthcare in this country is in such a shambles. It has not been managed in the public hospitals and clinics and because of this it has badly deteriorated,” he says. “Fortunately, I think we have turned a corner and the government is far more responsive to addressing the deficiencies and failings in our public health system than ever before.”

As part of the way forward, he explains, there is an urgent need to focus on increasing the public/private partnerships between the universities, private hospitals, the Gauteng Department of Health, the National Health Laboratory Service and the Health Professions Council of South Africa.

The Wits School of Public Health, which moves to its new building this year, will play an important role in fostering these relationships.

“As a faculty we see ourselves as integral to the development of a public health service that can properly serve the people of South Africa,” Wadee adds. “Many people still think the faculty is only about medicine, but it includes all the healthcare fields, such as nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, pharmacy and dentistry.”

The minister’s healthcare plan includes populating clinics and hospitals throughout the country with all the health service skills required. Wadee recognises the need to contribute to these skills by increasing the faculty’s intake while continuing to produce top, committed graduates.

January 2012

He says that apart from academic tutoring the faculty offers one-on-one student support and mentoring for all aspects of their lives. He has created the Office of Student Support at the faculty where students come and discuss issues ranging from academic through emotional to financial. The office opens at 6am.

“Some of our students are desperate because they haven’t received their bursaries or they aren’t coping academically. Some simply don’t have food or they have personal problems or they don’t have medical insurance,” says Wadee, who has in-depth knowledge of student issues, having served as the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs for 19 years.

Regarding the government’s proposed national health insurance scheme, he says: “I am in favour of it because it focuses on primary health care and rural medicine. We will play a large role in supporting the system.”

Wadee says it will take a while to work out the economic details of the scheme. “We have a focus group looking at primary healthcare delivery and how we can contribute. The minister has promised to start putting steps in place so that we can move forward, but we are still waiting for this to happen.”

Fortunately he does not have to wait for anyone to drive his vision in his first year as Dean. “It’s a very exciting time and I’m looking forward to this year.”

On a personal note he is looking forward to his daughter completing her MMed in TB at Wits. “I am very proud of her and my aim is to one day publish a paper together, authored by Wadee & Wadee.”

WITSReview 27

treasure trove of history, tradition & fond memories

P byTPeter 00 WITSReview W SReMaher viiew 0hotos 0 WI

January 2012

Heritage

Many alumni will have fond memories of Sunnyside if they were fortunate enough to live in the premier and oldest women’s residence on East Campus as undergraduates. Sunnyside Residence has been a second home for thousands of women students since 1929. Its traditional style of architecture has always been held in affectionate regard and a sense of community fostered by a succession of strong leaders.

By Katherine Munro Transvaal colonial for ‘new girls’ hostel’

A

rchitect Frank Emley, of the firm Cowin & Powers, designed the “proposed New Girls’ Hostel” in 1928. Its architectural style is Transvaal colonial, redolent of Herbert Baker, with its terracotta-tiled roof, generous proportions, rectangular shape, garden quadrangle below a wide balustrade verandah, and arched windows. The fittings, masonry and woodwork reflect detailed artistry. The panelled dining room (now a study area) is the heart of the residence, capturing purpose and community.

Emley’s distinctive rusticated style, featuring arched, small-paned, recessed Palladian windows, prevails.

Genuine Burmese teak was used throughout.

January 2012

The original H shape design positioned the dining hall facing north, fronted by a wide terrace-style verandah with arched columns on the ground floor.

A gracious double stairway led down to the lower ground floor and the semi-enclosed garden to the north, with its delightful semi-circular fountain.

The husband of Dean Erica Biesheuvel (1943-1963), Dr Simon Biesheuvel, laid out the gardens and the lower terrace on the northern side of the fenced garden was known as “the Biesheuvel Terrace.”

The main entrance, with an arched, glassed, panelled door above a set of now well-worn steps, faces west.

Wide corridors were ideal for displaying the annual group photos of the residents and house committees, helping establish traditions.

WITSReview 29

Sunnyside

The most appealing feature of Sunnyside is T iits wonderful garden overlooked by a wide verandah where students are served tea and buffet lunches when the weather is fine.

The wrought iron, well-proportioned staircases and the delicate balconies added further grace and charm.

garden overlooked by a wide verandah where students are served tea and buffet lunches when the weather is fine.”

The original roof was covered in beautiful terracotta Roman tiles (some are still visible on parapets), which were ill-advisedly removed in the 1980s or 1990s and replaced with concrete tiles coloured to look like terracotta.

Sunnyside has earned the title “the grand old lady” of residences not because it is the oldest, but because it has always had the reputation of being a traditional residence exclusively for the young women students of Wits.

The west wing was completed first. Emley and Fred Williamson, in association with Cowin & Powers were the architects of the east wing, completed in 1931.

Sunnyside has always been a close-knit community of women and, although subject to debate at different times, the view is that it should remain a single-sex residence, as are Jubilee, Girton, Medhurst and Reith residences.

‘The Grand Old Lady’ - for ladies only Architects Professor Geoffrey Pearce - head of the Wits architectural department - and Aneck Hahn enhanced the original residence in 1953. They extended the building to the north, east and south and by 1979 Sunnyside - then 50 years old - was home to 154 students whose residence fees were set at R1 050 per annum, excluding laundry.

A 1979 Wits residences pamphlet comments: “The most appealing feature of Sunnyside is its wonderful

30 WITSReview

Accommodating students from other parts of Africa (“Kenya, the Rhodesias, Portuguese East Africa”) was initially the focus, so girls from Johannesburg were accepted only in exceptional circumstances.

What’s in a name?

‘Isabel Dalrymple House’ was the original name of Sunnyside, named for Council Chairman Sir William Dalrymple’s wife who in the 1920s and 1930s took a great interest in the wellbeing of Sunnyside

January 2012

Heritage

residents. The sobriquet ‘Sunnyside’ was an informal d the h name was only l formalised f li d in i 1983.

1983 The Th one and origin of the name ‘Sunnyside’ has a deeper history, which reveals Wits’ connection to the Sunnyside Park Hotel.

Sunnyside was the name of Lord Milner’s house in Parktown, now the Sunnyside Park Hotel. Wits first used the hotel as a men’s residence from 1912.

During World War I, it was a convalescent home for returned soldiers. In the 1920s, it became the women’s residence when the men moved back onto East Campus into Dalrymple House.

The original planning of East Campus residences included men and women. Hostels were among the first structures approved. Construction of the student residences began in 1920 and male students occupied College House the following year. Dalrymple House admitted its first female students in 1922.

The first Dean of women students was Margaret Ballinger (who later became the doughty and distinguished MP and a founder of the Liberal Party), but with the Principal, Prof. Jan Hofmeyr and his puri-

January 2012

tanical and controlling mother taking up temporary id i College C ll H h was an inevitable i i bl residence in House, there personality clash. Mrs Hofmeyr expected the young women to remain invisible to the men of College House and issued a directive that the women close their curtains while dressing so the men could not see them. Ballinger retorted, “And what about the men doing the same?”

The Hofmeyrs prevailed and the women students relocated to Parktown. Dalrymple House became a second men’s residence during construction of the new women’s residence. In 1929, the year that Sunnyside was sold for £8 500, according to a handwritten archive note.

In 1930, 40 girls and the Dean, Miss Swansbourne moved into the half-completed Isabel Dalrymple House, which accommodated 70 students on completion in 1935.

The enduring popularity of Dalr ymple as a “superior” residence and an increase in the number of students at Wits demanded an increase in the number of beds. In 1937, with Dalrymple House

WITSReview 31

Sunnyside

full, annexes in Braamfontein served as additional women’s rooms. Phineas Court and Marmer Court, the latter of which stood on the corner of Bertha and Jorissen Streets, was known as “The Colony.”

The girls wore long dresses in the evening and had to hike across a campus “which resembled a wattle plantation” to dine in style at Sunnyside.

An explosion in a German-owned shop opposite the annexe in 1940 caused the Dean, Mrs Nichols to panic and move the girls back to Dalrymple House, into very crowded rooms, “like sardines in a can.”

By 1946, temporary huts were erected close to Dalrymple House (where the Umthombo building stands today) as an annexe for 37 second-year students under the popular Assistant Dean, Heather Martienssen.

In 1953, the new wing was completed and the number of students increased from 120 to 160.

Success through leadership Sunnyside’s success is due in no small measure to a succession of strong Deans, later called Wardens and now Hall Coordinators. There have been relatively

32 WITSReview

few Deans (all remained in office for many years) and their names are synonymous with Sunnyside history: Margaret Ballinger, M. Swansbourne (19241937), Pratt Nichols (1937-1943), Erica Biesheuvel (1943-1963), Thelma Henderson (1963-1975) and Shirley Irish (1975-1996).

Mrs Henderson contributed significantly to the planning of Jubilee Hall, built in 1972-1974 and named for the University’s 50th jubilee. Mrs Henderson had the distinction of being the youngest Dean.

A plaque commemorates Shirley Irish, formerly an English teacher at Parktown Girls’ High, who remained in office for two decades.

Sunnyside attracted a special breed of Deans who were academic and social leaders and who shaped the girls to be proud and worthy graduates and citizens. That tradition continues.

The strength of Sunnyside rested upon its appearance, varied accommodation and strong community spirit A sense of community has always been at the core of Sunnyside. During the war, the residents began

January 2012

Heritage

a night school, teaching the “native staff” of Wits. its. ater The SRC and the Students’ Medical Council later promoted this initiative. onal During apartheid, Wits had to comply with national ates: legislation and the 1979 residence brochure states: reas “It is regretted that, in terms of the Group Areas Act, residential accommodation on campus has not side yet been approved for all races.” Many Sunnyside pirit girls imbued with a liberal and humanitarian spirit participated in protests and demonstrations in the 1970s and 80s. rew I recall too that in the 1970s Sunnyside drew feminists from across the campus to discuss the state nt at of female academic and support staff employment rmuWits. We gathered our facts, investigated and formulated our belief in a fairer society (childcare for staff ities members, better maternity leave, more opportunities yside for women). The feminist lobby met in the Sunnyside common room and was instrumental in formingg the Administrative and Library Staff Association. w the After 1996, the reorganisation of residences saw ster warden position abandoned in favour of ‘cluster nise manager of East Campus residences’. Denise 011.

Hooper-Box filled this position from 1996 to 2011.

She holds Sunnyside in affectionate regard and ohn recalls the November 2007 visit of US Senator John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry, who had nt in been a student at Wits and a Sunnyside resident the 1950s. “There was an excitement in finding her om.” photograph on the wall and their visit to her room.”

A revitalized and modern Sunnyside accommodating more than 200 women is set to serve Wits into the 21st century.

-old The new four-storey wing of the now 82-year-old d on Sunnyside Residence opens in 2012. Positioned an east-west orientation on University Drive, the

January 2012

WITSReview 33

Sunnyside

awkward, rocky slope of the land challenged the creativity of architect Henry Paine, but the style and design respects heritage and tradition, with seven interior columns in the reception area.

Extending life

The new building extends over four floors (the old building is on three floors) but the line of the roofs remains constant due to the reduction in floor to ceiling height in the new building. The new wing will accommodate an additional 96 first-year students in 30 double rooms and 29 single rooms, including eigh rooms for people with disabilities. eight Sun Sunnyside is an important example of the architectur heritage of the 1920s. The quality of the tural ori original materials used and the skilled craftmanship dem demand preservation and celebration. It is a building tha reflects, too, the breaking of boundaries when that fem students were welcomed in the largely male female bas bastions of academe but needed a quality home from hom Renovations over the decades have reflected home. and respected the building’s heritage, as do the latest add additions.

Rob Sharman, director of Residence Life, commented: “The ‘grand old lady’ has not aged well in all respects. After 80 years, some of the plumbing and electricity had deteriorated and replacing the original roof resulted in recurrent leaks. It became our dream to renovate the old building…to restore spaces to their original purpose and to create an entire new wing.”

A thorough heritage impact study by Dr Johann Bruwer and Paine shaped early planning. Paine commented: “It has been our intention to keep the axial [rather than symmetrical] relationship from the old building to the new, with linking corridors at ground and first floor level, and courtyards separating the new from the old.”

34 WITSReview

r A revitalized and modern Sunnyside accommodating more than 200 women is set to serve Wits into the 21st century. With a proud history of lives well lived during formative years, Sunnyside Residence anticipates the future with curiosity, community awareness and confidence.

Katherine Munro is an Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Town Planning.

References: Thanks to Prof. Paul Kotze and Henry Paine for comments on an earlier draft. Interviews with Robert Sharman, Henry Paine, Kathy Cannell, Denise Hooper-Box. Bruce K Murray: Wits: The Early Years (Wits University Press, 1982). Bruce K Murray: Wits: The ‘Open’ Years (Wits University Press, 1997). Johann Bruwer and Henry Paine: Heritage Assessment in Support of Permit Application … Additions and Alterations to Sunnyside Hall of Residence, East Campus, May 2010. Wits Archives – two files on Sunnyside with reports from past deans; working document of I Isaacson, Deputy Librarian, on the residences. Juliet Marais Louw: When Johannesburg and I Were Young (Amagi Books, 1991)

January 2012

1b.

2.

3.

4.

5.

7.

8.

35

January 2012 6.

t h e Alumni with edge

1a.

Alumni with the edge

1. An invention that uses a cell phone to measure the oxygen content in blood and thereby predict pre-eclampsia - the leading cause of maternal mortality - won Dr Mark Ansermino (MBBCh 1985, MMed 1993) and Peter von Dadelszen $250 000 in seed funding in the “Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development” global competition in Washington, DC, in July 2011. These scientists from the University of British Columbia, Canada, responded to the call for “transformative ideas that have the potential to save the lives of mothers and newborns in rural settings around the time of birth”.

The challenge is run by USAID, the Norwegian government, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada and The World Bank.

The team’s “phone oximeter” was one of 19 winning innovations out of some 680 entries. The phone oximeter combines pulse oximetry - the transmission of light waves through a mother’s finger to determine blood oxygen levels - with software that can be downloaded into a cell phone. The innovation puts a diagnostic tool previously only available in hospitals literally in the hands of community healthcare workers. About 150 000 mothers and 10 times more babies die annually in the developing world in the three days surrounding childbirth.

2. The Royal Society of Canada (RSC) inducted Wits benefactor Dr Ian Jordaan (BSc Eng Civil 1960, MSc Eng 1965) as a Fellow of its Academy of Science at a ceremony in Ottawa in November 2011.

The fellowship recognises Jordaan’s distinguished engineering, research and learning contributions to designing off-shore structures in harsh environments.

Jordaan, who pioneered the risk-based approach to

36 WITSReview

offshore engineering and estimation of structural loads caused by ice, will enter the RSC’s Division of Applied Science and Engineering. The RSC is a national body of distinguished Canadian scholars, which promotes learning and research. Peers select the Fellows.

3. The Texas Academy of Family Physicians (TAFP) honoured Dr Jonathan MacClements (MBBCh 1989) with the 2011 TAFP Exemplary Teaching Award at the Academy’s annual assembly in Dallas on 30 July 2011. The award recognises individuals with outstanding teaching skills and those who have developed and implemented innovative teaching models. MacClements teaches family medicine in the University of Texas Health Science Centre.

4. Texan law firm Bell Nunnally & Martin LLP appointed Karen-Lee Pollak (BA 1990, LLB 1993) as a partner and head of the firm’s immigration practice from 31 October 2011. Pollak provides business immigration advice to clients that is informed by her own experience as an immigrant, her knowledge of the challenges of global migration and its necessity in the 21st century workplace. Pollak is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Dallas Bar Association, the Texas Women Lawyers Association, and both the Texas and California bar associations. Texas Monthly magazine selected her as its “Rising Star” in 2009.

5. The former legal head of the 2010 World Cup local organising committee and then Chief Executive of the South African Football Association (SAFA), Leslie Sedibe (BA 1994, LLB 1996, LLM 2005) took the reins as Chief Executive of Proudly South

January 2012

umni with the edge Alumni

Africa on 1 September 2011. He replaced acting CEO Herbert Mkhize. An attorney specialising in entertainment law, Sedibe joined EMI after serving articles and administered the careers of stars including Brenda Fassie.

6. The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) awarded its Science-for-Society Gold Medal to Ad Hominem Professor in the Wits Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department, Helen Rees, on 13 October 2011. The award recognises outstanding scientific thinking in the service of society. Rees established the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute, of which she is executive director, in 1994. Recognised internationally for sustained research and innovation in the field of women’s reproductive health and HIV, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections specifically, she chairs the World Health Organisation’s strategic group of experts on immunisation and is on the board of the international AIDS Vaccine Initiative. She chairs the Follow-on African Consortium for Tenofovir Studies (FACTS), established to conduct clinical studies to determine whether tenofovir gel is safe and effective in protecting women from HIV and the herpes simplex virus.

7. The Forum of University Nursing Deans of South Africa (FUNDISA) inducted Professor Laetitia Rispel (MSc Med 1991, PhD Med 1998), an Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Health Policy, into the Hall of Fame for Nurse Researchers in South Africa, in August 2011. FUNDISA, which provides a platform to pursue excellence in nursing scholarship in higher education, recognised Rispel for her research into health policy and health systems. The principal investigator in the Research on the State

January 2012

of Nursing (RESON) research programme or Health at the Wits Centre for used on Policy, Rispel has focused sation” nursing policy, “casualisation” ursing (flexitime), agency nursing ursing and moonlighting, nursing management and quality of care. She pioneered health policy research beforee democratisation and iss ut a recognised throughout lth policy li and d syssouthern Africa as a health tems expert. She is President of the Public Health Association of South Africa.

8. A Professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Dr Bonny Norton (BA, PDE 1978, BA Hons 1983) won the 2010 Second Language Leadership through Research Award (senior category) for sustained contributions to the field of second language research. Norton’s research evolved from groundbreaking work on identity, investment and language learning in 1995 and her recent book series, Critical Language and Literacy Studies (Multilingual Matters, 2010). Nominating scholars wrote that Norton’s publications, of which there are more than 100, had “changed the face of second language research” and had developed “a new paradigm of language learning research around conceptions of imagined identities”. Norton is also a visiting professor in the Wits School of Education.

WITSReview 37

Top 200 Young South Africans

get their just desserts

The Alumni Relations office hosted a luncheon at Hofmeyr House, East Campus, on Thursday 20 October 2011 to acknowledge the 17 Witsies featured in the Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans to Take to Lunch feature. Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic, Professor Yunus Ballim (BSc Eng Civil 1981, MSc Eng Civil 1983, PhD Civil 1994) paid tribute to the 10 recipients in attendance.

He commented that, while their inclusion in the list of leading young South Africans was a credit to them and their Alma Mater, the recipients also had a responsibility to nurture young talent in future for the betterment of the country. The following alumni featured in the Top 200 list:

38 WITSReview

January 2012

Top 200 Young South Africans

Nat Ramabulana

ARTS & CULTURE Actor Nat Ramabulana (BA DA 2008) won the Richard Haines Prize at Wits for drama in 2008.

Twice nominated for Naledi Awards, Ramabulana won in 2010 for “best performance by an actor in a supporting role” in Master Harold and the Boys. He was nominated for his role in The Girl in the Yellow Dress (2010). The play he co-produced and in which he co-starred with fellow Witsie Atandwa Kani (BA DA 2008), Hayani (2009), was critically acclaimed at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival. Ramabulana’s television credentials include roles in Askies, Isidingo and Wild at Heart. Film performances include Blood Diamond (2008), Jerusalema (2008) and The Bang Bang Club (2009).

BUSINESS & LAW Chief Executive of Channel Islam International Holdings (CII) Hamza Farooqui (BCom 2008) embarked on his first entrepreneurial venture aged 12; the creation of iCricketer.com, a website reflecting real-time cricket news. Within six years, the site had recorded millions of hits and content was syndicated worldwide. Farooqui co-founded CII Holdings at 18. CII focuses on Islamic satellite radio, Islamic

January 2012

Hamza Farooqui

Zukie Siyotula

financial services and property development. In 2010, CII launched Cape Town’s first liquor-free hotel, now within the Hilton Group. Farooqui was MD of Worldspace Satellite Radio (SA) in 2008. He counts weathering the insolvency of its parent company with the former chairman as his most rewarding experience.

Chartered accountant Zukie Siyotula (BAcc 2006) is a businesswoman, change-maker and future leader.

She heads franchise development and Umbono distribution in the retail mass market at Old Mutual.

Siyotula believes excellence is the best defence against bigotry and the daily application of this attitude has earned her accolades. She won the Association of Black Securities and Investment Professionals emerging talent award in 2009. In 2010, Destiny magazine included her in its list of Top 40 Women under 40 and the exclusive African Leadership Network invited her to become a member.

Attorney Stuart Wilson (LLB 2009) is a visiting senior Fellow and part-time lecturer in the Wits School of Law. He also holds a qualification from Oxford University. Wilson is the director of litigation at the Socioeconomic Rights Institute of South

WITSReview 39

Top 200 Young South Africans

Stuart Wilson

James Donald

Africa (Seri), which he co-founded. Seri provides legal services to community-based organisations and campaigns for improved policies and practices for the indigent. Wilson recently won a case that enabled 450 homeless people to move out of an unsafe building into affordable accommodation.

CIVIL SOCIETY A Clinton Democracy Fellow in 2002 and Wits SRC President in 2003, James Donald (BA 2003) is now the director of programmes for Grassroots Soccer. This non-profit, volunteer-driven programme uses soccer to teach children about HIV prevention. In 2008, Donald helped establish the curriculum for Grassroots Soccer and launch the Khayelitsha Football for Hope Centre. Today he organises national programmes that community coaches implement, thereby encouraging some 50 000 children to make healthier lifestyle choices.

Natasha Vally (BSc 2007, BSc Hons 2008, MA 2011) is a project manager at the Soul City Institute for Health & Development Communication, a non-profit organisation that “edutains” – communicates health-related messages through entertainment media.

Vally’s passion for human rights and social justice

40 WITSReview

Natasha Vally

emerged at Wits, where she founded the Palestine Solidarity Committee. In 2010, she was involved in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Working Group, a non-profit organisation that works to boycott Israel internationally. She has also worked at the Freedom of Expression Institute and for the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project.

EDUCATION A medical epidemiologist in the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Research Unit and an honorary lecturer in the Wits School of Public Health, Braimoh Bello (MSc Med 2005) is also a motivational speaker, author and poet. He is a mentor at Beyond Tomorrow, an organisation he established to assist high school and postgraduate students achieve academic excellence.

He runs workshops and visits schools countrywide to motivate and support learners in meeting educational challenges. His book, Beyond Tomorrow: Fundamental Principles for Achieving Academic Excellence, is part of this initiative.

A PhD Fellow in the Wits Developmental Pathways to Health Research Unit, Julia De Kadt founded the Durban branch of IkamavaYouth, an organisation that helps learners pass matric. De Kadt’s work at

January 2012

Top 200 Young South Africans

Braimoh Bello

Julia De Kadt

IkamavaYouth reflects her fascination with learning and policies that shape human well-being. Similarly, her PhD focuses on learner mobility and explores the daily commute of South African schoolchildren in pursuit of accessible, affordable and quality education.

De Kadt holds a degree in brain and cognitive sciences from MIT, and a Masters in politics and public policy from Princeton.

Sizwe Nxumalo is a postgraduate student in the Wits School of Economic and Business Sciences.

He is passionate about increasing access to quality education in South Africa. Since 2009, Nxumalo has been involved in enke:Make Your Mark, an initiative to build the leadership capacity of young South Africans. In 2010, he recruited Wits students to tutor learners in Katlehong informal settlement during the teachers’ strike. He previously facilitated the Grow Your Business programme, through which informal traders learn entrepreneurial skills. He heads tutoring at the Phumlani Nkontwana Foundation, which aims to sustain the academic excellence of exemplary schools in disadvantaged communities, and he is an ambassador for One Young World, the global forum for youngsters of leadership calibre.

January 2012

Sizwe Nxumalo

Shaheen Seedat (BEcSci Hons 2010) works to see more youth gain access to education. He heads volunteerism at the Wits Student Equity and Talent Management Unit and is involved in the University’s Targeting Talent programme, which recruits learners with potential from disadvantaged high schools and puts them through a programme to prepare them for university. Seedat’s own academic achievements are exemplary. He broke records in the Wits School of Economics and Business Sciences by scoring the highest results in the School in the past 30 years and won the Chancellor’s gold medal for the most distinguished graduate. He is a Mandela Rhodes Scholar currently reading for a doctorate of philosophy degree in economic science at Oxford University.

ENVIRONMENT Claire Janisch (BSc Eng Chem 1996) is one of the first crop of graduates from the US-based Biomimicry Institute. Biomimicry refers to adopting the strategies, models and processes used by the 30-million species in nature, to address human problems that threaten sustainability. Janisch established Biomimicry SA, a network of professionals - from biologists and engineers to designers and sustainability specialists - who consult

WITSReview 41

Research unusual

Claire Janisch

and educate on the efficacy of biomimicry. She also helps run the Genius Lab, a facility that helps children understand the interdisciplinary connections biomimicry is based upon and which educates business people about alternative approaches to problem solving.

Lee Swan (BSc TRP 2003) is a sustainability and climate change consultant at Deloitte, where she helps companies find ways to incorporate sustainability into their business strategies. Swan is also the first African-born woman to compete in the gruelling Polar Race, which entails trekking through the North Pole on skis and on foot, towing an 80kg sledge. Raising awareness about climate change and the need for sustainable living motivated Swan to complete the race. She also raised funds for local charities involved in developing maths and science in schools. Swan holds a Masters degree in development economics and sustainability from the University of Reading.

HEALTH Melissa Meyer is the project coordinator of the HIV/Aids and the Media Project run under the auspices of the Wits Journalism Department and the Anova Health Institute. Meyer works to sustain media coverage of HIV/Aids at a time when the epidemic remains

42 WITSReview

Lee Swan

Zeenat Adam

prolific but media coverage is waning. She maintains the website journAids, which encourages health journalists to provide consistent, critical, informed and accurate HIV/Aids coverage, and she influences storylines on local soap operas to incorporate HIV messaging. She co-authored The Politics of Aids Denialism: South Africa’s Failure to Respond, a book emanating from her Masters research. She holds qualifications in politics and journalism from the University of Johannesburg and in graphic design from AAA School of Advertising.

POLITICS Zeenat Adam (BA, BA Hons 1999, MA 2003) is the diplomacy director in the Department of International Relations and Cooperation. In this capacity, she provides direction on the political dynamics in Sudan, Somalia, Madagascar and countries in East Africa and facilitates South Africa’s relations with these territories.

After graduating from Wits with a Masters degree in International Relations, she served as South Africa’s Deputy Ambassador to Qatar from 2005 to 2009. She has participated in the World Conference against Racism and in the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

She was invited to attend the International Youth Conference in Iraq and was selected for participation

January 2012

Top 200 Young South Africans

Bruce Spottiswoode

Rebecca Kahn

in the United Nations Leadership Programme in Jordan. She monitored the elections in Palestine and the referendum in Juba, South Sudan.

Themba Masondo (BA 2008, BA Hons 2009, MA 2010) is Chairman of the Gauteng chapter of the South African Students’ Congress. The Society, Work and Development Institute at Wits appointed the former SRC President as the team leader for a Congresss of South African Trade Unions survey in Gauteng in 2008. Passionate about working-class struggles, Masondo recently led a march of 300 students to the Ministry of Higher Education to demand free education. An astute academic, Masondo achieved first class passes for his undergraduate and Honours degrees. In 2010, the International Centre for Development and Decent Work awarded him a scholarship funded by the German Academic Exchange Service, to pursue a PhD.

capabilities range from measuring chemicals in the brain to assessing the effect of HIV on the brain at different stages. Spottiswoode oversees the scanner and the research it enables, which contributes to insight and better treatment. He is also an accomplished mountaineer, having scaled Mt Kenya (5199m) and Tupungato (6550m) in Chile.

Rebecca Kahn (MA 2009) spent six years as a Johannesburg-based writer and editor focusing on youth and digital culture. She is now a student at King’s College, London, pursuing a Masters in digital humanities. Her research focuses on how national libraries in transitional societies like South Africa go about digitising their archives, and how this will affect the national identity. As a community manager for Peer2Peer University, Kahn aims to make information and education accessible.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Biomedical engineer Bruce Spottiswoode (BSc Eng Elec 1999, GDE Elec 2001) directs a medical imaging research facility that finds ways to scan the brain to assess diseases. This Cape Universities Brain Imaging Centre houses the only magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner of its kind in Africa. The scanner’s

January 2012

WITSReview 43

44 WITSReview

January 2012

t Alumni with hewriting edge^

Alumni with the writing edge

POETRY

MEMOIR

Talking to a Tree: Poems of a Fragile World,

by AE Ballakisten

The Swordmaster’s Apprentice, by Edward Burke

Athol Williams (BSc Eng Mech 1992) again writes as AE Ballakisten in Talking to a Tree: Poems of a Fragile World in this his second anthology since Heap of Stones. Formerly a strategy consultant in the United States, Williams is an Adjunct Professor in the Wits School of Public and Development Management. He serves on the advisory board of the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Wits Business School, and on the board of Wits Enterprise. Talking to a Tree, through the poems, explores the state of humanity and asks the question: “Is this really how we want to live?”

The poems reveal themes of conflict, abuse, decay and deception, reflecting the poet’s fear that we are rapidly eroding our humanity and threatening our already fragile world. He dedicates his anthology to Nelson Mandela, and its central hope is a return to a common humanity through the power of love. As an engineering student at Wits in the 1990s, Williams published poetry in the University publications Wits Student and Sex. He has since also published poetry in the United States and the UK.

January 2012

An anthropologist turned corporate consultant, Edward Burke (BA 1993, MA 1998) has practised martial arts since childhood and at Wits trained in the Old Mutual Sports Hall. He holds black belts in karate and aikido. Burke’s memoir recounts his quest for self-discovery through the fighting arts. He escapes the excesses of London during the boom and sets off to learn from some of the greatest martial arts masters. His journey traverses the academy of Bruce Lee’s most famous student, a Japanese dojo, ancient Buddhist temples and a scorching ‘capoeira roda’ (a martial art/dance form) in Brazil. Burke’s greatest challenge will be his time training as the live-in student of a legendary Japanese swordsman, Zen monk and aikido master. In the intensity of training and the formidable presence of his master, Burke seeks purpose. The Swordmaster’s Apprentice (Penguin Books, 2011) “is the joyful tale of a year of pain, suffering and menial labour, undertaken for the love of movement and the privilege of learning from the masters.”

Or: “How a broken nose, a shaman, and a little light dusting may point the way to enlightenment.”

WITSReview 45

Alumni with the writing edge

NON-FICTION

BIOGRAPHY

In Township Tonight! Three Centuries of South African Black Music and Theatre, by David Coplan

Battle Scarred: Hidden Costs of the Border War,

by Anthony Feinstein

Wits benefactor David Coplan (PhD Arts 1980), Professor and Chair in Social Anthropology at Wits has been researching SA performing arts for 35 years.

Black popular culture was a dynamic, inspiring force to people living in Soweto and Sharpeville, against the harsh reality of apartheid. This culture, which produced artists of international repute including Abdullah Ibrahim, Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela, has a long and complex history which In Township Tonight! (Jacana and Chicago, 2007) explores. From slave orchestras and penny whistlers through vaudeville acts and the first jazz bands, to mineworker gumboot dances and the first all-black musicals, this book examines the socio-economic and political landscape within which this vibrant culture thrived. This edition includes a revised introduction reflecting on recent developments in black music and theatre, updates cultural events and trends, and offers a new conclusion. “No great city attains its distinctive character without the work of its popular artists … and Johannesburg’s has been forged in the face of great obstacles,” Coplan said in a related lecture at the Origins Centre in August 2011.

Battle Scarred: Hidden Costs of the Border War (Tafelberg, 2011) is a war memoir by Wits benefactor Dr Anthony Feinstein (MBBCh 1980), Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and the 2001 Guggenheim Fellow endowed to study mental health issues in post-apartheid Namibia. In 1982, the SADF conscripted Feinstein to its psychiatric unit to treat “bossies” (“bush-whacked”) soldiers during the war involving South Africa, Namibia and Angola (1966 1989). As a young doctor with just weeks’ specialised training, Feinstein treats soldiers with war-induced psychosis, in a largely hostile environment. He encounters severe mental illnesses - schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder - and combat-related emotional problems; his first patients talk to the stars and claim to be Jesus. Later dispatched to the largest military base in the war zone to screen troops for post-traumatic stress disorder, he witnesses a world of alcoholism, family violence and venereal disease.

Battle Scarred, also available in Afrikaans (Kopwond), “demands to be read, not only by the thousands of ex-soldiers still carrying the invisible scars, but by all South Africans.”

46 WITSReview

January 2012

Alumni with the writing edge

AUTOBIOGRAPHY Of Exile and Music: A Twentieth Century Life,

by Eva Mayer Schay Of Exile and Music (Purdue University Press, 2010) is the autobiography of Wits benefactor and violinist Eva Mayer (née Schay) (BMus 1956). The story recounts a life in exile that begins with Mayer’s birth in Germany and an idyllic childhood in Mallorca, where her parents emigrated to escape Nazism.

Repatriated to Germany after the Spanish Civil War and made to choose between Italy and a concentration camp, the family departed to Italy but then fled to South Africa prior to Italy’s implementation of race laws. During World War II, Mayer’s parents were classified as “enemy aliens” and the family endured considerable hardship. Themes of “a stubborn stand against racism” and “the transcendental power of music” recur throughout the book. In 1950, Mayer won a Chamber of Mines scholarship to study music at Wits. The University endowed Mayer with the Melanie Pollack Scholarship in Music to pursue postgraduate studies in England.

Apartheid and the Sharpeville riots prompted her final emigration to England in 1961. She married in 1967 and joined what became the English National Opera, where she remained for almost 30 years.

January 2012

Bio-tweeting Witsies lauded at synthetic biology World Championships A team of Witsies came second out of 65 in the European semi-finals of the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) held in Amsterdam in October. The team advanced to the World Championships in Massachusetts in November with their “bio-tweet” technology and finished in the top 16 out of 180 teams from 22 countries. iGEM is a synthetic biology competition, which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) hosts annually for universities worldwide. Synthetic biology refers to biological ‘machines’ designed according to engineering principles but made from biological components (DNA, proteins). iGEM requires teams to build and test these machines.

Rivalry is fierce as students from eminent universities including Harvard and Cambridge compete.

Fifty teams from 17 countries competed in the European jamboree. The Wits team included Ezio Fok (BSc 2011), Gloria Hlongwane (BSc 2011), Natasia Kruger (BSc 2011), Bradley Marques (BEngSci 2010), Sasha Reznichenko, and partners from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

Bio-tweet is a bacterial communication network that imitates social networks to enable the rapid integration and exchange of information. Bio-tweet won a gold medal and two of ten prizes in the regional jamboree and World Championship judges lauded it as “exemplary”.

WITSReview 47

Alumni Achievers

P Patrick Deane EEducation as integrity D Patrick Deane was installed as President and ViceDr Chancellor of McMaster University, Canada, in November Ch 2010. He credits the influence of his Wits education as being 20 the catalyst for his becoming an academic administrator in th pursuit of “education as integrity”. pu

By Deborah Minors

B

orn in Johannesburg on 12 December 1956, 1 Patrick Deane (BA 1978, BA Hons 1979) matriculated from King Edward VII High School.

He read English and Legal Theory and Institutions at Wits from 1975 to 1978. It was at Wits during this politically volatile period in South Africa that Deane’s sense of “the link between learning and social justice” emerged.

“No one at Wits between 1975 and 1978 could fail to grasp the magnitude and complexity of the relationship between education and the social good,” the Wits benefactor told WITSReview shortly after his installation at McMaster in 2010. “And no one

48 WITSReview

privileged enough to be a student during those years should ever fail to discharge the responsibility settled upon them by the experience.”

In his inaugural speech at McMaster, Deane recounted his student years at Wits. He recalled the campus environment as “a hotbed for anti-apartheid activism” that was both exciting and confusing. His confusion stemmed from the fact that Wits was (apartheid) government-funded and existed under parliamentary statute, yet University academics – including the Vice-Chancellor, often in full academic regalia – were frequently a sympathetic presence at student protests.

January 2012

Alumni Achievers

“I have many vivid memories of this time, including one of Prof. Phillip Tobias … deftly slipping away through a cloud of tear gas, his billowing robe asserting in very stark contrast to the uniforms of rampaging riot police the elusive yet indomitable value of humane learning and scientific enquiry,” Deane said in his installation speech at McMaster.

He wondered in whose name the Vice-Chancellor wore that gown: from what source did the ViceChancellor derive his authority to criticise the state?

And students the right to object to prejudice? It was at the 1975 academic freedom lecture at Wits that the penny finally dropped for Deane.

Legal philosopher and constitutional scholar Ronald Dworkin delivered the address. The Chair of Jurisprudence at Oxford, Dworkin established his reputation as a critic of “legal positivism” the doctrine that denies any inherent connection between the validity of law and ethics or morality.

He proposed the notion of “law as integrity”, which an impressionable Deane interpreted as there absolutely being a connection between law and morality.

Deane reasoned that Dworkin’s “law as integrity” demonstrated that the University’s authority derived not from “the monolithic state as temporarily constituted by partisan politicians, but from society”.

The Vice-Chancellor asserted an authority derived from values that transcended the state itself, Deane concluded.

“My Wits education, I often note, was profound in its effect on me, and is unquestionably the reason I became first an academic and subsequently an academic administrator,” he told WITSReview.

January 2012

Deane took his concept of “education as integrity” with him when he emigrated to Canada in 1978.

He earned a Masters (1980) and PhD (1985) in English literature at the University of Western Ontario and began his academic career at the University of Toronto. He returned to Western to join the English department in 1988, the year he won the John Charles Polanyi Prize for Literature. He took the Chair less than a decade later.

The turn of the century saw Deane at the University of Winnipeg, where he acted as President and ViceChancellor in 2003/4 and served as Vice-President (Academic) until 2005. He assumed the same post at Queen’s University prior to his appointment at McMaster in 2010.

“Education as integrity reminds us that this is an activity of the highest order, that it should be available to all and should act for the betterment of all,” Deane told graduates at his installation. Wearing his own academic regalia, he concluded: “The gown is a gift of the McMaster University Alumni Association, and I am very proud and grateful to receive it. I am even more proud when I reflect on what the gift means: that our graduates now at work in the world maintain their investment in their university; that they have an interest in its leadership; and that they understand the extent to which the work of the university must be integrated with … their hopes and the constructive aspirations of our society at large.”

WITSReview 49

Alumni Achievers

Percy Tucker (Compu)Ticket to ride Percy Tucker (BCom 1950) was the first person to develop computerised ticket reservations. He created Computicket in 1971, revolutionising the marketing of entertainment worldwide.

By Heather Dugmore

I

t takes a brilliant mind to have recognised the dawning of information technology and to have foreseen its application. IT was Tucker’s ticket to the world of theatre and entertainment, which had captivated him from age seven when he first entered a theatre and heard Gracie Fields sing.

It was clear that young Percy would have to access the entertainment world some other way - which he did so successfully that his life has been a whirl of worldwide associations with celebrated producers, directors and performers. Two of his favourites are Marlene Dietrich and Margot Fonteyn.

“I remember the incident vividly,” he says. “The lights in the Criterion Theatre in Benoni dimmed and the orchestra struck up. The entrance of Gracie Fields is as vivid in my mind as if it was yesterday.

Tall, blonde and wearing a long blue dress that sparkled under the spotlight, she seemed to me to be the most glamorous of creatures. As her clear and resonant voice soared over the auditorium, I was filled with total happiness, and thus began my abiding love of the theatre. I have been starstruck and stagestruck ever since.”

“I realised the need for a centralised booking office and I had to find a way of providing it,” says Tucker, now 83 and living in Cape Town, where he keeps busy on performing arts committees and boards, including the Cape Town City Ballet board.

The problem was he couldn’t dance, act or sing. His one performance as ‘Bottom’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Benoni High School was not his finest.

50 WITSReview

He is patron of the Wits Best Director Award, the Naledi Awards and the Cape Town City Ballet awards. He writes, researches and lectures regularly.

His autobiography Just the Ticket! (Jonathan Ball, 1997), which documents more than 50 years in the South African entertainment industry, was a resounding success.

Tucker’s first professional theatrical business venture was a booking office called Show Service.

January 2012

Alumni Achievers

I never took no for an answer. Every time they said it couldn’t be done, my answer was that if it can be done manually, surely it can be done by your wonder machines.

It opened on 16 August 1954 at 100 Eloff Street, Johannesburg. The business grew exponentially over the next 17 years but Tucker was dissatisfied that the public had to do something he himself abhorred: queue.

“I knew there had to be a better way of doing things,” says Tucker. He started investigating computers in the 1960s. “No computerised reservation system existed in the world at that time.” Searching for a solution, he travelled worldwide and saw his first computer in Los Angeles in 1968.

In December 1970, he learnt of an abortive attempt in London to develop a computerised reservation system.

He left that night for the UK and within five weeks relocated the 12 top team members from the London venture to Johannesburg. They worked furiously on developing a localised computer programme that could sell tickets.

“I was a very hard taskmaster. I never took no for an answer. Every time they said it couldn’t be done, my answer was that if it can be done manually, surely it can be done by your wonder machines.”

In 1971, he found a company called Sigma Data that was willing to test the system on its IBM 360.

The world’s first computerised entertainment booking system was unveiled to the press on 11 June 1971. The

January 2012

story detailing the Benoni boy’s world- first space age scheme made the front page of The Star.

Tragically, that same night a drunken driver killed his father. “I will never know whether my father read the article in The Star. When I started Show Service he didn’t speak to me for a year, as he thought that with my chartered accountancy degree I should make more of myself than a ticket seller,” says Tucker.

Computicket went live and opened with four branches on 16 August 1971. That year, mall culture emerged and Hyde Park and Bryanston shopping centres opened. “Instead of paying the shopping centres rentals, we asked them to pay us rental as a magnet tenant,” Tucker recalls.

Anglo American bought Sigma Data in 1973 and Computicket moved to Anglo’s computer room - an entire block in Fox Street. In 1976, Computicket went onto the first minicomputer ever used in South Africa and relocated to its own premises in Marshall Street.

Computicket established itself as the brand name in ticket reservations. When Tucker retired in 1994, there were hundreds of Computicket terminals countrywide.

Computicket turned 40 last year and is now owned by Shoprite/Checkers.

Tucker has been honoured the world over for his contribution to the performing arts. Sunday Times columnist Robert Kirby wrote: “There is, in my opinion, no other single personality who has shown what true professionalism can be. I only have unqualified praise for that raw commodity these days: an honest and decent man, one whose sheer enthusiasm for the business has never wavered.”

WITSReview 51

Wits is

beautiful

Photo Essay images taken from the Facebook Page, Wits is Beautiful, by second year Mechanical Engineering student, Nikheil Singh.

52

January 2012

Photo Essay

Jan ar 2012 January

WITSReview 53

Wits is beautiful

54 WITSReview

January 2012

Photo Essayy

January 2012

WITSReview 55

Obituaries Ob O biitttua uarriies ua es

Wits University fondly remembers those who have passed away Bartels, Kathleen (1970-2011)

Beenhakker, Johlyne Crewe (1932-2011)

A contributing sub-editor to the WITSReview, Kathleen Bartels (BA Hons 2006) died in Johannesburg on 17 August 2011 after suffering cardiac arrest. She was 40. Born on 10 December 1970, the mother of two held a postgraduate degree in publishing studies from Wits. She co-managed Wordsmiths, a specialist writing and sub-editing company, with her father. A freelance sub-editor at The Star since 2004, Bartels was also an accomplished copywriter and editor. She edited, ghost-wrote and proofread various non-fiction publications.

Professor Johlyne Crewe Beenhakker (BSc 1954, PhD 1986) died on 4 September 2011, aged 79.

Beenhakker was born on 26 May 1932. She began teaching at Wits in the physiotherapy department in 1967, later becoming acting Head. She was Chair and Vice-Chair of the South African Society of Physiotherapy from 1981 to 1991 and edited the South African Journal of Physiotherapy for seven years.

In 1988, Wits established a prize in Beenhakker’s honour, awarded to the top-performing fourth-year physiotherapy student who achieves no less than 70%.

58 WITSReview

January 2012

Obituaries

Lissoos, Irving (1937-2011) Eskapa, Shirley Joan (née Barnett) (1934-2011) An eminent South African-born novelist, Shirley Joan Eskapa (BA 1963, BA Hons 1967) died in London of cardiac arrest on 17 August 2011, aged 77. Born in Johannesburg on 30 July 1934, Eskapa studied psychology and sociology at Wits.

She was a member of the Black Sash anti-apartheid movement, and she and her husband, Raymond (BCom 1953, BA Hons 1967) left South Africa in the 1960s after the secret police threatened her.

Eskapa wrote Blood Fugue (1981), about an interracial love affair in South Africa, and her novel The Secret Keeper (1982) was a smash hit. Her novel on marital infidelity, Woman versus Woman (1984), garnered international recognition and sparked worldwide debate, including an appearance by Eskapa on Oprah Winfrey’s show. The novel explores the dynamics between philandering husbands, betrayed wives and “the other woman”. Eskapa was happily married for 57 years. Her last novel, In a Naked Place (2008), about a headmistress whose daughter has died and who embarks on an affair, alludes to Eskapa’s personal experience of the death of her own daughter, who choked on a litchi and died in 1963, aged three.

January 2012

Urologist and Wits benefactor Dr Irving Lissoos (MBBCh 1960) died in Johannesburg on 30 July 2011, aged 74. Born in Johannesburg on 2 March 1937, Lissoos matriculated at King Edward School and then studied medicine at Wits. He pioneered kidney transplants in South Africa and served as secretary of the Urological Association of South Africa. He was in private practice for 38 years and at the time of his death was still practising at Milpark Hospital. A stalwart of the Jewish community, Lissoos was a founding member of the Victory Park Synagogue and formerly served the King David Schools and Jewish Board of Education. He lectured and wrote on topics of Jewish and general historical interest and delivered the keynote address at the opening of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies’ “Jewish Johannesburg 120” exhibition in 2007.

A passionate Joburger, Lissoos promoted his home town’s heritage as a tour guide for the Parktown Westcliff Heritage Trust and Soweto heritage tours.

A committed family man, he was married with five children and 11 grandchildren.

WITSReview 59

Obituaries

Olie, Marinus (1927-2011)

Price, Selwyn Lionel (1927-2011)

Dr Marinus Olie (MBBCh 1950) died suddenly in New Zealand on 8 May 2011, aged 84. Born on 13 February 1927, Olie furthered his Wits medical studies in England, where he qualified as a specialist physician and was ultimately made a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Olie returned to South Africa and studied tropical medicine and lung functions. He established a private practice in Vereeniging and devoted time to the Mines Medical Bureau and later the Mines Benefit Society Hospital in Johannesburg. He mentored Wits medical students at the JG Strydom Hospital and contributions at his memorial were donated to the Medical School. Olie was an ardent patron of the arts - theatre, opera, ballet and symphony concerts in particular and an accomplished violinist himself. He retired in 2001 to New Zealand, where he travelled extensively.

He was a devout Christian who was married for 56 years. He had two children, four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Selwyn Lionel Price (BSc Eng Civil 1949) died on 18 August 2011, aged 84. Price was born in Pretoria on 9 May 1927 and matriculated from Pretoria Boys’ High. The recipient of five municipal bursaries, he held a BSc degree from the University of Pretoria as well as a degree in civil engineering from Wits. In 1951, he was one of three South African students awarded a 15-week scholarship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he trained with 80 other scientists and engineers from around the world. On return to South Africa, Price worked on commercial projects including Sun City, the Polana Hotel in Maputo and, most recently, converting inner-city offices into flats in Gauteng. He retired in 2009. Price was a keen Rotarian and presided over the Johannesburg Main Reef Chapter. He received the Paul Harris award - the namesake award of Rotary’s founder - in 2004, for service to Rotary.

Price’s interests lay in literature, music, theatre, ballet and travel and he was a keen golf and squash player.

Block, Phyllis Ray (née Lonstein) (1925-2011) Phyllis Ray Block (née Lonstein) (BMus 1945), an accomplished musician and a music teacher for more than 50 years, died on 6 March 2011, aged 85. Born in Krugersdorp on 26 April 1925, Block joined the Krugersdorp and West Rand Symphony Society Orchestra in 1938, aged 13. The Wesrande Kunsvereeniging [West Rand arts association] awarded her a gold diploma for a violin solo (under 20-years-old) and she later became a first violinist. The Krugersdorp Municipality (Mogale City) awarded her two service medals, and she held teaching diplomas from the Trinity College of Music, London, for both the piano and violin. She previously led the Johannesburg Jewish Guild Orchestra.

Her son, Wits Professor David Block, her husband and daughter survive her.

60 WITSReview

January 2012

Obituaries

Ginwala, Alice Kekobad (1924-2011) Alice Kekobad Ginwala (BA 1944) died in Mumbai, India, on 8 May 2011 from Parkinson’s disease-related complications.

She was 87. Ginwala was born in Mumbai on 6 April 1924. The family relocated to South Africa to pursue educational opportunities and Ginwala read history at Wits. She married in 1946 and lived in New Maputo until 1978 before moving to England, where she volunteered in hospitals. Declining health caused by Parkinson’s disease prompted her return to India.

Schlemmer, Lawrence (1936-2011) Eminent sociologist and political analyst Lawrence Schlemmer died in Cape Town on 26 October 2011, aged 75. Born in Pretoria on 11 September 1936, Schlemmer studied sociology and social work at the University of Pretoria. His social work in the field exposed him to the complex dynamics governing South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. He then joined Wits to lecture sociology before joining what is now the University of KwaZulu-Natal. As professor and dean of social sciences, he established and ran the Centre for Social and Development Studies (CSDS). Schlemmer reportedly possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of South African sociology, politics, economics and anthropology, and his fascination with understanding this milieu drove him. His efforts to help unionise black workers won

January 2012

him the support of Mangosuthu Buthelezi (leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party from 1975), who asked Schlemmer to direct the Inkatha Institute.

Schlemmer’s association with Buthelezi made the sociologist a political target, however. Under death threat, Schlemmer left Durban after 20 years and returned to Joburg to chair the Centre for Policy Studies. Schlemmer’s various roles included founding member of the Academy of Science of South Africa, and President of the South African Political Studies Association and the Association for Sociology in Southern Africa. He was Vice-President of the Human Sciences Research Council and of the South African Institute of Race Relations. He was the strategy director of the Urban Foundation and director of survey company Markdata, and consulted to the Centre for Development and Enterprise. He was a research associate of the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute (Germany) and he authored or co-authored more than 300 publications and 15 books. He was married with two children and he enjoyed tinkering with old cars.

WitsReview relies on the Wits community to keep us informed of alumni deaths. To notify us about the recent death of a Wits alumnus, please e-mail alumni@wits.ac.za

WITSReview 61

At Wits End

TICKETSUPREMO “I was born in Benoni, where not only did I have my first Campari, it was BC (Before Charlize) and now BCC (Before Charlize and Charlene, Princess of Monaco),” says Percy Tucker.

By Heather Dugmore

62 WITSReview

January 2012

At Wits End

Who was your favourite lecturer at Wits?

“Let me describe the day I met my favourite lecturer.

I was sitting in the lecture hall with something like 500 students, many of them men dressed in uniform as they had recently returned from World War II. The first lecture of the day was Economic History and we were anticipating the arrival of our lecturer.

In walked a gorgeous young woman whose looks provoked a loud and enthusiastic chorus of wolf whistles and cackles. She was beautiful, charismatic and frighteningly authoritative. Her name was Helen Suzman and she was our lecturer for the next three years.”

What was one of your more embarrassing moments as a student?

“Embarrassing moments happened every day because I depended on trains to get from Benoni to Wits and they were typically late. I would rush into the lecture room after it had already started and the lecturer would say: ‘Late again, Mr Tucker. Another train problem?’ ” Tell us about student life on campus.

“I really didn’t have the time to participate in student life because my life was dictated by railway timetables.

I became a dab hand at belting for the train and that is where I developed my habit of belting rather than walking.

“The only time I got involved on campus was during Rag one year when all the commerce students dressed up as babies in nappies, of all things, and rode through the streets of Johannesburg on our float.”

January 2012

Wits Rag through the decades had a reputation for the pranks played by students, as Tucker recalls. “In 1966 when Marlene Dietrich was presenting her one-woman show at the Civic Theatre, Wits students burst into her dressing room where she stood nearly naked while changing into her dressing gown. Their intention was to stage a kidnapping stunt to advertise Rag and possibly raise some extra funds. Marlene was appalled by this invasion of her privacy and called for tight security measures. Rag and the students got a hammering from the press for their stunt.”

What was the political atmosphere on campus, considering the Nationalists came to power in 1948 while you were at Wits?

“Obviously we were stunned and it was a momentous time for the country, but for me life was about getting to lectures and working between lectures. My political involvement came 10 years later when Helen Suzman stood for election and they asked for volunteers. I was full of admiration for her and I liked the

WITSReview 63

At Wits End

party she was representing. I volunteered for her for every election from then onwards.”

a certain Nelson Mandela to offer him the role. He said ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you’,” Tucker smiles.

Share with us one of your favourite memories of Wits.

What did you do when you graduated?

“It was in 1959, nine years after I had graduated with my BCom, and I was running my business, Show Service. It was the year of King Kong, the extraordinary South African musical directed by Leon Gluckman and starring talents like Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Joe Mogotsi and Abigail Kubeka. It opened on 2 February 1959 at Wits’ Great Hall and because it was at the University, multiracial audiences were allowed. We realised what the potential for theatre would be if there were no barriers.

“The stage exploded into life, the energy of the cast was electric and the music is still being played 52 years later. This opening night at Wits is among the best memories of my life.

“King Kong ran until 1961, when it became the first all-African musical to transfer to the West End. However, to get the cast there … well, it would take me hours just to tell you of the heartaches, the problems and the horrors of the government intervention before they were all finally given the go-ahead to board the plane to London. I will never forget the silence that followed when the departure of their plane was announced and the cast spontaneously sang Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika, which was banned at the time.”

Gluckman’s next show after King Kong was to be the play The Emperor Jones. I went with him to see

64 WITSReview

“I was articled to a firm of accountants called Tuffias & Swersky and when I graduated with my BCom degree I went to Mr Swersky (who had several degrees himself) and said: ‘I have now graduated, does it mean an increase in salary?’ His answer was short. He said: ‘No, your salary stays at six pounds per month’.”

What do you think of South African theatre/performing today?

“I see [South African] performances all over the world and I can say with conviction that it is absolutely superb. I have always believed that theatre should have a purpose: to entertain, to inspire, to educate and to reflect current society. It is a powerful method of communication. As a nation we should be as proud of our actors, artists and musicians as we are of our sportsmen, but very few companies allocate funding to the arts.

“I am a fortunate human being. Every time I sit in a theatre and the curtain rises, I sit on the edge of my seat in anticipation of what this magic world will open. As Athol Fugard said: ‘It is a life-changing moment’. After 76 years my enthusiasm and love for the theatre remains undimmed. I have attended some 5 000 opening nights all over the world and to my mind there is no audience to match an opening night. There is no audience as keen, as alive and as exciting as a first-night audience that takes a performance to its heart.”

January 2012

Visit the alumni homepage for the latest news, information and happenings, find a classmate and connect

with Witsies on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Flickr or update your contact details

www.wits.ac.za/alumni

January 2012 Volume 19

The magazine for ALUMNI and friends of the University of the Witwatersrand

January 2012 Volume 19

CONNECTINGENGAGING INVOLVINGWITSALUMNI

Wits gives you the edge

IN THIS ISSUE: Xolela Mangcu • Glenda Gray • Ahmed Wadee www.wits.ac.za/alumni alumni@wits.ac.za