Curiosity Issue 14

Research . Rethink . Relearn

CONTENTS

8 How higher education can help heal us all

FEATURE

Academic and science activism saves lives

14

Mapping African genetic diversity for better health

16 Death makes us alive

18 Thirty years of the lab in the bush

22 The politics of protest

24 COLUMN

Wits at a time of national crisis: Then and now

26 Telling African stories through art

28 FEATURE

The evolution of science and research practice

32 Wits Digital Dome to light up the sky

42

34 Facing climate change head-on

36 Digging for the truth of humanity

38 Navigating life through the eyes of a gogga

40 Research by the books

42 PROFILE

Dr Nicholas Bacci - Identifying faces to recognise humanity

44 Business for good

46 Beyond the ivory tower

48 COLUMN

The best job in the world

50 HISTORY

A philosophy for good

STAY CURIOUS

Wits University celebrates its centenary in 2022 and although Wits today differs from a century ago, our raison d'être and values remain consistent: Our purpose is to impact society positively through creating and advancing global knowledge, and to foster graduates to be leaders with integrity. We value excellence, our people, and innovation.

Issue 14 of Curios.ty, themed #Wits100, gives a snapshot of some of the research giants and innovations that preceded us, that shaped the world today, and which will impact on the next century.

The Featured Researchers on the cover and page 6 showcase a handful of Wits’ world-class scientists and, importantly, a new generation of early career researchers – read the profile of a young forensic anthropologist (page 42).

Wits occupies a significant space in the South African higher

Curios.ty is a print and digital magazine that aims to make the research at Wits University accessible to various publics. It tells Wits’ research stories through the voices of its academics and postgraduate students. First printed in April 2017, Curios.ty is published three times per year. Each issue is thematic and explores research across faculties that relate to the theme. Issue 14 is themed #Wits100. Our feature stories profile some of Wits’ science superheroes whose research has saved lives as we explore the evolution of science and research practice and its future. We share research over 30 years from Wits’ rural campus in Mpumalanga, share social sciences research published as non-fiction books, and tell African stories through the Wits Art Museum from the streets of the City in which we are entrenched. We showcase Wits’ contributions to genetics and paleo-archaeology and our impact ‘beyond the ivory tower’. We confront climate change and life and death questions, dig deep to unearth our origins, and look skywards to a transformed planetarium. We embrace our protest history with a 1984 retrospective and explore the implications for the 21st Century. #Wits100 demonstrates Wits’ impact in the laboratory, academy, and society and envisages a Brave New World, for good.

education sector, a space as tumultuous as it is dynamic. In the story on page 8, Vice-Chancellors and others envisage the sector in the next century. Our first feature (page 10) showcases some Wits science superheroes whose research and activism has saved lives. Further evidence of such impact can be found in public health research over 30 years at Wits’ Rural Campus (page 18). Read about Wits’ other contributions ‘beyond the ivory tower’ (page 46) and the emergence of entrepreneurial innovation (page 44).

Wits is known as much for its political protest as for its academic excellence. Over 100 years, Wits has been at the forefront of speaking truth to power. The Politics of Protest story (page 22) gives a perspective on the practice of this democratic right, while the column (page 24) by eminent sociologists suggests how a Perceptions of Wits study in 1984 demands interrogation in a post-pandemic, climactic crisis world in 2022.

The evolution of science and research practice is our second feature (page 28) and unravels how we do what we do best and how it’s changed since the 20th Century. We explore Wits’ significant contribution to the field of genetics since we helped sequence the human genome (page 14), tackle the origins of life and death (page 16), confront climate change (page 34), and dig deep for the origins of humanity (page 36). We look up to reimagine the night sky from a state-of-the-art Digital Dome (page 32) and consider what dung beetles can teach us about navigation (page 38). Bibliophiles will enjoy the compilation of social sciences research published as books (page 40).

Wits University is as much a part of Johannesburg as gold mining. The Braamfontein campus is an anchor in the City’s cultural precinct and home to the Wits Art Museum, which at a decade old reveals African stories – untold and emerging –through art (page 26).

The stories in Curios.ty #WITS100 showcase the University’s sustained participation, influence and impact in the laboratory, the academy, and society. Our focus in future is on developing excellent (post)graduates who advance society, conducting world-class research and fostering innovation, and leveraging our location in the City to lead from the Global South.

We invite you to celebrate our centenary with us and, above all else, stay curious. There’s a whole new world coming in 2122 – and Wits University will have made its mark.

Professor Lynn Morris Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation

Professor Zeblon Vilakazi Vice-Chancellor and Principal

Professor Lynn Morris

Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation

Dr Robin Drennan

Director: Research and Innovation

Shirona Patel Head of Communications

Schalk Mouton

Senior Communications Officer and Curios.ty Editor

Deborah Minors

Senior Communications Officer and Curios.ty Sub-Editor

Erna Van Wyk

Senior Multimedia Communications Officer and Curios.ty Digital Director

Chanté Schatz

Communications Officer and Curios.ty

Photographer

Tiisang Monatisa Communications Officer

Buhle Zuma

Wits

All material in this publication is copyright and all rights are reserved. Reproduction of any part of the publication is permitted only with the express written permission of Shirona Patel, the Head of Communications of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily the views of the University, nor its management or governance structures. ©2022

100 YEARS OF CHANGING THE WORLD. FOR GOOD

Wits University, and Witsies, have undoubtedly changed the world for good over the past 100 years, be it through research and innovation, teaching and learning, or civic action, as reflected in the following pages.

It was at Wits where engineers developed and tested the first radar set. Fast-forward 70 years and researchers are now testing the safe encryption and transmission of data through light on the same spot. Wits was the first South African university to own an IBM mainframe computer. Fast-forward to 2019 and Wits, in partnership with IBM, became the first African university to access a quantum computer.

Witsies took to the streets to oppose apartheid and other atrocities, resulting in campus raids, violence, imprisonment and even death for people like David Webster. Fast-forward to the 21st Century and Witsies continue to demand access to higher education, and to engage in civic activities whether it be insisting for the treatment of HIV/Aids, speaking out against xenophobia, or advocating for measures to mitigate climate change.

Teaching and learning at Wits started in 1922 in response to a need from industry and the City. Fast-forward to 2022, and Wits’ response to the coronavirus pandemic can be felt at the local and global levels through its innovative research (including vaccine development), blended teaching and learning programmes, community initiatives, and social activism.

Today, we are confronted with a myriad of complex planetary problems including global change and inequality, erratic

energy supply and crime, lack of governance and ethics, the intersection of communicable and non-communicable diseases, pandemics, and so on. It is at Wits where we can bring the best intellectual talent and resources to bear, across disciplines, institutions, sectors and geographic boundaries, to find solutions to these challenges, some of which are still unknown.

We can continue to make a positive impact on society from our locale in the Global South if we remain true to our values – search for and stand up for the truth, hold those in power to account, act with integrity, entrench proper governance systems, guard our academic freedom and institutional autonomy, tolerate differences of opinion, and stand up for democracy, justice, equality, and freedom.

We must continue to promote freedom of enquiry and the search for knowledge and truth, foster a culturally diverse, intellectually stimulating and harmonious environment within which there is vigorous critical exchange and communication, and encourage freedom of speech and public debate through facilitating dialogue and interaction between different parties, with the goal of increasing mutual respect and trust, amongst others.

Wits remains a beacon of hope in society – a national treasure that has developed with the City of Johannesburg and industry, an institution that will continue to impact society for good, for the next 100 years. We must continue to strive for excellence in all that we do and use our knowledge for the advancement of our community, city, country, continent, and the globe. For Good.

Prof. Zeblon Vilakazi Vice-Chancellor and Principal

RESEARCHERS

DENNY MABETHA

Denny Mabetha holds a Master’s of Science in Epidemiology from Wits University. She works as a Project Site Manager for the Verbal Autopsy with Participatory Action Research (VAPAR). Project in the Medical Research CouncilWits Agincourt Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt). In this capacity, Mabetha serves as a link between Agincourt and the Mpumalanga Department of Health and others. Mabetha has expertise in nutrition, public health, research and project operations. She presented research output at the fifth and sixth Global Symposium on Health Research Systems.

ANANYO CHOUDHURY

Ananyo Choudhury is a Reader at the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (SBIMB) at Wits. His research interests are population genomics and genomics of complex traits. He co-leads several components of the National Institutes of Health-funded Africa WitsINDEPTH partnership for Genomics Studies (AWI-Gen) research and he co-chairs the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) Genome Analysis Working Group. He has played a leading role in major genomic studies conducted in Africa including the Southern African Human Genome Project, the H3Africa Genotyping Array Design and the H3Africa Whole Genome Sequencing Study.

PIERRE DURAND

Forbes and his team tailor light, much as one might do with cloth, cutting and weaving a pattern into the fabric of light itself. His research focuses on producing novel structured light as bright laser beams and entangled quantum states, for applications in sensing, metrology, fast and secure optical communications and the imaging of invisible objects.

CARREN GINSBURG

Dr Carren Ginsburg is a Senior Researcher in the Medical Research Council-Wits Agincourt Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt). Her research focuses on the impact of migration and urbanisation on health transitions in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Ginsberg has co-led the Migration, Urbanisation and Health Working Group of the International Network for the Demographic Evaluation of Populations and Their Health Network since 2016. She is a co-investigator on the Migrant Health Follow-up Study researching the health and economic consequences of migration on South African internal migrants.

SORI LA

CATHI ALBERTYN

Cathi Albertyn is a Professor of Law and the South African Research Chair in Equality, Law and Social Justice at Wits University. Her research interest is the role of the Constitution, rights and the law in enabling, advancing and/or preventing the achievement of equality in South Africa. Her work has been influential in shaping constitutional interpretations of, and legal debates on, substantive equality. More recently, Albertyn researched the role of equality law in distributing social goods and services, addressing economic inequalities, and the relationship between substantive equality and climate justice.

Dr Pierre Durand is a Reader in the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits. He holds a PhD in Molecular Evolution and he researches the evolutionary biology of programmed cell death in microbes. He wrote The Evolutionary Origins of Life and Death (2021), which prompted a departure towards philosophy and an interest in ‘heritable death’ across all forms of life. Heritable death refers to modes of death that seem to be biologically hardwired and inherited across generations. Currently, Durand is collaborating on a project at the Institute of Philosophy at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.

ANDREW FORBES

Andrew Forbes is a National Research Foundation A-rated scientist and a Distinguished Professor in the School of Physics at Wits where he established a Structured Light Laboratory in 2015.

Wits MSc graduate Sori La is an evolutionary biologist researching how the first eukaryotes arose on earth. Eukaryotes are organisms whose cells have a nucleus enclosed within a nuclear envelope. La’s research is influenced by US evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, who advanced the significance of symbiosis in evolution. La studies programmed cell death mediated conflict between different microbes in endosymbiosis. A passionate science communicator, La advocates studying ancestral microbes and #ArchaeaMatter. Archaea are believed to constitute an ancient group which is intermediate between the bacteria and eukaryotes.

MALOSE LANGA

Malose Langa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Wits and an Associate Researcher in the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. He has published book chapters and journal articles on violence and masculinities. He is the author of Becoming Men: Black Masculinities in a South African Township and co-editor of Youth in South Africa: Agency, (in)visibility and National Development. He is a National Research Foundation C-rated researcher, which denotes an established researcher

ANDREW FORBES

ANANYO CHOUDHURY PIERRE DURAND

MALOSE LANGA

CATHI ALBERTYN

DENNY MABETHA

CARREN GINSBURG

SORI

with a sustained record of productivity, and peer-recognition of quality work and demonstrable research methodology.

SHABIR MADHI

Shabir Madhi is the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at Wits University. He is the Director of the South African Medical Research Council's Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit. He is a National Research Foundation A-rated scientist recognised internationally as a leader in his field. A paediatrican, Madhi’s research has focused on vaccine development against pneumonia and diarrhoeal disease to protect pregnant women – studies which informed World Health Organization recommendations on the use of these vaccines. In 2020, Madhi led Africa’s first Covid-19 vaccine trials.

ACHILLE MBEMBE

Achille Mbembe is a Research Professor in History and Politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER). A Cameroonian historian, political theorist, and public intellectual, Mbembe co-founded Les Ateliers de la pensee de Dakar, which brings together thinkers, writers, and leading African and diaspora scholars to reflect on new questions raised by the transformations of the contemporary world. He writes prolifically on politics and philosophy and his work has been translated into 15 languages. The French President commissioned him to explore issues related to democracy in Africa, an outcome of which was the establishment in 2022 of the Innovation Foundation for Democracy at Wits.

KENEILOE MOLOPYANE

Dr Keneiloe Molopyane is an archaeologist and biological anthropologist. Her PhD focused on skeletal bone trauma and mapping the distribution of this trauma using Geographic Information Systems. She was an ‘underground astronaut’ in the Rising Star team in 2018 and in 2020 was part of the UW105 cave expedition, the name of a new fossil site in the Cradle of Humankind. She is a National Geographic Society Emerging Explorer, 2021. Molopyane is now a researcher in the Centre for the Exploration of the Deep Human Journey and the Principal Investigator at the Gladysvale Fossil Site, Cradle of Humankind.

NOOR NIEFTAGODIEN

Professor Noor Nieftagodien is the Head of the History Workshop and the South African Chair in Local Histories and Present Realities. He has published books on the

histories of Alexandra, Orlando West and Ekurhuleni and on protest movements. His current research is on the history of the Congress of South African Students and Public History. He is a co-editor of the soon to be published More than a Trade Union: The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa in Post-apartheid Perspective.

HELEN REES

Professor Helen Rees established the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute in 1994, one of Africa’s largest research entities, of which she is Executive Director. She is internationally recognised for her research on HIV/STIs, vaccines, infectious diseases, reproductive health, and climate and health. She chairs the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority and over 100 boards to develop technical and policy guidelines in Africa and globally. Awards include Officer of the British Empire and Officer of the French National Order of Merit for contributions to global health and Covid-19, and South Africa’s Order of the Baobab for outstanding contributions to maternal and child health.

MICHÈLE RAMSAY

Michèle Ramsay is the Director of the Wits Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience, a Professor in Human Genetics and the South African Research Chair in Genomics and Bioinformatics of African Populations. Her research interrogates why some people are more susceptible to developing disease than others. She explores genetic variation in African populations to understand gene-gene and gene-environment interactions that influence disease risk. Extensive collaboration, large datasets and novel analysis techniques enable novel insights into the demographic history of anatomically modern humans, and the evolutionary forces that have shaped the genetic landscape and the health of extant (surviving) populations.

TSHEGOFATSO SEABI

Tshegofatso Seabi is a PhD Fellow in the School of Public Health where she is evaluating a behaviour change intervention to reduce disease risk in rural South African adolescents. As Project Manager in the Medical Research Council/Wits Agincourt Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), she researches adolescent health, mortality, the use of personal protective equipment, and partner support for pregnant women living with HIV. Her Masters in Psychology involved the Blood Sugars project which explored the lived experience and community awareness of diabetes.

BORIS URBAN

Boris Urban is the first Professor in Entrepreneurship appointed at the Wits Business School. His primary research agenda is to deepen understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour within a unified explanatory structure at the individual, organisational and societal levels. Urban’s scholarship spans entrepreneurship and includes aspects including start-ups, corporate entrepreneurship, technopreneurship and social entrepreneurship. He is a National Research Foundation-rated researcher and a highly cited researcher according to the Web of Science journal category rankings. He has published over a 150 journal articles, case studies, and book chapters and has edited five books.

HELEN REES

KENEILOE MOLOPYANE NOOR NIEFTAGODIEN

BORIS URBAN

SHABIR MADHI ACHILLE MBEMBE

MICHÈLE RAMSAY

TSHEGOFATSO SEABI

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HOW HIGHER EDUCATION CAN HELP HEAL US ALL

When Professor Yunus Ballim became the first ViceChancellor and Principal of the new Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley, Northern Cape, in 2014, he had to contend with the reality of creating a relevant tertiary institution in a saturated market, with deep polarities and divisions threatening to unravel the delicate threads of culture and society.

Ballim knew when establishing the university that the way we think about higher education had to change completely. “For me, it’s about allowing students from a variety of backgrounds to contribute to scholarship meaningfully, and to feel unashamed of the knowledge that they bring and the ways in which they think about and process information,” says Ballim, who remains an Emeritus Professor at Wits University.

Ballim’s approach speaks to the ‘why’ of higher education. In the 21st Century post-pandemic world, information is readymade and pressing global and local challenges need solutions immediately. But a university’s role is also to see the bigger picture – to stoke the fires of critical thinking and ways of knowing and inspire the application of humanity’s best gifts across disciplines.

FUNCTIONAL FACILITIES AND INDIVIDUAL FOCUS

To facilitate this philosophy, Ballim says that competent classroom teaching and functional learning facilities are critical. “Universities need to ensure that every single student’s educational development is realised. This extends to all features of their university experience, including their interaction with administrative and operational functions.”

One of Ballim’s first tasks was to ban academic development programmes. “We cannot blame students for failing. They fail in

part because of our inability to teach them properly. For me, it’s not about English language competence. Let’s look behind that all. We want to increase knowledge and spur action. Therefore, academics must learn to read a particular student’s work and allow that student to feel comfortable in sharing ideas. If you don’t know that a student has six words for ‘uncle’, then you cannot teach that student anthropology, for example,” he says.

Ballim is critical of decolonising the university curriculum. “It’s possible to be racist and right-wing in any language and culture. Poverty hurts, no matter the country in which you live. Both Shakespeare and Plaatje have relevance to readers everywhere. Rather, we need to decolonise the mind. There are so many ways of knowing. Why shouldn’t we read Camus in Tswana? Why aren’t Russians reading Plaatje? It’s about both and not either/or.”

LIFELONG LEARNING AND FLEXIBILITY

Professor Diane Grayson, Senior Director: Academic Affairs at Wits, says, “For me, it’s about flexibility. We need to accommodate students coming from diverse life circumstances.”

Indeed, in the 20th Century in South Africa, the majority of university students were young undergraduates studying full time. But Grayson says that this is an old-fashioned model of higher education and a declining trend globally.

Many students who attend university today are older than justout-of-high-school, and they must earn an income. Many are caregivers of older parents or young children, yet these students want to earn qualifications or change their career paths. “Higher education should embrace lifelong learning in a diverse student body. One of the ways that lifelong learning is realised is through

The higher education sector, with universities a part of this larger “edusystem”, is fundamental to creating and contributing to societies that are equipped for the 21st Century. Beth Amato asks academic experts and vice-chancellors how they envisage higher education in the next 100 years.

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These developments show that it is possible to develop equitable partnerships in an unequal world,” he says.

MORE MATHS FOR AN AI FUTURE

Just as teaching and learning pedagogy has evolved, so too should subject matter. Professor Loyiso Nongxa, former Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal (2003-2013) and a mathematician, is passionate about ensuring that students have the mathematical capability to respond to the ruptures brought about by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

“The mathematics that we are teaching is insufficient to deal with the scope of what’s to come. Mathematical sciences must be prioritised in universities, schools, and even crèches,” he says.

Nongxa is involved in various projects to ensure that maths education is relevant and responsive to local and global challenges.

“We are looking at developing a maths-based Master’s programme looking at artificial intelligence in the financial sector. We are also seeing how maths can be deployed to promote inclusion and equity, such as in banking services.”

Professor Ruksana Osman, Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic at Wits – and UNESCO Research Chair in Teacher Education for Diversity and Development – is responsible for the broad coordination of the academic project across all divisions of the University, and she oversees the University’s online and blended-learning academic strategy.

“The contours of higher education locally and globally show clearly that lifelong learning and the flexibility in learning are going to be important if we want to serve a digital nation. It means that we need to start decoupling learning from the place of learning and in this way open up opportunities for more equitable approaches to accessing education globally and locally,” says Osman.

GLOBAL NORTH, GLOBAL SOUTH, ONE WORLD

No stranger to issues around inclusivity and equity, Professor Adam Habib served as the Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal from 2013 to 2020, during the tumultuous #FeesMustFall era of student protests. Now Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, Habib believes that collaboration between institutions in the Global North and the Global South is the path towards addressing both structural inequalities in higher education and in society. He speaks of “clusters of excellence” co-run by universities across the world.

Although the Covid-19 pandemic pushed online learning forward, Habib says that there is no doubt that we need to have as many faceto-face, in-person experiences as possible. “Learning does not only happen in the classroom, virtual or in-person. Students learn from the social interactions that universities facilitate.”

“We envision cross-continental teaching and learning on the grounds that this could assist in stemming the ‘brain drain’ and enable scientific and technological capacity to remain on the African continent,” says Habib.

He refers to two major game-changers in the higher education space: the announcement by the African Union and the European Union of an AU-EU Innovation Agenda, and the initiative between the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) and the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities.

“These announcements highlight that we’re in this together. That we’re interconnected. That what affects me, affects you. Now we can develop institutional capacity and build human capability across the world to address transnational capacity.

ENDURING PARTNERSHIPS

“Collaboration is going to be very important for higher education. And it can’t be a once-off phenomenon,” says Dr Judy Dlamini, Wits University’s Chancellor. She refers to the exemplary collaboration of the private and public sectors in ensuring equitable technological access for students during the Covid-19 pandemic. Laptops were donated and data were zero-rated.

“We live in the most unequal country in the world. We can help bridge the divide and we don’t have any time to waste. Inequality breeds instability, and if we don’t work together, the July 2021 riots that devastated South Africa will look like a child’s picnic,” she says.

Dlamini draws on the example of the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre, the first private teaching hospital in the country. “We had to address the critical shortage of medical sub-specialists in South Africa and the public sector was too constrained to do this on its own. Wits, along with a generous donation from Sir Donald Gordon, responded to this crisis in a world-class manner,” she says.

“We need to show that higher education is relevant and there is nothing better to highlight this phenomenon than the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Braamfontein,” adds Dlamini.

This “digital innovation ecosystem” encourages entrepreneurship and grows the skills necessary for succeeding in the digital economy. Tshimologong is a Wits entity that facilitates collaborations between academia, corporates, government and entrepreneurs in the digital sphere. “It is up to all of us to make higher education count in the next 100 years,” says Dlamini.

INNOVATION AND ANTICIPATORY CONSCIOUSNESS

The higher education sector – and universities in particular –provide a platform for innovation, new knowledge creation, high-level and scarce skills development, and the incubation and exchange of ideas. Universities are also treasure troves of knowledge that need to be protected, valued, guarded and strengthened.

Osman says, “Research-intensive universities will also have to learn to make optimum use of resources and develop an anticipatory consciousness rather than a reactive one. The 2020 global pandemic has taught us first-hand about the need to be able to anticipate challenges so that we are not blindsided when such challenges hit universities and society.”

A FUTURE FOR GOOD

Certainly, innovation underpins Wits’ role in higher education in its next century. Innovation is fundamental to the Wits 2033 Strategic Plan, the implementation of which Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal since April 2021, will lead.

“It’s crucial for Wits’ development and growth that we continue to develop local and global partnerships that cement the University’s position as a leader in innovation,” says Vilakazi. “Universities enjoy longevity in society – akin to libraries and museums. They are institutions that usually outlast multiple generations. Research-intensive universities like Wits have a role to play in society as a catalyst for change. Looking ahead, these universities should strive to create new knowledge and apply this knowledge for the benefit of society.”

‘stackable micro-credentials’, allowing students to receive their qualification in a flexible, stackable way,” says Grayson.

ACADEMIC &SCIENCE

ACTIVISM

SAVES

LIVES

Five Wits scientists weigh in on the University’s proud legacy of public health activism and why standing up for social justice in an unequal world remains their fight – as it should be for those who follow.

UFRIEDA HO LAUREN MULLIGAN

When academic life intersects with activism in the name of public good – and the certain reality that sitting on the fence itself becomes injury – something mighty happens. It is also what is needed more in the world in 2022.

A rich crop of public health scientists, researchers and doctors, many of them Witsies, have chosen to take a stand, and in so doing, to become household names. They are in the public eye not only because they can communicate their science and weigh in with expert input but because they choose to engage, and to draw a line in the sand.

Their mission is centred on educating, raising awareness for good, and deepening the media's and public's understanding of public health issues. They do so fully aware that sticking their necks out in the public arena can come with criticism, trolling, and populist attacks. They know too that populism divides, and when science and evidence-based research remain muted, it allows misinformation and disinformation to drown out informed choice.

For Professor Karen Hofman, Director of the South African Medical Research Council's Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science (a unit known as PRICELESS SA – Priority Cost Effective Lessons for Systems Strengthening), informed choice extends to informed policy and smarter policymaking that optimises scarce resources for the greatest impact.

Hofman, who trained as a paediatrician, came to public health advocacy fighting for children and families, and has not lost sight of their vulnerability, particularly in the area of nutrition. Referring to one of PRICELESS’s key areas of work: researching and advocating for reducing and limiting added sugar in beverages, she explains the Unit’s impact. By pushing for limits on sugar in beverages, PRICELESS has helped to achieve breakthrough in policy reform in South Africa in recent years.

It is an intervention that helps reduce risks for obesity, especially in children, which in turn can curb the staggering upward climb of diabetes and high blood pressure in the country, which is a drain on an already meagre public health purse.

BITTER-SWEET RESEARCH FUNDING

But taking on the sugar industry – “the new tobacco”, as she calls it, comes with a corporate fight that can be brutal. “You must be a bit thick-skinned; learn how to work with the media and be flexible. You must also be confident that you are conducting top notch science.

“Soon after I started this work, I was named and shamed in the press and called a ‘sugar Nazi’ by the Free Market Foundation –now, I wear that badge with pride. I am also reminded that this could be worse. For example, colleagues in Mexico got death threats for going against industry. But for me there is also the strength that we can draw on which comes with belonging to an authoritative global community of researchers,” says Hofman.

She also takes a stand against accepting corporate funding for the South African Medical Research Council's PRICELESS Unit and is wary of corporate white-washing and hijacking as she says that “there can be huge interference in research”.

“Research funding is one area wherein which universities need to be increasingly vigilant. Wits should be wary of entering into partnerships and funding agreements that can potentially compromise research,” she says.

Wits as an institution has equal responsibility to be accountable

and to create environments in which academics can find and use their independent voices and do so knowing that, when it counts, they will have the backing of their institution, she adds.

Professor Shabir Madhi, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, says that vigorous debate should be encouraged at universities but there is an equal imperative that these debates have impact and inclusion beyond a university setting.

“Universities are heterogeneous, including in terms of thought, which is healthy. So, it’s not that a university necessarily needs to take a position on every issue, but individuals within a university, in their individual capacity, can promote a specific agenda, have debates, and bring these to the public,” he says.

Madhi has in recent years been at the forefront of guiding public understanding of the fast-changing story of the Covid-19 pandemic, its waves, vaccines, and the mandates and protocols around measures for personal protection. This terrain has been fraught with division, disinformation, fear and anxiety.

TOWARDS TRUSTWORTHY SCIENCE COMMUNICATION

Together with colleagues from Wits, other universities and public health interest organisations, Madhi has led the Scientists’ Collective, which has jointly authored articles on Covid-19 that have been published for maximum access through the mainstream media.

11 He has also used social media to directly communicate on public health crises. In March 2022 he organised a protest at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, calling out hospital and provincial health mismanagement. Incompetence and inefficiencies led to patients going without food for days and severely disrupted the essential service of biological waste removal.

Madhi stridently calls out government’s failings and missteps, because leveraging his insider’s insight, academic authority and his platform advances the fight for good.

“You don’t just make a noise because you want to make a noise; you make a noise if things are going wrong. It’s always about promoting science so that the public can trust the science, rather than trying to become an apologist for the government,” he explains. “We must be a society that speaks up when government tries to sell a narrative. For example, government’s narrative that things will be much better with the National Health Insurance is a case in point. If they don’t fix the healthcare system, that narrative is just disingenuous.”

IN PURSUIT OF PURPOSEFUL ACTIVISM

Madhi, whose health activism was honed when he was a medical student at Wits in the 1980s as part of the United Democratic Front, says that more attention should be paid to develop today’s students to become critically aware, and to fight for social justice beyond the issues that affect them directly or personally.

“Activism evolves over time and what is lacking now is activism for purpose. At a student level, we should be equipping people to become more critical in thought, so that hopefully they become the voices of reason in the future.”

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER

Being exposed as a junior doctor to segregated hospitals in the apartheid era revealed injustices from which Professor Glenda Gray could not look away. She signed up to work with the Detainees’ Parents Support Committee, helping with medical examinations and the medical documentation of abuses of detainees.

“Even as I was training as a doctor and specialising, I was involved in health activism around the desegregation of hospitals and the

health workers’ rights movement,” says Gray, who is the Chief Executive Officer of the South African Medical Research Council.

Gray encourages young doctors to actively join progressive health associations. “It’s very important to find these networks because you work as a collective,” she explains, emphasising that activism is as much about grassroots relevance as it is about networks and strong leadership.

At the time that Gray became a paediatrician, the HIV crisis was beginning to take its toll. It directed her career and activism towards fighting AIDS denialism, research on HIV vaccines, and for the landmark rights for women in public health facilities to access the anti-HIV drug nevirapine to stop the mother-to-child HIV transmission in 2003.

She has been outspoken on the rise of malnutrition cases as a direct result of lockdown restrictions during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic. It put her in the crosshairs of bureaucrats more concerned with the image of the Department of Health rather than the unfolding public health concern. Gray stood her ground. The research and scientific evidence were her key weapons, and “the collective”, she says.

Gray’s colleagues and the University were unequivocal in standing with Gray when she raised the alarm. “Of course, it’s a horrible thing to happen when it’s happening, and you wish that everything would just go back to normal. But I realised that if I apologised then I would be selling out everyone who comes after me,” she elaborates. “I also do an exercise to ‘walk myself down’ from the worst-case scenario and then I get to a place when I realise that the worst thing that can happen to me is not going to be ‘the worst thing’.”

Whistle-blowers and those who criticise goliaths of states and corporates, need better holistic support and protection, she acknowledges.

FIND YOUR FIGHT

For Professor Helen Rees, Founder and Executive Director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (WRHI) and Board Chairperson at the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA), there is no separation between health activism and the fight for equity and human rights.

Having written the Women’s Health Policy for the African National Congress before the 1994 elections, Rees founded the WRHI to undertake the research to inform that policy. Applying those principles, the Institute has grown from five people to over 2 000 staff, the majority of whom are women. Over the years, the WRHI has focused on emerging public health priorities, moving from sexual and reproductive health, to HIV, vaccine-preventable diseases and most recently, to climate change and health.

“I was a doctor activist before I was a clinician researcher,” she says. It is this kind of unequivocal purpose that has guided the WRHI to be an Institute that focuses on research to develop new technologies and to inform health programmes and policy, locally and globally.

Rees is no stranger to finding herself defending evidencebased decisions – particularly those made by the regulatory authority – from the criticism of groups that don’t like what the science is proving. She has learnt to stand her ground and to push back even harder. “You pause when challenged, reflect on your mandate, and respond with the science, and what is best for public health,” she adds.

She has also fine-tuned strategies for fighting back over the years. “Sometimes it’s better not to engage directly with the arguments of those who hold opposing views, for example on vaccines or on regulatory decisions, but instead to work out you own messages and repeat them over and over again, with language tailored to different audiences.”

THE FEMALE FACTOR

Professor Laetitia Rispel says that to strengthen the activistacademic’s armour to stay the course for health activism requires conscious effort to build networks and to respect the importance of self-care. You need support and you need to be personally grounded. This makes blind spots more obvious and develops the skills to navigate a world of trade-offs and unfair compromise more deftly.

“Trust in your own power to make a difference, find your voice to speak truth to power,” says Rispel.

As a young health professional graduate at the Red Cross Hospital in the 1980s, Rispel says that her eyes were opened to the depth of social injustice under apartheid and in particular, the gendered oppression in the healthcare system.

“I started to understand the multiple layers of oppression experienced especially by black nurses,” she says.

As she became involved in anti-apartheid organisations in the 1980s, she also directed her activism towards working for gender transformative policies and pushing for diverse and inclusive leadership. This is still a key focus for Rispel, who holds the South African Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation Research Chair in the Health Workforce for Equity and Quality.

“Public health systems are largely gender-blind in their responsiveness, the quality of care, and what options and say women actually have in their healthcare,” she says.

The fight continues and for the legion of Wits activistacademics, the point is to never give up.

As the world pulls apart even more in 2022 and the widening chasm claims more of society’s most vulnerable, this is exactly the moment to resist despair. Hope must turn to purpose and purpose into action for change, for good. C

MAPPING AFRICAN GENETIC DIVERSITY FOR BETTER HEALTH

The contribution of the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience to the field of human genomics is rewriting history on the African continent.

DELIA DU TOIT CHANTÉ SCHATZ

When the Human Genome Project finished in 2003, scientists had the ability, for the first time, to read nature’s complete genetic blueprint for building a human being. And now, it’s becoming clear that one single reference genome is inadequate – humans, after eons of evolution in different environments, are simply too diverse. This is especially the case on the African continent, and the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (SBIMB) at Wits has taken massive strides to illuminate African genomes since its founding in 2014.

Genetics is the scientific study of genes and heredity – of how certain qualities or traits are passed from parents to offspring because of changes in DNA sequence. Genomics is the study of all an individual’s genes (the genome), including scientific research into complex diseases such as heart disease, asthma, diabetes and cancer, because these diseases are typically caused more by a combination of genetic and environmental factors than by individual genes.

DNA, DATA AND AFRICA

In 2017, the SBIMB led the publication of the pilot study of the first African government-funded Human Genome Project of 24 whole human genomes, involving the efforts of scientists in seven South African institutions.

In 2020, under the banner of the Human Heredity and Health

in Africa Consortium, researchers from the Institute were lead authors in a study involving the analysis of whole genome sequences of 426 African individuals, depicted in African beads and featured on the cover of the journal Nature. The study identified marks of natural selection in several genes associated with viral immunity, DNA repair and metabolism, demonstrating adaptation to new geographies, diets and pathogens.

“The central premise of the research at the SBIMB is to create a better understanding of African genetic diversity and how that impacts on health or drug response,” says Professor Michèle Ramsay, Director of the SBIMB. “Africa is so diverse in terms of genetics, climate and culture that you can’t think of the populations on the continent as one group of people.”

Ramsay has been involved in the Human Genome Project since its start in the 1990s. “It’s incredible that, over the span of a few decades, we’ve moved from not having a genome sequence to now having a reference human genome, access to so much data, and the ability to immediately identify DNA sequences and where they come from on the genome map. When I started my career, we had to build those maps to understand where the DNA sequences were that we were working on. We’ve come so far.”

DIVERSITY IN DISEASE

“We’re rewriting history, as it were,” says Dr Ananyo Choudhury, who in 2021 published the largest genetic study involving

Bantu-language speaking South Africans, including 5 000 people from all the major language groups. “Until now it was considered that all South African populations are more or less genetically equivalent. But we found several differences that are significant in terms of disease susceptibility and drug response and contributed to the country’s history by showing how groups of people migrated and interacted with other populations.”

Impactful as this work is, it’s still in its infancy in many ways, says Professor Scott Hazelhurst, whose work at the SBIMB focuses on building computational capacity as well as pharmacogenomics – particularly how genes impact drug efficacy and safety. “The Institute’s work in Africa is clinically significant, as most drugs are developed in European populations for Europeans. When these drugs are then deployed here, there are potential issues because of the differences in the genetic diversity between African populations and other world populations. We’ve been spending the last three years cataloguing that diversity and giving some insight into potential drug effects.”

TOWARDS PRECISION MEDICINE

Hazelhurst says that to get the complete picture, we need the “sequencing of every human being in Africa, and on the planet. Only then will we have precision medicine that considers individual variability in genes, environment and lifestyle for each person.”

Though this is, at least for now, a castle in the sky, it makes it clear why more data, more capacity, more funding and more expertise is critical, says Ramsay. “The models for analysing genomes are so complex so there are still very few people on the continent who can analyse the data. We’re not near critical mass yet when it comes to developing this expertise.”

However, study by study, things are changing. The SBIMB currently has 17 PhD students and eight postdoctoral fellows. Many of these students are nested in the Africa Wits-INDEPTH partnership for genomics studies in Africans. Though the partnership is now in its tenth year and the grant is coming to an end, its projects and related research will continue – using data

and stored samples on around 12 000 people in four African countries. “Possibly the most rewarding part of our jobs is to oversee the development of future leaders in the field. Many of these younger researchers are already growing their own research programmes,” says Ramsay.

And the future looks bright. The Institute recently received funding to study at least 1 000 whole human genomes from under-investigated African populations. Another project is using machine learning to extract new information from data collected from several projects over the past 20 years and to analyse it to provide health planning and treatment insights into multimorbidity in populations in South Africa and Kenya.

Yet another study will look at the effect of genetic variants in African individuals and develop algorithms to predict where a person falls on a spectrum of risk for a particular disease. The SBIMB also has active cancer genomics and pharmacogenomics programmes. Its scientists work collaboratively with researchers locally, regionally and globally, across a range of disciplines.

The Institute today has data and stored samples on over 17 000 Africans and 200 whole African genomes – taking up close to two petabytes of storage. “All those samples in the biobank means we are building resources for the future, too. Mining the data for interesting findings will form the basis for future generations of study,” concludes Ramsay. C

“Africa is so diverse in terms of genetics, climate and culture, that you can’t think of the populations on the continent as one group of people.”

DEATH MAKES US ALIVE

Without death, there would be no life – this might sound like ancient mysticism, but Wits scientists are proving it.

Why do we die? You’ve asked this before. We all have. It is a question that has plagued humankind since the birth of our species – and an issue that few people would even consider tackling.

“This is one of life’s most fundamental questions,” says Professor Pierre Durand of the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits. “Why do we have to die? Is it inevitable? What would happen if we were immortal?”

Durand and his team are trying to connect these philosophical

questions with empirical biological evidence, in an attempt to contribute to the field of naturalised metaphysics, a philosophical worldview which holds that nature is in fact all that exists.

Durand’s book, The Evolutionary Origins of Life and Death examines this question and its possible answers through the lens of the coevolution hypothesis.

“When you start thinking about why death exists, you automatically start to ask what life is because life and death are obviously linked,” he says.

In essence, living beings harbour potential death programmes (versions of death mechanisms that are heritable) and the question of why an organism would actively kill itself is a challenge to evolutionists.

Durand argues that life and death coevolved. “The evolution of more complex cellular life depended on the coadaptation between traits that promote life and those that promote death,” says Durand.

“Without death, we wouldn’t see life the way we do, and we probably wouldn’t have evolved beyond the very simplest life forms.”

THE COEVOLUTION HYPOTHESIS

The coevolution hypothesis is one of five major hypotheses attempting to explain the evolutionary origins of heritable forms of death – each with varying degrees of empirical support (the hypotheses being Durand’s coevolution hypothesis and the “addiction”, “immunology”, “non-adaptive/mal-adaptive” and “original sin” hypotheses).

One of Durand’s Master’s graduates, Sori La, in 2022 published a paper in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that supports the original sin hypothesis, titled The Ancient Origins of Death Domains Support the “Original Sin” Hypothesis for the Evolution of Programmed Cell Death.

Says Durand: “The emergence of life in the ‘original sin’ hypothesis posits that because of the emergence of life we are forever connected to programmes for death. Life and death programmes are mechanistically linked. These genetic programmes for death seem to be extremely ancient, but we don’t know when they first emerged.”

By comparing the genomes of modern organisms, La found that some of the proteins involved in death today trace back to the very beginning of life.

“This shows that many of the programmes for death may be as old as life itself and emerged very soon after life emerged.”

Evidence for one hypothesis does not prove another wrong, he adds. It’s possible that the evolution of some cells proves one hypothesis, others prove another, and yet others show traits of more than one hypothesis.

“We don’t know,” says Durand. “We will never have an absolute answer because the scientific method used is inductive reasoning – we don’t have access to those very first organisms, so we study today’s organisms and try to trace components of the available genomes as far back as possible. In this field, one hardly ever gets deductive proof, only inductive support for the hypothesis.”

Still, a clearer picture is emerging, with every new study adding a clue. Some of them close one loop but open another that require scientists to conceptualise new questions.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DEATH

For Durand, the work is satisfying a curiosity that he has had since his childhood. “Even as a child I can remember being interested in these questions, but I didn’t know how to ask the questions or

even if this field existed. Very few people work on the philosophy of death worldwide.”

Durand has won a fellowship to work with eminent philosopher Grant Ramsey at the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven in Belgium, where he will dedicate a year of research time to the philosophy of death.

Though the field is small, the work is significant – some of it is being conducted by emerging researchers such as La, Karen Houlston (PhD candidate) and Jaganmoy Jodder (postdoctoral research fellow) under Durand’s guidance.

“Every student and postdoctoral researcher who has worked in my lab has contributed something significant. They all have an insatiable curiosity and I’m inspired to be working with them. As a team, our interests are two-fold: understanding the evolution of death and developing a general philosophical and metaphysical framework that explains it. It’s a tremendous claim to say that we’re getting some of the answers, but I believe that we are.”

So why do we and other organisms die? “In a metaphysical sense, death is a necessary feature of living systems. Death is a necessity for the sustainability of life. For life to take hold, to evolve, and for us to experience the spectrum of life from the mundane to the truly profound, death must exist. That, at least, is what we’re trying to understand and it seems to be the answer.”

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“Without death there would be no life”. If this is true, it follows that we cannot value our life if we do not, also, value our death. One ethical implication of this, is that modern medicine ought to give much more attention to preparing practitioners to deal with death and the dying, and needs to let go of the notion that prolonging life at all costs is always best. Our medical expertise has led to people living longer and healthier lives than ever. However, it has also medicalised dying, with many people coming to the end of their lives in institutions, separated from the people and things that make their lives most meaningful.

As American surgeon, writer, and public health researcher

Atul Gawande puts it in Being Mortal, “the waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver’s chance of benefit.” The oldest ethical principle of the practice of medicine is “first do no harm”. Practitioners need to learn that death is not failure – it is natural. A good, dignified death, when the time for life to end has come is often far less harmful than pursuing every possible treatment, however unlikely they are to be of benefit.

Associate Professor Kevin Behrens, Director of the Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics at Wits brings a bioethical eye to the philosophy of life and death:

THIRTY YEARS OF THE LAB IN THE BUSH

Agincourt is one of the longest-running research centres of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa with sophisticated infrastructure to track and understand health and wellbeing over the life course.

BETH AMATO LAUREN MULLIGAN

When the then Agincourt Health and Population Unit opened its doors in 1992, the evidence to inform rural health was paper thin.

Agincourt (or Matsavana) is a town in the Bushbuckridge Local Municipality in the province of Mpumalanga in South Africa. Agincourt lies 100km north of the border of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) and 90km east of the border with Mozambique. To the west of Agincourt lies the Kruger National Park.

The Agincourt Research Centre, then focusing on the inhabitants of 20 villages in Bushbuckridge, was a microcosm of the woefully neglected health and socioeconomic systems in rural areas during apartheid, and the town had no reliable population information upon which to base rational decision-making.

Driven by this urgency, Professors Kathleen Kahn and Stephen Tollman moved to implement a population platform suited to both observational and interventional research and development.

Taking inspiration from Pholela, a pioneering community-oriented primary healthcare initiative in rural KwaZulu-Natal, and platforms used in vaccine trials in Bangladesh and Senegal, the Agincourt Research Centre was developed to monitor and respond to the changes experienced by South Africa’s rural communities.

Today, Agincourt is one of the longest-running research centres of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa, with sophisticated infrastructure to track and understand health and wellbeing over the life course – and promote better outcomes and improved health systems through trials and policy evaluation.

It is a unique study hub attracting global and multidisciplinary scholars and researchers.

URBAN-RURAL BLEND TRENDS

“The Agincourt Research Centre is a living, dynamic, everchanging environment,” says Tollman. In the late 1990s, Agincourt transitioned from designing and testing decentralised health systems to a full-on population-based research platform conducting work relevant to other transitioning rural communities in southern and sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2004, the Agincourt Health and Population Unit was officially recognised as a South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) and Wits University research unit, with the new title, the MRC/

Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt). Now in 2022, the research centre covers 31 villages and some 120 000 people in 20 000 households.

“What makes the Agincourt Research Centre so interesting is the rapidly changing profile of a ‘transitioning’ society. It is reflected in mortality, morbidity, and risk data, and the intersection of infectious illnesses and non-communicable conditions like heart disease and diabetes. So, coupled with increased life expectancy thanks to the uptake of antiretroviral medication for HIV, for example, there is a high prevalence of other chronic conditions,” says Tollman.

Since 2004, Agincourt researchers have put emphasis on the “why?” of the rapid rise of non-communicable conditions (NCDs), and the reality of a younger population experiencing age-related afflictions, such as stroke, and neurological diseases.

“While specifics will differ by context and environment, the profound economic, social, lifestyle and behavioural changes that we are all experiencing are key determinants of an unfolding health and population transition – a phenomenon across the continent but with extreme intensity in South Africa, particularly rural South Africa,” says Kahn.

INTERNAL MIGRATION IMPACTS HEALTH

Professor Imraan Valodia, Director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, says that we tend to believe that Johannesburg is a smaller-scale version of the “real” SA, but indeed, “the Agincourt area shows this fascinating phenomenon of the blurring of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ lines, where it’s impossible to classify the area as having characteristics on which to devise coherent health, social and economic policies”. While the sustainability of urban corridors is critical, the lived reality of many South Africans suggests a remaking, reordering and mixing of village and city life.

“The Agincourt Research Centre is a living, dynamic, everchanging environment.”

“Migrant labour now involves large numbers of women. Transport patterns have changed. Digitisation is proceeding apace,” adds Tollman. But poverty and inequality remain deeply ingrained “driving health transitions that we don’t fully grasp”.

Internal migration (people moving within national borders in search of work, but returning to a rural home periodically) is a dominant feature of the South African economy. The impact of this migration on health is poorly understood.

Agincourt migration researcher, Dr Carren Ginsburg, who is an investigator on the Migrant Health Follow-Up Study, says that the study aims to understand how migration and urbanisation change risk factors for health conditions, and whether migration creates barriers to accessing treatment and has an impact on the continuity of healthcare.

“We are finding important differences in health and socioeconomic outcomes between migrants and rural residents, and between men and women. For example, women migrants display high blood pressure in contrast to residents who remain in the Agincourt study area, and migrants are less inclined to use health services in destinations when compared to those who have not moved,” says Ginsburg.

The work of the migration research group has highlighted the need for innovative healthcare strategies to ensure better and consistent care for mobile people.

POVERTY, POOR HEALTH AND CLIMATE CHANGE

The Agincourt Research Centre, says environmental researcher Professor Wayne Twine, is ideal to host multidisciplinary teams of scientists to better understand the nuanced and complex factors impacting on the high prevalence of multiple chronic illnesses in

the study population. This includes the effects of climate change, and the intersection of poverty, poor health and ecological degradation.

“We’ve seen that with widespread unemployment and the weakening of local governing authorities, that the culturally and economically important marula trees are being harvested for fire and fuelwood. While Bushbuckridge has electricity infrastructure, people resort to using these sacred trees (prized for their fruit) to cook and work because of money constraints. This also has health implications, especially for women, who are responsible for household labour. They breathe in smoke and are at risk of several respiratory diseases,” says Twine.

The researchers are seeing the living impacts of climate change, with droughts affecting household vegetable patches grown as supplementary food supply.

“We need climate-resilient food systems and an awareness of managing natural resources. But this cannot occur in isolation. People are aware of what the consequences are of cutting down trees, and so we must critically engage with what drives people’s daily decisions and work out policy from there. Climate change cuts across everything,” he adds.

PEOPLE-LED PUBLIC HEALTH

Top-down research methods rarely work in contexts like Agincourt, and for structural health changes to occur, community participation in identifying issues is critical.

Denny Mabetha and Maria van der Merwe are involved with the Verbal Autopsy with Participatory Action research project (VAPAR) at Agincourt. In many developing and transitioning societies, functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems are

Professor Mark Collinson hand-drew this map in 1991 as a visual aid to plan the MRC/Wits-Agincourt Research Unit field site. The map emphasises the locations of the Agincourt Health Centre and Mozambican refugees who had been displaced by civil war.

incomplete or absent, leading to poor social planning and policy implementation. Thus, family-based caregivers, through the verbal autopsy interview process, can provide much-needed information about the event of death, as well as the circumstances leading up to it.

“Our VAPAR project reveals the effectiveness of participatory action research in communities. We don’t surmise the challenges that they face; people identify their concerns and priorities, and we work from there,” says Mabetha.

DEFINING THE DECEASED

The participants identified lack of safe drinking water; alcohol and drug abuse; and difficulty adhering to medical treatment regimens as priorities.

“It thus allowed us to forge partnerships between service providers and service users, such as the Departments of Health and Social Development, sanitation initiatives and the affected communities. We encourage working together to improve our interventions,” says Mabetha.

Van der Merwe notes that the skills development of community health workers, especially in terms of improving and sustaining tuberculosis and HIV treatment, was a direct result of the community identifying gaps in healthcare. “We have supported, trained and built capacity of the community health workers and their standing within the health system and the community. This is a key component of the theory of change. They are, therefore, better used and respected in the formal health system,” she says.

Based on the positive experience of VAPAR’s contributions, and at the request of district management, the Agincourt Research Centre systematically trained and supported several hundred community health workers serving Bushbuckridge.

UNDERSTANDING COGNITION AND MENTAL HEALTH

Dr Ryan Wagner has looked at the longitudinal trends in Agincourt and found that certain mental and neurological health conditions were likely to become more prevalent in the coming years, but hard to measure, and thus were a barrier to implementing health interventions.

By undertaking rigorous innovative, population-based research, including neuroimaging with Wits Professor Victor Mngomezulu, as well as blood assays, they are for the first time in a rural South African context able to establish a baseline and to identify cognitive trajectories.

“This is enabling us to examine potential determinants and outcomes across the life course. For example, we are seeing an association between formal education and cognition. Formal education is likely a protective factor against diseases like dementia later in life,” says Wagner, something that is expected to be an important factor in an area with historically poor educational opportunity and attainment.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD LIFE?

Tollman and Kahn explain that the initial motivation to set up the Agincourt Research Centre was the pure neglect of rural South African populations. “We have continued to ask the question, over the last 30 years, ‘How do you build flourishing societies in a context where jobs are few, migrant labour is deeply embedded, but where aspirations and the desire to live a life of meaning is evident?’ In this way, Agincourt has been forward-thinking in its establishment of a contextually sensitive and responsive rural research and development ‘lab’ to tackle complex problems,” says Tollman

Twine says that Agincourt is a critical contributor to the first “African knowledge synthesis centre”, namely the Wits Rural Knowledge Hub, which aims to “make sense of the noise of all the data out there”.

He adds: “We are bringing together our longitudinal data sets, and different types of knowing and experiencing the world, to generate new understandings and new knowledge to tackle development challenges.” C

FUTURE-FOCUSED RURAL RESEARCH

Tshegofatso Seabi is a PhD candidate and Programme Manager in the Agincourt Research Centre. Her research interests are obesity, adolescent health, behaviour change, rural health and policy. She says that she has gained an enormous amount of knowledge and experience working at Agincourt, and that this has greatly improved her career trajectory.

“Young researchers are included in everything. I have been involved in the grant writing process. I see the impact that our research has on the community. It has been so exciting to work with many people from different backgrounds. Training traditional healers in using personal protective equipment was one of the highlights of 2021.”

“We are bringing together our longitudinal data sets, and different types of knowing and experiencing the world, to generate new understandings and new knowledge to tackle development challenges.”

THE POLITICS OF PROTEST

Protests are a hallmark of Wits’ history and have contributed to the University’s legacy of social activism, democracy and constitutionality. Always uncomfortable, often traumatic, protests are about speaking truth to power –and they are a South African human right. Ufrieda Ho asked Professor Noor Nieftagodien, Head of the History Workshop at Wits, for his reflections.

The year that Wits came into being in 1922 was a wild one by all accounts. Protests and mineworkers striking, coupled with underlying race-based jobs wars on the mines, exploded into the Rand Rebellion. Just months later, Wits was granted full university status in a young city full of unquiet energy and contestation. So over its 100 years, Wits has had a knotted history of protest, resistance and contention tied to capital versus labour, racial division, as well as the poisoned treasures of the extractive industries and the making and re-making of a city of gold.

Nieftagodien recounts some of these impactful historical events in Wits’ history, and offers insights into what comes next in

safeguarding the right to protest, nurturing activism, the need for deeper reckoning regarding the growing securitisation of campus, and the impact of how a time of isolation, clickivism and social media noise reframes the questions of how a university of the future reimagines its role outside the academy.

THE RISE OF STUDENT ACTIVISM

Picking up from the tumult of strikes of the 1920s, Nieftagodien says that the mineworkers’ strikes in the 1920s took place in an era of anti-fascist struggles, mirroring the groundswell across Europe from around the mid-1930s to the 1950s. Added to this push against oppressive regimes came the rise of the Nationalist

Party in 1948. It would shape a response from Wits to defend its autonomy and remain an ‘open’ university, even though black students were a small minority on campus.

From the mid-1960s, more radical voices were heard in the ranks of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), who were concerned about the complicity of universities in supporting apartheid. By the late 1960s there was growing dissatisfaction that the predominantly white NUSAS would not or could not prioritise a more radical response to fighting racist structures within the University and the country. Black students, led by Steve Biko, left NUSAS to establish the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO), which inaugurated the formation of the Black Consciousness Movement, Nieftagodien says. The NUSAS-SASO split would be crucial in shaping political resistance.

BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS

“The importance of the decision to split was confirmed by the 1970s. The SASO grew significantly, not only at the former white universities but also at black universities, giving rise to the stronghold of black consciousness at the University of Durban-Westville and the University of the Western Cape,” says Nieftagodien.

University-based activism would fill the gap in the struggle in the 1970s when organisations, including the SASO, were banned. Nieftagodien says that the emergence of the Azanian Student Organisation (AZASO), although regarded as the successor to SASO, had by the early 1980s adopted non-racialism and support for the Freedom Charter. This marked a convergence again between black and white students, with AZASO and NUSAS forging a strong alliance, he explains.

A CLIMATE OF DISQUIET

The political climate in the aftermath of the Soweto Uprising in 1976 into the 1980s would see Wits, particularly students, supported by some academics, take a strong stand against the apartheid regime – but it would mean ratcheting up police brutality and violence. Police stormed campuses and harassed and beat up students. Nieftagodien says that it forced the English-speaking universities to take a more public stand against apartheid.

This was also a moment that marked an era of stronger offcampus activism aligned to trade union organisations that were not banned at the time. Fighting for workers’ rights would be a crucial layer of pushback in the broader fight to end apartheid.

WITS AND DISSENTING VOICES

Fast forward to the democratic era and protests have not strayed far from workers’ rights, including the in-sourcing of workers at Wits. Protests have extended to struggles to transform university curricula; to decisively address gender-based violence and rape culture; to reform fee structures, to address historical debt; to protest against xenophobia; to demand treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS; and to acknowledge the unequal burdens on mostly black students without financial means and support. It

would make the #FeesMustFall movement of 2015/2016 another critical turning point in the history of Wits and South Africa.

Alongside student-led protests, some academics and staff took a public stance during the protests.

“We were able to mobilise several hundred academics across the country to sign a letter demanding that the national government increase subsidies to support the project of ensuring the viability of public universities,” says Nieftagodien.

POST-PANDEMIC SECURITISATION

Nieftagodien is concerned that since #FeesMustFall, Wits has become increasingly securitised. The 2020-2022 Covid19 lockdown years added to campus life growing quiet. Nieftagodien’s opinion is that what should emerge from this period is a reinvigoration of campuses as spaces not just for learning, research and scholarship, but to be “spaces of critical thinking and of independence that allows – at the right moment – the environment for academics, students and administrators to take a stand in support of the good of the public.” C

WITSIES WITH THE EDGE

Jerome September, the Dean of Student Affairs, points out that Wits is not unique in terms of protest but he says that it is an important legacy that Wits activists over the decades have been at the forefront of speaking truth to power, shifting national priorities and sounding wake-up calls for society.

One such activist is Emeritus Professor in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Barry Dwolatzky, who turned 70 this year. He says that his activism was shaped from the moment he stepped onto campus in 1971. Dwolatzky, who is currently working on his memoir, pulls an intergenerational thread through protests at Wits. He says: “We still sit with the big issues that reached a peak in 2015 and 2016 with #FeesMustFall, that haven’t gone away. At the same time those issues were not dissimilar to the questions that we were asking in the 60s and 70s about what shape education should take – how could it be significant and meaningful, who would it include and who would be left behind?”

Having shared 51 years of Wits’ 100-year journey, he says the ‘what next?’ chapters are to be written by a new generation of activists. “My role is to tell my story, to reinforce the need for community mobilisation and to keep asking better questions, but it’s not to tell young people what to do – they know what they want and the resolutions that they are willing to fight for,” he says.

September believes that it would be a failure if students left Wits without recognising that activism, protest and active citizenship are components of democracy and democracy building. This could be in raising awareness of climate change, better public healthcare for all, or protesting against state capture and corruption.

“If we are to develop young people to be future leaders of organisations across all sectors, then they must be able to have to deal with activism, to deal with differences of opinion and with strong expressions of these opinions, and be able to make sense of where they fit in the broader debates and issues being raised.”

“In both the public and private sectors, we have seen responses which treat protests as an inconvenience instead of a sign of a healthy democracy.”

WITS AT A TIME OF NATIONAL CRISIS: THEN AND NOW

In 1986, Wits initiated the Perspectives of Wits (POW) project to explore township communities’ perceptions of the University. Professors Jacklyn Cock and Eddie Webster suggest that we revisit how Wits is perceived in the 21st Century in the context of climate change and persistent inequality.

As the number of black students increased at Wits University in the 1980s, township struggles spread onto the campus and management came under increasing grassroots pressure to implement change within the University. In response, social scientists in the Faculty of Humanities, with the financial support of the University’s Research Office, undertook an extensive survey of the perception of Wits among organisations in Gauteng townships, as well as of international academics, students and staff at Wits, and even had a meeting with the then-banned African National Congress (ANC) in Lusaka.

The outcome of this Wits-initiated research project, Perspectives of Wits, published at the height of apartheid in 1986, revealed a disconnect between township communities’ perceptions of Wits, and the image that the Wits administration had been attempting to convey of the University as a progressive opponent of apartheid.

The POW survey revealed that a large proportion of the

community members surveyed thought that Wits served mainly white, corporate interests. The report recommended widespread further transformation of the University.

KNOWLEDGE FOR WHOM, FOR WHAT, BY WHOM?

Nearly 40 years later, with University leadership, staff and students increasingly representative of South Africa’s demography, Wits has clearly made significant progress towards what the late antiapartheid cleric Reverend Beyers Naudé called for at the time, “securing a democratic, educational future for all in South Africa”.

However, we must ask whether the University’s responses to the multiple crises we face today are not reproducing a similar disconnect between the University and the growing number of students struggling to pay their fees, amidst the impoverished and hungry masses eking out an existence in the sprawling informal settlements in Gauteng.

Do we need another survey to establish whose interests and needs we are serving? This survey needs to be framed by three crucial questions: Knowledge for whom? Knowledge for what? And knowledge by whom?

MIND THE MINES

These questions are of relevance because of our long-standing relationship with the mining industry. Indeed, our origins go back to the South African School of Mines, established in Kimberley in 1896. At the time of the POW survey, the Chamber of Mines – and AngloAmerican in particular – remained our largest private donor. Of course, there have been occasions in our history when the Chamber felt that it was not receiving a satisfactory return on its investment in the University. An example was the attempt by the asbestos industry to suppress the findings in the 1950s by the Wits Pneumoconiosis Unit of a link between asbestos and cancer – the hidden disease of mesothelioma. On balance, however, it can rightly be claimed that Wits has served mining capital well over the years.

Today, extractivism – the process of extracting natural resources from the Earth to sell on the world market – particularly of coal, is under attack because of its relationship to the crises of climate change and deepening inequality. As in the past, there are a variety of responses to these crises amongst Wits’ diverse constituencies. The establishment of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies and the recent appointment by Wits of a Pro-Vice Chancellor on Climate, Sustainability and Inequality is an exciting response that places Wits at the forefront of two central national challenges: climate change and the persistence of our position as the most unequal country in the world in terms of income and wealth.

These high levels of inequality have been sustained, and in some cases have deepened in the post-apartheid era. Will our researchers help promote a shift in the dominant view of coal as a source of energy, jobs and foreign exchange, to the view that coal is a driver of inequality and environmental damage? Will we help promote a democratic “just transition” from coal, which includes the lived experience of people in coal-affected communities? In the present cacophony of voices addressing the question of a just

COMMODIFYING KNOWLEDGE

Much has changed over the past four decades as Wits and universities globally have been restructured according to a market logic. This means that knowledge is largely valued in terms of its capacity to be commodified. As universities have been defunded by the state, funds have been sought through raising student fees, the provision of short and online vocational courses, trusts and foundations, and endowments from wealthy alumni.

One of Wits’ biggest mistakes, which it has since rectified, was to try to cut costs by outsourcing its service staff to avoid paying benefits. Furthermore, over time, the balance of power has shifted from academics to the administration as a form of academic managerialism triumphed and Senate was in danger of being side-lined. The Senate is accountable to the Council for regulating all teaching, learning, research and academic functions of the University and all other functions delegated or assigned to it by the Council.

The Australian academic Jill Blackmore suggests that this market logic “results in epistemic injustice … it ignores the social and material conditions of knowledge production – the social relations of collegiality and collaboration, the emotional labour of teaching and researching” that is “dangerous for democracies”.

As Wits proudly celebrates a century of independent critical thought, maybe we need to revisit our external stakeholders to see how they perceive us in the face of the multiple crises of increasing inequality, casualisation of labour and ecological devastation?

Indeed, is it not time for all South African universities to revisit their multiple publics and explore with them what a public university in southern Africa in the 21st Century could – and should – become? C

Jacklyn Cock is Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Sciences and Edward Webster is Professor Emeritus in the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies. They were members of the Perspectives of Wits research team in the 1980s and remain active researchers at Wits today.

transition, we hope that these marginalised voices will be heard.

TELLING AFRICAN STORIES THROUGH ART

The Wits Art Museum, a decade old in 2022, houses a world-class African art collection and is an architectural embodiment of the city that it inhabits and sentinel of African art stories, both untold and emerging.

BETH AMATO CHANTÉ SCHATZ

On the corner of Jan Smuts Avenue and Jorissen Street in Braamfontein there once stood a post-apocalyptic site: a grotty petrol station adorned in rusty barbed wire. Above this towered the University Corner building, which housed a curious revolving restaurant in disrepair. But in 2009 this changed with the rejuvenation of University Corner and the breaking of ground where the Wits Art Museum (WAM) would be established.

COLLECTION, LOCATION, AND VISION

“The location of WAM is particularly significant,” says the Museum’s Senior Curator, Julia Charlton, who has journeyed with WAM in its various iterations since 1997. “One of our main reasons for existence was to show ‘academic citizenship’. We needed to be accessible to the public, through our location, free entrance and presentation.”

In the 1990s, WAM’s extensive collection was bursting at the seams in what was then the Gertrude Posel Gallery, housed in Senate House (now Solomon Mahlangu House) at Wits University. The Gallery was difficult to access and its location was ill-suited to meet the contemporary needs that its remarkable collection deserved. But with the help of generous individual donations and a commitment shown to WAM by its donors and University leadership over the years, WAM has secured its appropriate and rightful place along one of Johannesburg’s key cultural arcs.

“The fact that we are here today is quite remarkable,” says Charlton. Wits was undertaking five major capital projects at the

same time, which was unprecedented. “We had to pull in a lot of money to make this a sustainable site. But the urgent need to house the African art collections properly resonated powerfully with the benefactors, who shared the vision of transforming a shabby corner of Johannesburg into an excellent art museum and combining art and education in concrete form.”

Charlton commends the visionary leadership of former Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Belinda Bozzoli, and former Vice-Chancellor Professor Loyiso Nongxa, who believed in the establishment of WAM as a prolific contribution to arts and culture at large.

Charlton recalls a particularly special moment when Nongxa opened an exhibition at the Wits Galleries in Senate House in 2001. Nongxa saw, for the first time, items that he recognised as part of his cultural heritage in the Eastern Cape, admitted into the great canons of art. “The fact that these artefacts were deemed art – collected, curated, and cared for – moved him a great deal,” explains Charlton.

BOOKS AS ART AND ARTISTS BOOKS

In 2019, WAM opened the Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts (the Centre), the namesake of generous benefactor, Jack Ginsberg. His collection of ‘artists books’ and books on the subject procured over 50 years were once pitched for by a prestigious New York Museum, but Ginsberg was firm in his choice to house them at WAM and to grow this artistic sub-field in Africa. Wits

is Ginsberg’s alma mater, and this was a strong reason for his important collection being placed there.

“Book art, and indeed the Centre, is a living, growing field. There are many differing definitions of what makes an artist’s book. We embrace the Duchampian approach: If an artist considers something an artwork then it’s an artwork,” says Ginsberg.

At the Centre, visitors will be treated to Pippa Skotnes’ book sculpted horse and an incredible display of Sue Williamson’s objects collected in the aftermath of the forced removals in District Six. The Centre has an acquisitions budget that enables it to keep up with developments in the field and hosts four major exhibitions a year.

The Centre is the largest book arts centre in the southern hemisphere. In Wits’ centenary year, the Centre is exhibiting most of world-renowned artist and Wits alumnus William Kentridge’s artists books and art monographs, and this is significant: “I think that the number of Kentridge’s art monographs are approaching [Andy] Warhol’s,” says Ginsberg.

‘ARTEDEMIC’ CITIZENSHIP

At WAM, academic citizenship extends to teaching, research and public engagement and WAM’s Education Curator, Kamal Naran, says that the Museum has been a rich resource for young children, students, researchers and the general public. “We have tried to be relevant and it has been such a joy to arrange tours and educational activities for people across all disciplines. For example, we had architectural students engaging in a recent exhibition for the explicit purpose of developing their critical thinking skills.”

Charlton explains that the disparate components of WAM form a rich, vast and varied collection of artworks and a unique resource.

The Wits Art Museum has four storerooms covering 3 000 m2, housing more than 12 000 artworks, of which 5 551 comprise the Standard Bank African Art Collection. The Museum’s holdings now include the Schlesinger Collection, the Gerard Sekoto Collection, the Robert Hodgins Print Archive and the Walter Battiss Collection. Another major component is the Wits Museum of Ethnology Collection, a closed collection officially transferred from the University’s Anthropology Department in 2001. Several substantial research archives have been donated to WAM. Among these are the Neil Goedhals collection, the Judith Mason Archive, and the Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts.

REDEFINING ART

Wits University’s Art History syllabus changed rapidly in the 1980s to include the study of African artists and artworks, particularly what is now described as classical/historical African art, says Charlton. Until then, what constituted “art” and “art history” was taught as a linear progression from “Ancient Egyptian through Greek and Roman towards the Renaissance and beyond, to the Impressionists and Surrealists and ending somewhere around Pop Art.” However, Wits soon became known for its African art specialisation, which then influenced the growth of the collection.

Kutlwano Mokgojwa, Curator of the African art collection at WAM, says that for a long time, the West has dominated the idea of African art expression. Mokgojwa says that the Museum's collection, exhibition, teaching, publication and research efforts have tried to subvert this ill-fitting notion of “African art”.

Wits academics have, through the African art collection, contested the idea that the continent only has (a narrow) artistic expression. Wits Professor Anitra Nettleton drove this contestation at WAM and within the University. She showed how varied African art was, says Mokgojwa. Although this is not reflected as prolifically in the writings of Western art history, “these are part of our cultural heritage and they can't be dismissed as craft. Since Nettleton’s work has been completed, we have added to the art historical canon by taking the time to research and find these incredible artworks.” In this way, WAM has made and continues to make a seminal contribution to the continent’s cultural and artistic narrative.

Mokgojwa believes that WAM’s attention to detail in its dizzying complexity and variation of African art has enabled artists and creatives of African descent to reclaim their narratives. “We are living in an incredible age; we are telling our stories from our perspectives and disseminating them to the world.”

THE EVOLUTION OF SCIENCE AND RESEARCH PRACTICE

Charlotte Mathews looks at how science and research practice at Wits has evolved over a century, from individuals working in silos, to the more data-intensive, collaborative, crossdisciplinary and public-facing field it is today.

The world is changing faster than ever. There is a massive demand from society worldwide to find answers to local and international challenges, and planetary problems too. With universities at the centre of knowledge generation, it is only natural for people to look to these institutions for solutions to climate change, geopolitical instability, inequality and economic challenges globally. However, due to the way in which universities were established traditionally, with research conducted in discipline “silos”, it has been difficult for higher education institutions to serve up the solutions to complex societal challenges.

“Problems are evolving fast – they are becoming ‘harder’ and more ‘real-world’,” says Professor Andrew Forbes of the Wits School of Physics. “There is a demand from our funders, predominately the public, to address pressing problems as well as create new knowledge.”

South African citizens indirectly fund public universities through paying taxes, a portion of which the government uses to subsidise

public universities. Most research-intensive universities also require third-stream funding and donor support to produce quality research.

Since Wits started as a mining school 100 years ago, the focus has always been on enabling discovery research, applied research and innovative research, in collaboration with the public and private sectors, industry and civil society at times.

INNOVATE AND COLLABORATE FOR IMPACT

“Research at Wits is world-class and excellent,” says Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the new Wits Innovation Centre. “The gap that I see is the conversion of research into ‘innovation’. Far too much of our excellent research ends in the publication of an academic article or the awarding of a higher degree. We need to go the next step in taking that research output into society as a product, service or new policy. The biggest obstacle in doing this is mindset.”

Dwolatzky has spearheaded a new Strategic Plan for Innovation, which includes tackling research conducted in isolation.

“In the 21st Century research environment, disciplines cannot solve the world’s problems in isolation, so there is a growing emphasis on multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches to global problems,” says Professor Ruksana Osman, Senior Deputy ViceChancellor: Academic and UNESCO Research Chair in Teacher Education for Diversity and Development.

This focus on collaborative inter-, multi- and transdisciplinary research is not just encouraged in the field of human evolution, in which Wits is a global leader. It is something that Professor Lee Berger, the Phillip Tobias Chair in Palaeoanthropology, actively drives.

Berger’s team collaborates with almost every other faculty in the University. For instance, they support PhD students in zoology, archaeology, geography, palaeosciences, geology, architecture and planning, anatomy and several medical disciplines.

“The study of the past in humans should engage almost every human endeavour,” says Berger, who has been with Wits for 32 years.

“In my early career, I had a conversation with a then-deputy vice-chancellor, who told me: ‘you have a terrific research background, but you need more single-author papers, because that is how you will be judged’.”

Twenty-five years later, Berger says it is not uncommon to write papers with dozens of authors from across the world.

“Science has emerged, not as a conceptual idea of a lone genius, but one where great advances are achieved collaboratively.”

Berger has become world-famous for sharing his work, and

“The gap I see is the conversion of research into ‘innovation’.”

that of his team on social media platforms, inviting scientists from all over the world to collaborate and share their knowledge, and making available the fossils that his team discovered to researchers worldwide. This has also made him extremely unpopular with some global peers who have a more “traditional” approach to science.

“I am an enormous proponent of ‘open collaboration’ and ‘open access’,” says Berger. “That means one, opening it to other scientists, which is a major mission of mine, and two, to the general public, to people who are interested in, and who are funding the science.”

FROM STEM TO STEAM

There are numerous other examples of highly successful crossdisciplinary collaborations at Wits.

Forbes says that because he has been allowed creative rein at Wits, his own work has expanded beyond physics to encompass groups in chemistry, engineering, health and even art. Crossdisciplinary research demands and reflects a move from focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to incorporating the arts (STEAM).

“My structured light group is now working closely with Arts Research Africa under Professor Christo Doherty in the Wits School of Arts to explore art-science innovation, through an artistin-residence programme. The idea is to change perspectives in the route to innovation. There are not many institutions in South Africa where this is possible and we are excited as to where this might lead. This is what makes Wits special – it is always evolving in perspective and scope, to create and enhance research.”

In the last five of the 15 years that Doherty has been at Wits, he says that the changing relationship between different creative arts and research – initiating interdisciplinary research between the creative arts and “hard” sciences – has been a major step forward for the University. Previously, most creative arts programmes ended at the Master’s level. Recently, PhD or research programmes in creative arts subjects have become possible, with students often applying an understanding of arts practices, such as materiality, embodiment or performance, to other fields of investigation.

DRAWING FROM A DIVERSE TOOLBOX

Not only has the nature of research changed. “The toolkit is also evolving fast,” says Forbes. “It is now very sophisticated and embeds intelligence beyond that of just the researcher. Thinking and doing ‘the same as before’ is unlikely to make a real impact.”

Osman says that research in the 21st Century is characterised by several defining features. In the context of the wide availability of (big) data and (open) knowledge, the emphasis is on synthesis rather than collection and curation. This suggests that researchers nowadays must have a strong sense of what knowledge counts, and why.

This has resulted in research work on meta-analyses and systematic reviews. Some of Osman’s work has focused on a meta-analysis of educational policy studies and a meta-analysis of educational scholarship in higher education. She says that there is far less emphasis on discrete [separate] methodological expertise and more on researchers having a diverse toolbox of methodologies upon which to draw.

“Research is now far more driven by technology and data,” says Professor Imraan Valodia, the former Dean of the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management and now Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality.

Professor Cathi Albertyn, South African Research Chair in Equality, Law and Social Justice, says that the most obvious change since the 1980s was the move from books to computers: researchers no longer have to sit in libraries but can research from their offices. This has also made it quicker to do research –“although, as it has become faster, something has been lost: time to engage and reflect”.

The second obvious change, linked to that development, is that media-savvy researchers can disseminate their research more easily, she says.

Dwolatzky, who graduated with a PhD in Electrical Engineering at Wits in 1979, says: “The most remarkable change that I see when I compare research at Wits in the 1970s to the way it is undertaken now, is that now there is a large ‘support environment’ that surrounds research. Research in the 2020s at Wits is far more formally managed. Students are under pressure to make progress and work to a timeline and supervisors are under pressure to ensure that they meet these deadlines. Research productivity is measured and discussed.”

FOCUSED RESEARCH MATTERS MORE

It is not just the nature of research that has changed. It is also the focus.

“Research is more socially connected and linked to big social questions than ever before,” says Valodia. “For example, in my areas of speciality, we’ve embarked on big projects on climate change, unemployment and social policy. I think that research

“In the 21st Century research environment, disciplines cannot solve the world’s problems in isolation.”

is correctly becoming more relevant to the big questions that societies face, and that trend is likely to continue.”

This is also true in other areas, which traditionally have not seen much scope for interdisciplinary work.

Albertyn says that there is far greater diversification in methods and collaboration in law research than before. “It was unusual when I started for people to do interviews or social research and understand how the law worked in action. In those days, legal research mainly focused on legislation and cases. Today, it is more interdisciplinary, working with anthropologists or historians to bring different perspectives. Lawyers are also moving beyond traditional legal methodology and are not just reading texts but also interviewing people on how law works in practice.”

In the Wits School of Arts (WSOA), a postgraduate programme, Drama for Life, combines various arts disciplines and techniques to bring an understanding of audience and imaginative engagement to address social issues, such as the effects of HIV/ Aids and Covid-19 on youth and marginalised communities.

NEXT GENERATION RESEARCHERS

The changing face of research at Wits has already made an impact on the world, as well as a difference in terms of attracting interest in the University. David Francis, Deputy Director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) at Wits and one of the “next generation” of academics, says that the Centre has seen more widespread interest in how to address the problems of inequality.

“We have seen enthusiasm from other academics, policymakers and activists for an interdisciplinary approach to understanding inequality. That helps to inform our research agenda and it means that there is an audience who is interested,” says Francis.

The SCIS was set up by Valodia as a multidisciplinary research hub to encourage research and policy changes to help address inequality.

“There is a real enthusiasm for research and a depth of ability

among young economists,” says Francis, adding that the SCIS is launching new PhD fellowship and Master’s courses and that these are attracting high-calibre applicants. “This is probably because the issues that the Centre is tackling are seen as highly relevant, so we are attracting engaged scholars.”

Albertyn has also seen a difference in the School of Law.

“In recent years, a career in academic law has become far more acceptable to graduates than it was in the 1990s to early 2000s, when the lure of higher salaries in the commercial world or the status of being a professional held greater appeal.”

As research becomes more complex, mentoring the next generation of researchers becomes increasingly important. However, developing the next generation of academics will not happen automatically, says Osman. It must be done in a targeted way, such as through the Future Professor Programme. This is a flagship programme of the Department of Higher Education and Training to develop academic excellence and leadership in university scholarship and so develop the South African professoriate in future.

“We have programmes to develop early career academics, linking them with mentors, and ensuring that they work in big teams to develop the necessary skills sets,” says Osman.

Dwolatzky predicts that, in future, IT systems will be used increasingly to monitor and streamline the research process. “In terms of the content of the research done, I’m hoping that in the future there will be a much stronger relationship between research and impact. I define this as ‘innovation’.”

Professor Lynn Morris, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation, concludes: “In terms of the Research and Innovation agenda, it is important that the research is responsive and relevant locally and globally – and that includes local communities –, that research is done at the highest academic standards, that we insist on excellence and that we ensure academics set the agenda without political interference.” C

Lauren Mulligan

THE WITS DIGITAL DOME TO LIGHT UP THE SKY

It’s the end of an era for the Wits Planetarium, although reimagining it as a digital dome promises to be literally out of this world.

UFRIEDA HO SHIVAN PARUSNATH

It’s a good day at the Wits Planetarium when the soundtrack Vangelis, the Greek musician, syncs perfectly with the moving projection of a cluster of stars rising from the rim of the dome, while the room darkens, on cue, to a shade of deep-space black.

“I still get a kick out of it every time,” says Planetarium Supervisor Constant Volschenk, who has played “conductor” hundreds of times at the Planetarium since 1997. He has overseen an orchestra of gears, dials, knobs and switches that have made planetarium live shows pop for thousands of people who have

over the years craned their necks into the cushioned headrests and willingly fallen under the spell of the story of the night sky.

“We can have 400 school learners at a show. When you get through to even one child who leaves in total amazement, then my job is done,” says Volschenk.

PLANETARIUM PROJECTION

In the days before the Covid-19 lockdown, the Planetarium welcomed about 60 000 people every year. It’s been a popular city fixture since it opened its doors in October 1960. It was in

1956 when the then Johannesburg City Council decided that a planetarium would be the perfect hurrah for a City that was turning 70 years old. Wits donated the land, cementing a city-university partnership, and welcomed a unique asset to the campus. Zeiss, the manufacturer of the star projectors in Germany was not able to manufacture a new projector in time that year. “That’s when the Hamburg Planetarium offered their projector for sale. Part of the arrangement was for the star projector – which was built in 1930 – to be taken to Copenhagen so that it could be upgraded to become the Zeiss MKIII that we now have,” says Volschenk. He adds that the distinct pale avocado dome along Yale Road was designed specifically to optimise the projection from this Zeiss MKIII projector.

MAN ON THE MOON IN YALE ROAD

Over the years there have been dozens of live and pre-recorded shows that have ranged from ancient Egyptian astronomy to exploring major celestial events like solar and lunar eclipses. The Planetarium has also been the venue for numerous launches and talks. Volschenk remembers the time that it was turned into a giant beach to re-launch a holiday club scheme for Sun City.

“Following the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Planetarium was one of the first places in South Africa where people got to watch the recordings of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the lunar surface. The tapes were flown in from London and someone fetched them directly from the pilots and brought them here. It was such a big event that people were lined up all the way to De Korte Street waiting to get in, and there was no charge,” reminisces Volschenk.

These are the kind of historical highlights that have put the Planetarium’s star projector at the heart of the City’s heritage. But now it’s time for the grand ol’ dame projector herself to slip into memory. The Zeiss MKIII will be pensioned off in 2022 to make room for a rebuild project that will give Wits and the public a research, educational and entertainment resource aligned with 21st Century demands.

VISUAL LAB PUTS STARS IN OUR EYES

Professor Roger Deane, Director of the Wits Centre for Astrophysics and the Square Kilometre Array Chair in Radio Astronomy, says that the multi-million rand digital upgrade will transform the familiar dome into a high-tech, fully immersive, multi-sensory, multi-dimensional resource. He likens it to an IMAX theatre experience – but better.

“For many researchers across many fields, we feel as if we are basically drowning in data, which is coupled with the challenge of datasets becoming more complex and more multi-dimensional. A resource like this Digital Dome is a way of honing a more intuitive understanding of big data,” explains Deane.

The technology will be a boon to science and research, while it will also hit the sweet spot for entertaining and educating a modern-day public. As an example, Deane imagines that it could be three-dimensional shows made from drone footage swooping through the world’s largest radio telescope, the SKA. An immersive experience of the SKA, which is built in an inaccessible part of the Karoo, inspires collective pride in this significant South African scientific endeavour in a site that most people will never get to visit.

“We could also visualise what the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is measuring as particles are smashed together. It’s why we view the

Digital Dome as a visualisation laboratory that will have countless applications and opportunities for collaborations, including creating local content for showcasing a wide range of academic disciplines, from lightning research to multi-layered biodiversity data, as well as advancements in the digital arts,” he says.

MULTIDISCIPLINARY CELESTIAL (AND SPORTS) IMMERSION

It could also serve as an additional medium to highlight some of the Wits Arts Museum’s 15 000 works of art for instance, or as a virtual walkthrough of the world-renowned active archaeological dig sites that Wits has been excavating and studying.

Beyond Wits, it could present visualisation and immersive experiences for a community of researchers to better understand ocean conditions, to study climate science, or to virtually explore underground mines towards improving strategies to reduce mining accidents or to limit environmental damage.

“The emphasis on multi- and trans-disciplinary research and applications is critical to give the new Digital Dome continued relevance, access for those from disadvantaged communities in particular, and for it to justify the big spend,” adds Deane.

He says that the Wits Council has already committed about a fifth of the funds (around R20 million) of all three stages required, meaning that the construction can kick off in 2022, Wits’ centenary year. A major donor is also interested in funding the first phase of the project.

The building project will incorporate a revamp of the Planetarium, within an upgraded precinct, and will include a partnership with Wits Sport on revitalising joint facilities and surrounding structures. The new facilities will be used both for viewing sports matches and to host exhibitions and other events.

Given that it is a multi-use precinct, it will ensure broad, Universitywide use as well as greater public patronage and access.

This project is also about giving attention to this wonderful, green precinct at the north end of campus that is perhaps sometimes underappreciated.

“I’m an astronomer focused on research and postgraduate training. However, I believe that as academics, we have broader roles and responsibilities in society. In this project we are furthering the interests of Wits, as well as promoting science engagement and education with the public, and what that means for the City and for community building,” explains Deane.

He promises that the Zeiss MKIII will “go to a good home” as she is moved out of the Planetarium. She deserves it – after all, it is this projector that started everything 62 years ago, with each planetarium show urging another person to reach a little further, to touch the stars. C

“The emphasis on multi- and transdisciplinary research and applications is critical to give the new Digital Dome continued relevance.”

FACING CLIMATE CHANGE HEAD-ON

Climate change took nearly a century to become mainstream science. Wits is taking the lead in facing up to the challenge.

SHAUN SMILLIE REUTERS/ROGAN WARD

Water from heavy rains runs along a road, which was damaged during previous flooding, in kwaNdengezi near Durban, South Africa, May 22, 2022.

While climate change is now accepted as being humankind’s – and the planet’s – greatest threat, it took science nearly a century to come to this realisation and to convince the world of this fact.

Climate change started out as a theory in the early 1900s when scientists started to speculate that the burning of coal and oil could trigger a process of global warming.

The hard science to prove the theory would only come 50 years later when one scientist started seeing evidence of change in the atmosphere.

In 1958, Charles Keeling at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii started taking measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. For the next 50 years, Keeling would continue his measurements, noting the continuing rise of CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

It would be 30 years after that when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) came into being, with the intention of providing governments at all levels with scientific information to inform climate policies.

WORLD WAKES UP TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Gradually climate change science came to be accepted into the mainstream.

“By the late 1990s, early 2000s, the majority of the world’s nations had accepted the evidence of human-induced global warming,” says Francois Engelbrecht, Professor of Climatology at Wits’ Global Change Institute (GCI).

In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol signed in Japan committed countries to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This was replaced by the Paris Agreement in 2015 that aimed to raise finances to assist countries in fighting the effects of climate change.

Now, 65 years after Keeling first began recording increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere, there is growing evidence of climate change happening around the world.

“The level of global warming that we’ve reached today in 2022, when compared to the pre-industrial temperature of the early 1800s, is about 1.2 degrees Celsius. If we look at different parts of the world, there are many regions that are warming up faster than this global average,” says Engelbrecht.

South Africa is one of these regions, with the Highveld experiencing a rise in temperature of two degrees Celsius when compared to pre-industrial times. With this rise will come extreme weather events, droughts and heat waves.

At Wits’ GCI, efforts are being made to predict the effects that climate change will have on the African continent.

At the forefront of this research is Lengau, a super computer that generates detailed projections of climate change in Africa. The name Lengau is a nod to the computer’s speed, as it means cheetah in Setswana. Lengau’s predictions for the near future makes for frightening reading.

SOUTH AFRICA’S “TIPPING POINTS”

Four future climate events – or tipping points – have been identified and they are on a scale never seen before in the historic record. Alarmingly, they could happen in the next ten to 20 years.

The first of these is a day zero drought hitting Gauteng, devastating the economy and triggering an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.

The second tipping point is the complete collapse of the South African maize crop and cattle industry, brought on by long-lasting droughts.

A third tipping point scenario is killer heat waves that we might even experience within the decade, which could kill thousands of people.

The fourth catastrophe could come from the sea in the form of category four or five tropical cyclones barrelling down the Mozambique Channel.

“What the Institute’s climate modelling tells us is that because of the warming of the waters in the Mozambique Channel, for the first time it is possible that a tropical cyclone of category four or five intensity can make landfall as far south as Maputo or maybe even as far south as Richards Bay,” says Engelbrecht.

A category four cyclone would make landfall with sustained winds of 200km an hour. It could dump 500mm to 1 000mm of rain in a day or two and be accompanied by a killer storm surge.

To better understand these devastating weather events, work at the Institute continues to better define and understand the models.

“The problem is that many South Africans don't know what the future possibly holds. We need to talk about these risks because we are totally unprepared for any of these four tipping points,” says Engelbrecht.

MAINSTREAMING CLIMATE CHANGE

Wits University has put climate change and sustainability front and centre by appointing a Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality, to coordinate University-wide efforts to research, adapt and mitigate climate change at the University.

“We don’t see climate change as something that can just be focused on in one part of the University,” says Professor Imraan Valodia, the Pro Vice Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality. “We wanted to mainstream it throughout the University, so the position was created to coordinate efforts and integrate different parts of the University and add value.”

The Office will focus on five task areas, including transdisciplinary research; teaching, with specialised training in climate change and sustainability in an integrated way; looking at the University’s internal operations and reducing its climate footprint; advocacy; and policy support.

“One example of how we are mainstreaming climate change in our teaching is through the course on climate that we teach all first years at University as part of the Gateway to Success Programme, initiated by my colleagues,” says Valodia. “We want our students to be key agents of change as they are the ones who are going to have to change the world and who have to confront tough economic issues in the process. We cannot have an energy and climate transition without dealing with the deep social issues around climate change at the same time.”

As part of its next strategic plan, the University is also actively looking at ways to reduce energy and water consumption, develop cleaner, more cost-effective and efficient energy systems, grow organic food gardens, make buildings greener, develop better waste management strategies, and make the campus greener. C

“Four future climate events –or tipping points – have been identified and they are on a scale never seen before in the historic record.”

DIGGING FOR THE TRUTH OF HUMANITY

Wits researchers have over the past century changed, and challenged, the way we think about the evolution of humanity and our ancestors.

SHAUN SMILLIE CHRIS COLLINGRIDGE & BRETT ELOFF

In the Cradle of Humankind, a group of scientists waited for the moment when they would know if they had struck pay dirt. The wait was for the first of 20 cores to come to the surface courtesy of a diesel-powered drilling rig.

That pay dirt, if all worked out, would be a core of tufafreshwater carbonate rock that contains the fossilised remains of plants. Tufa is a variety of limestone formed when carbonate minerals precipitate out of ambient temperature water. It would allow a peek into what the environment and climate was like in this corner of the Cradle about 200 000 years ago.

“We will first see what is preserved, then get an age sequence of the unit and after that we look at the carbon and oxygen isotopes,” explains geologist Dr Tebogo Makhubela, the Principal Investigator at what is known as the Lefika la Noka tufa site. “This will give us an indication of vegetation type, the temperature, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the time, and rain levels.”

BIRTH OF A SPECIES

Two hundred thousand years ago is a period in which palaeoanthropologists are starting to take a serious interest. This is the date range when it is thought that one of the latest additions to the evolutionary tree, Homo naledi, was wandering the Cradle.

“This will be the only nearly continuous environmental record for the interior of South Africa that exists,” says Wits palaeoanthropologist, Professor Lee Berger.

The search for Homo naledi and the world in which she lived is the continuation of a tradition of research that Wits has led for close on 100 years. In that time, there have been groundbreaking discoveries that have turned the understanding of our origins on its head.

Back in 1925, Wits Professor Raymond Dart revealed to the world the Taung child. Often referred to as the most significant palaeoanthropological find of the 20th Century, the fossilised skull would eventually prove that Africa was the birthplace of the human species.

Both the nature of research and the face of those who lead

it has changed dramatically at Wits since Dart’s days. Innovative technologies are adding to our understanding of the past and a younger generation of academics have been given the chance to take charge of world-renowned dig sites.

Dr Keneiloe Molopyane is amongst this new generation of scientists, and she is the Principal Investigator at Gladysvale, which is situated close to the new Lefika la Noka tufa site. But Gladysvale is worlds away from those early dig sites when palaeoanthropologists like Dart, sporting stiff collars and ties, went about their business working on their own.

On the hill overlooking Gladysvale is a transmitter hooked up to provide high speed internet connectivity – part of a new ethos where everything is geared towards mobility. The infrastructure can be broken down and moved elsewhere quickly, and mobile labs allow for on-site analysis.

“It has definitely become more multidisciplinary,” says Molopyane. “We need geologists, palaeoanthropologists and everyone to work together on modern dig sites.”

But just as 200 000 years ago is the new hunting ground for a mystery relative, there is another period in distant human history that has Wits scientists scratching their heads, and on a quest to find out more.

JEWELS, TOOLS AND GRAFFITI

Something started happening to humans around 120 000 years ago. It was during this time that they began expressing themselves through art, wearing jewellery and using new hunting technologies. Evidence for this change has been found in cave sites, many of which hug the South African coastline, including the Blombos Cave, Klipdrift Shelter, Pinnacle Point, Sibudu Cave, Klasies River Caves and Border Cave.

In 2018, what is believed to be the earliest evidence of a human “drawing” was revealed by Professor Christopher Henshilwood, who holds the Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation South African Research Chair in the Origins of Modern Human Behaviour at Wits and is the Director of the Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour at the University of Bergen in Norway.

The drawing was a series of red criss-crossed lines of ochre on a piece of grindstone found at Blombos Cave in the southern Cape in South Africa. The artefact was dated to between 70 000 and 100 000 years old. Besides this early art, archaeologists at Blombos and other sites have found shell beads covered in ochre and sophisticated leaf-shaped stone spear points.

“We can see that this period was key to human brain development, and it is probably associated with syntactic language,” says Henshilwood.

Trying to figure out what caused that spark deep in the Middle Stone Age means drawing on new disciplines and technology.

“Part of our group are psychologists,” says Henshilwood. “We are working on functional magnetic resonance imaging that records areas of your brain that light up as you do certain things, such as making a stone tool. This helps us to trace how human brains might have been organised in the past.”

Together with several world-first discoveries – such as the discovery by Professor Lyn Wadley and her team of the first grass bedding that people used 200 000 years ago, and the first evidence of early human beings cooking and eating starch 120 000 years ago, by Professor Sarah Wurz and her team – Wits researchers have revolutionised the way we think and contributed to knowledge of our ancestors.

WHY DID WE LIVE HERE?

Jerome Reynard, Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at Wits, is another new generation scientist. He is trying to figure out why humans took to living in the highlands that border what is now Lesotho and the Eastern Cape some 20 000 years ago, at the height of the Glacial Maximum. Conditions then would have been brutal. Temperatures were well below freezing and what is now the mountain kingdom would have been dotted with mini glaciers.

“Why they would have lived in the highlands when there were warmer conditions just down the mountains below, is a mystery,” says Reynard.

He plans to dig at a site called Strathalan, near Nqanqarhu (Maclear) where he hopes to solve the mystery and work out how people survived in such hostile conditions.

“So how do people adapt to those environments? Did they adapt by, for example, increasing social networks? Or did they become more isolated?” he asks.

A BRIGHT FUTURE FOR THE PAST

Back at the Lefika la Noka tufa site, in the Cradle, the shout went out. The drillers had found something. Makhubela laid out the core on a wrap of heavy-duty plastic. It exposed a core of tufa, drilled from about four metres deep. This newly unearthed time-capsule could begin to unravel a new chapter in the century-long search into human origins that began when Dart described the Taung skull in 1925, and then spent the next three decades defending his discovery against a world opinion with preconceived ideas on how human evolution worked.

Since Dart’s days, Wits has continued to populate the evolutionary family tree with new discoveries such as Australopithecus sediba and Little Foot, and has challenged notions, ideas and long-held traditions and misconceptions that have advanced our understanding of the origins of humankind.

This, believes Berger, will continue.

“The future lies in building strong and dynamic science with scientists, explorers and technicians,” he says. “This future looks brighter than ever with this new generation of discoverers, who are curious about the world, and who are making a plethora of discoveries.” C

One day, 30 years ago, Wits entomologist Professor Marcus Byrne was standing in the African bushveld, curiously observing a dung beetle doing a little dance on a ball of dung. Then it set off, rolling the ball in a perfectly straight line into the distance.

The insect’s dance fascinated Byrne, who immediately started asking questions: What is the purpose of the dung beetle’s dance? How do dung beetles orientate themselves? How do they navigate and roll their ball in a perfectly straight line?

Byrne’s curiosity led to a 30-year study of this insect and changed not only what we know about these insects and how they navigate their world, but also led to new insights on how we can teach robots to navigate. It has attracted the attention of the US military, and led to a book, written by Byrne and Helen Lunn about human’s fascination with these insects over thousands of years, and their role in our changing lives.

“It turns out that the dung beetle’s ‘dance’ – standing on top of the ball of dung and spinning – is an orientation and navigation behaviour to determine the fastest and most efficient way to leave the dung pile to avoid a competitor’s hijacking of the ball of dung,” says Byrne.

“Dung beetles have almost no memory. Because elephant droppings are never at the same place, dung beetles don’t need to remember how to travel to and from a specific spot. However, they do need to know how to navigate to find their way around the bush.”

The beetles, it was found, use celestial cues – among others –for orientation. In other words, they scan the sky for orientation cues. The dung beetle’s built-in navigation system is the key to its ability to roll balls of dung with precision during the day and night, even under the gruelling African sun.

Further experiments conducted inside the Wits Planetarium

NAVIGATING LIFE THROUGH THE EYES OF A GOGGA

reveal that they can navigate using the Milky Way – making them the first species known to do so.

“We were able to prove that some species of dung beetles don’t just orientate, they do truly navigate. Orientation just means you're able to move in a straight line or move with intent. Whereas navigation means you're able to move between two known places on the surface of the planet,” Byrne explains.

USING AN INSECT’S BRAIN TO DEVELOP ROBOTICS

Byrne and a team of scientists from Sweden, Germany, Australia and South Africa have since 2013 meticulously observed and run experiments on certain species of dung beetles with the hopes of using their discoveries about the beetles’ brains – which are smaller than a grain of rice – in real-life applications in robotics and Artificial Intelligence.

A large part of the team’s research has looked at what they've called a “dung beetle compass”. They started off with experiments that looked at how dung beetles use the sun to navigate. They then went on to understand how the insects used polarised light as a navigational aid, then the moon and even the wind.

“The dung beetles’ ability to use directional sensors to achieve navigational precision opens possibilities for us to understand how their minuscule brains are able to handle large amounts of information, which allow them to go in a certain direction,” says Byrne.

In theory, the discoveries and understanding of dung beetles’ brains could help scientists build robots that are autonomous and don’t need a pilot or map to drive them through unknown terrain.

“Roboticists are interested in understanding dung beetles’ simple directional cues and their ability to use the sun, moon, stars, wind, and polarised lights to feed the same algorithm into robots to increase their efficiency,” Byrne says.

Curiosity about dung beetles could lead us into our future.

PONTSHO PILANE CHRIS COLLINGRIDGE

THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF FASCINATION

Globally, there are around 6 000 species of dung beetles and Africa is home to about 2 000 of them, with more than 800 of those species in SA. But only 10% of these animals roll the dung into a ball – often across the hot African continent.

Dung beetles have fascinated humans for thousands of years.

As described in Byrne’s book, Dance of the Dung Beetles: Their role in our changing world, these night-soil collectors of the planet

have been worshipped as gods, worn as jewellery and painted by artists.

More practically, they saved Hawaii from ecological blight and rescued Australia from plagues of flies. They fertilise soil, cleanse pastures, steer by the stars, and have a unique relationship with the African elephant. Now, they will also influence the way we train robots.

While humans may admire dung beetles, our own advancements and actions threaten their existence. Last year, Byrne and his team found that light pollution - from the myriad manmade light sources - makes it difficult for dung beetles to find their way. Large amounts of unnatural light cause the night sky to glow unnaturally bright, leaving only the brightest stars visible.

“Given the level of light pollution in the modern world, we wondered how ‘sky glow’ in the night skies of our cities would affect the ability of dung beetles to orientate themselves.”

The experiments showed the presence of unnatural light makes it impossible for the dung beetles to use the stars for orientation and navigation like they typically would.

Beyond the discoveries and exciting future possibilities, Byrne says that this body of work is curiosity at its highest form.

“The core of being human is to ask questions and to be curious about the world around us. Curiosity is part of what we are as humans. Curiosity allows us to question the world around us, without having to justify it in any other way other than to satisfy our curiosity,” he says. C

“The dung beetle’s built-in navigation system is the key to its ability to roll balls of dung with precision.”

RESEARCH

BY THE BOOKS

SHANTHINI NAIDOO

Research is a central steppingstone of an individual’s academic journey, but it should also be viewed holistically, says Dr Nechama Brodie of the Wits Centre for Journalism. Brodie’s doctoral research at Wits, which resulted in the book Femicide in South Africa, included creating a dataset that is available to other researchers and policymakers.

“What we learn through undertaking research is that a dissertation or thesis is necessary for completing a syllabus for academic purposes, but academic research also answers questions, or parts of a question,” says Brodie. “When you combine this answer with those that came before yours, and which will come after, you start to answer bigger questions and contribute to a larger body of research. This is the interesting and meaningful nature of the research.”

WOMEN WRITING WRONGS

The dataset upon which Brodie’s research was based includes 400 murders linked to 3 200 unique media articles on femicide. Apart from her own publications, Brodie’s data has supported the work of activists, organisations and government institutions tackling gender-based violence.

It shows that when the research supports criminology studies, science, medicine, history – or encourages timely discussions – it becomes a vehicle for societal change.

Similarly, the publication of Women in Solitary: Inside the female resistance to apartheid, which stems from my Master’s in Journalism and Media Studies, highlights the narratives of female activists who were imprisoned with Winnie Mandela in 1969.

Fast-forward to 2022 and the research has brought an important piece of South African history back to life over 50

years later. The work was launched in London on International Women’s Day on 8 March 2022, where anti-apartheid activists and living legends Joyce Sikhakhane-Rankin, Rita Ndzanga, Shanthivathie Naidoo, and Nondwe Mankahla were celebrated in praise-song.

SOCIALLY IMPACTFUL SCHOLARLY STORIES

The Witwatersrand University Press (Wits Press) is the oldest university press in South Africa and was the first university press in the country to publish local scholarly material. Its first publication, The national resources of South Africa, was written by Economics Professor RA Lehfeldt, who spoke out against the inequities of the migrant labour system in mining.

Telling Wits stories not only spans 100 years, but an array of subjects. Among Wits Press’ bestselling titles are Dr John Kani’s globally acclaimed play, Nothing but the truth, which tells the story of exile and shaped narratives during apartheid.

A similarly well-regarded tome is Dance of the dung beetles: Their role in our changing world, by Wits Professor Marcus Byrne and Dr Helen Lunn, which is now the topic of a TED talk and audio book.

Veronica Klipp, the Director of Wits Press says: “Our research is of interest to academics and readers around the world. In 2021, we sold books in 31 countries and our books were downloaded in 185 countries. Black and female writers are a priority.”

The focus on African languages led to the compilation of the English-isiZulu Dictionary by Clement Doke and BW Vilakazi in 1948, says Klipp, which has been expanded and revised many times since it was first published. It is still in print and is being digitised.

Books based on research by Wits authors create a rare recording of history that tracks changes over time.

“This publication is considered the foundational dictionary in the isiZulu language and one of the most important books published by Wits Press in the last 100 years,” explains Klipp, adding that scholarly works, such as Man's anatomy: A study in dissection, by the late Professor Phillip V Tobias, has also been frequently republished.

BOYS TO MEN

“The key is taking local research and trying to get it out into the wider world. A good recent example is Becoming Men by Malose Langa, which was reprinted three times in two years. Some of our books, often by established intellectuals such as Professor Achille Mbembe (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research – WiSER) and Professor Isabel Hofmeyr (African Literature) are licensed to international publishers.”

Dr Malose Langa, Associate Professor in Psychology whose PhD evolved into a publication, followed 32 boys from Alexandra township over 12 years during which time they negotiated manhood and masculinity.

“My key interest was about the psychology of manhood and I did not expect a book out of it,” says Langa. “But the impact means that I’ve received thousands of phone calls from across the country about how to make change in townships and among young men. While the research is complete, I continue to keep relationships with the men in the book and these will likely

continue lifelong. So, this has made its contribution in knowledgeproduction, facilitating conversations. Hopefully, this way, we can make some change.”

INTERGENERATIONAL STORY TRANSMISSION

Dr Khwezi Mkhize, Senior Lecturer in African Literature and protégé of the late Professor Bhekizizwe Peterson, is co-editing Foundational African writers, about four prolific writers born in South Africa in 1919 – Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Cyril Lincoln Nyembezi, and Es’kia Mphahlele.

“Before he passed on in 2021, Professor Peterson was the main driving force behind this project. This is something that he never shared with us – and I never asked him why – when he asked me to come on board as a co-editor,” recalls Mkhize.

“Knowingly or not, it was an intergenerational conversation between Professor Peterson, co-writer, Prof. Makhosazana Xaba (WiSER), me and the subjects of our book. We are in an interesting moment in a particularly complicated time. There’s a lot to think about what’s happened in the last century. One cannot have done enough,” he explains.

In putting pen to paper, academics and researchers reflect Wits’ enduring values of research excellence, public engagement and social justice over 100 years. As Klipp says, books based on research “create a rare recording of history that tracks the changes through time”. C

IDENTIFYING FACES

TO RECOGNISE HUMANITY

Dr Nicholas Bacci has got a lot going on, which is the way he likes it. His Twitter profile describes him as a forensic anthropologist, anatomist, husband, beard grower and boring human being. Almost everything about that description is true.

ALecturer in the School of Anatomical Sciences at Wits, bearded Bacci has two main research paths that demand most of his time. Simply put, these are his “facial identity work” and his investigations into lightning fatalities and bone trauma, both of which are equally fascinating. Then there is the constant stream of “what ifs” and ideas that he jots down in his little black book, because there is just so much that he would like to do, but so little time.

In a conversation that never strays far from his work, Bacci describes himself as obsessive, passionate, curious and determined and anyone who has encountered him will agree that

this is the more accurate portrayal. Not a boring bone in sight.

When we met, he was putting together an application for a Thuthuka grant to support his ongoing facial identity work. This is an off-the-cuff reference to his most intensive project yet: The development of the Wits Face Database: an African database of high-resolution facial photographs and multimodal closed-circuit television recordings.

The title of the paper, published in 2021, refers to the collection of 6 220 facial photographs of 622 matching individuals in five different views, as well as corresponding CCTV footage of 334 individuals recorded under different realistic conditions.

LEANNE RENCKEN CHRIS COLLINGRIDGE

MAPPING FACES FOR IDENTIFICATION

Why has he focused on creating this database? Until now, most databases have been developed in Europe, the US or China, and so many databases end up being biased towards white and Asian males. This results in several facial recognition algorithms training on databases that don’t serve specific populations at all, with oftentimes detrimental consequences.

However, it’s important to be clear: Bacci is concerned with facial identification and not facial recognition, and there is a significant difference between the two. “There is a very common misunderstanding where the two are confused: grouping the automated systems, and the psychological process of facial recognition with facial identification, which is meant to be a forensic application,” he explains.

FACING OFF AGAINST CRIME

A very manual application, human-based facial identification is an emerging field with its origins in facial mapping. Many people are surprised by when Bacci explains that he is not working on facial recognition or developing machine learning algorithms, but that he is rather creating a system that is more inclusive than any system currently available but which he also hopes will help law enforcement with suspect prosecution and missing person identification.

“It’s more of a reactive measure,” he explains. “If there’s surveillance footage of a potential crime, it can help with associating a suspect to a criminal scenario that was under surveillance, or if there are images or a body we cannot identify due to various reasons, it can possibly help with missing person identification.”

He adds: “This research is literally just scratching the surface. We have so much data that I think it’s very short-sighted if we don’t investigate using the data to address crime.”

If he is awarded the Thuthuka grant, Bacci plans to expand his database, increase the number of male subjects and add female faces to his photographic pool. In addition, he will be able to support the onboarding of a PhD candidate to help to process the information as well as build a mobile photographic unit, to allow for more efficiency and uniformity in the gathering of this data.

From lockdowns to load shedding, it’s been a difficult and protracted experience trying to put this database together –especially considering that it is a manual process. Each face in the database is scored against an accepted list of criteria and the comparisons are made through the scores generated for these criteria, rather than by putting two faces together side by side and looking for similarities and differences. Part of this database work is studying these faces and coming up with more relevant and detailed criteria for comparison and having those criteria reviewed, tested and accepted.

LIGHTNING BOLTS TO THE BONE

If that’s not enough, Bacci keeps a standard blue cooler box in his office – not for after-work drinks, but for the bones that he picks up from the butcher to further his other field of study. With help from Wits electrical engineers, he generates lightning under controlled conditions to see how skeletal remains react.

Through this multidisciplinary work, he and his colleagues have been able to determine that lightning strikes affect bone in a very particular way. They are now able to identify lightning-related deaths in skeletal remains, where previously this could only be done by way of markers left on the skin and the soft tissues of recent deaths.

At its core, the work Bacci is doing is making connections –whether it’s between faces, or between lightning and bone, or critically, between different disciplines. It is something at which he is good at and much of the success that he has achieved can be attributed to his collaborative approach both within and beyond the University.

He connects the dots that others sometimes cannot see and at heart wants to solve some key real-world problems through his innovative research. C

BUSINESS FOR GOOD

CHARLOTTE MATTHEWS

The stereotype of the greedy, exploitative capitalist, who has been around since the Industrial Revolution, is being turned on its head by a new breed of “social entrepreneur”.

A social enterprise is a business, not a charity organisation. However, its first objective is to fulfil a social need, rather than satisfy an indulgence. It may make a profit, but it can also be supported by grants. It is characterised by innovation, a sense of purpose and a business-like approach.

In South Africa, there is a vast need for services associated with health and education, but government resources and private sector donations are inadequate to meet it. This is where the opportunity lies.

Professor Boris Urban of the Wits Business School (WBS), who launched social entrepreneurship at the School, says that understanding the social entrepreneurship landscape is difficult, since South Africa does not have a single consolidated legal structure for social enterprises and there is no comprehensive database on social enterprises registered and available in the country. Despite these hurdles, scholarly and practitioner interests in social entrepreneurship is growing and it has emerged as a distinct field of study.

SOCIAL ENTERPRISES AND JOBS

In 2016 and 2017, the Gordon Institute of Business Science gathered data from 453 survey respondents to find out more about social enterprises in the country. Amongst its findings was that these organisations largely focus on developing skills and literacy, and working with disadvantaged groups, including youth, women and particular communities. Only about onefifth made a profit or a surplus and those that did, tended to reinvest it.

While these enterprises remain modest in scale, they do provide an opportunity for unemployed youth to empower themselves and those around them. Recognising this, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition is developing a Social Economy Policy to strengthen the sector.

“It is estimated that if social economy jobs increased by an achievable 2% every year, it could add 250 000 jobs to the economy by 2030,” said the Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Nomalungelo Gina at a meeting in 2020.

INNOVATIVE AND ENTREPRENEURIAL

Urban’s work at the WBS has highlighted how social entrepreneurs in South Africa attempt to create systemic changes and sustainable improvements by being innovative and entrepreneurial.

A good example of a social entrepreneur is WBS alumna, Elena Gaffurini, who founded DEV Consulting in Mozambique. While studying at the WBS, the University invited her to become involved with establishing Startup Nations South Africa. She also managed the southern African region as project manager for the Africa Engagement portfolio of the Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association. In 2015 she became a World Economic Forum Global Shaper – a network of inspiring young people under the age of 30, working together to address local, regional and global challenges.

Now DEV Consulting is helping entrepreneurs to address the need for food security and nutrition in Africa. Its activities include designing projects to scout, train, incubate and accelerate local, socially relevant business solutions, and attract resources. In addition, the firm has been supporting international non-profit organisations to develop a social-business arm to improve their financial sustainability.

CHOOSING BUSINESS MODELS

Gaffurini says that the social enterprise model is relevant everywhere, but in lower income countries the gaps are more obvious, so social enterprises may have a larger base of users or consumers. In developed countries, a social enterprise may prove its value through its customer proximity, pricing strategy or other aspects.

“Social entrepreneurs face the same challenges as traditional enterprises. In many developing countries, they may face the additional challenge that they try to compete in donor-funded sectors, where a significant portion of funding may be directed towards NGOs that are by law tax-exempt,” she says.

Most countries lack legislation for social enterprises, so these entrepreneurs must choose whether they follow the same laws as private sector firms or operate as non-profit firms. “However, operating as a non-profit may hinder their ability to attract capital,” she explains. “It is really up to the social entrepreneur to develop a viable business model, to prove the concept by finding

Wits is exploring the opportunities created by social enterprises that focus on addressing local, regional and global challenges.

customers, and then to develop a prototype.”

The WBS is currently focusing on several research themes that drive PhD topics, start-ups, social ventures and curricula for courses. These include institutional forces in emerging economies and their impact on social entrepreneurs, the scalability of social enterprises in South Africa and food and energy security through innovative social enterprise development.

“WBS students, after having been exposed to social entrepreneurship courses in the Master’s degree in Entrepreneurship and the MBA, have moved into incubation, providing business support services and financial advice, to ensure the investment readiness of innovative social enterprises,” Urban says.

“Through courses and practical research projects, WBS students are fostering strong networks between various ecosystem actors including academic institutions, industry sector clusters, government and corporates, to nurture the capabilities of social enterprises.”

In 2018, the Centre for African Philanthropy and Social Investment was established at the WBS. The Centre has entrenched pan-African ties in academic, funding and NGO spheres, has collaborated on student projects and has also delivered executive education programmes. The Centre has also been involved in numerous other initiatives with impact, such as the Philanthropy Secretariat in Liberia, the Rwanda Philanthropy Strategy and the Sustainable Development Goals Platforms in countries such as Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. C

MORE ON THIS RESEARCH:

- http://www.thedtic.gov.za/collaborative-efforts-criticalto-revamping-the-economy-post-covid-19/

i- https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/ in-their-own-words/2018/2018-06/embrace-the-powerof-social-entrepreneurs.html

- https://www.gibs.co.za/about-us/centres/ entrepreneurship-development-academy/documents/ ssesa%20report%20with%20case%20studies%20-%20 webversion.pdf

- https://devconsulting.org/

XABINDZA is a Mozambican social enterprise in which DEV Consulting - the venture builder established by WBS alumna, Elena Gaffurini - invested. Since 2016 DEV Consulting has hosted the SANBio FemBioBiz Acceleration programme, which identifies and nurtures young, talented and entrepreneurial graduates. DEV Seed funded Jubia Domingos Uchavo, whose start-up XABINDZA is a biotech firm that bioprocesses organic waste into protein rich feed and organic fertiliser.

“Through courses and practical research projects, WBS students are fostering strong networks between various ecosystem actors including academic institutions, industry sector clusters, government and corporates, to nurture the capabilities of social enterprises.”

private donor funds.

According to Muganza, one of the true learnings from the Unit is about gaining deeper insight into the communities that it serves and the lives of the close to 1 000 patients that come through the doors annually.

“Between 60% and 65% of our patients are burnt accidentally, which is a direct result of using candles or primus stoves. Between 25% and 27% of patients are burnt as a result of violence, often

the importing of sub-standard primus stoves that were exploding and which resulted in around 25% of the accidental burns that we were seeing,” he explains.

TOWARDS LEGAL EQUITY

A deeper acknowledgement of the lived reality of the vulnerable for whom a meaningful response is critical is also what grounds the work of the Wits Law Clinic.

Now in operation for over 40 years, the Clinic is accredited as a legal practice and is part of the compulsory experiential training for final year law students, in the form of Practical Legal Studies.

Its mission is to ensure better access to legal advice and legal recourse as an essential part of building a more inclusive and equitable society. These gaps of access were starkly clear during the hard Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 – even as people were forced to distance socially and stay home, hundreds were in need of legal advice for job dismissals, evictions, family court matters, and fair debt management.

At the time, the Director of the Clinic, Daven Dass said that they realised that they had to find a way to stay open but still comply with hard lockdown rules. They devised a questionnaire system for plaintiffs to complete documents and to leave with campus security, which the Clinic collected and then followed up telephonically. In five months, the Clinic received over 800 questionnaires.

Dass said: “The need was huge. Our phenomenal staff and students at the Wits Law Clinic continue to do the work they do, epitomising the spirit of Ubuntu and the value of being the change they want to see in the world .”

Also in the Wits School of Law, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) has been at the forefront of using the law to

promote human rights and to challenge unjust power systems in the country and the region.

The Centre was formed in 1978 and played a pivotal role in pushing back against the National Party during apartheid. Today it focuses on five key areas: business and human rights; civil and political justice; environmental justice; gender justice and home; and land and rural democracy. Together they make up the social justice values towards building a better world.

WATER JUSTICE

These values dovetail current pressing issues that demand solutions to the deepening climate crisis. The Claude Leon Foundation Water Stewardship Programme tackles this head on. This Wits centenary initiative includes two research chairs for a transdisciplinary approach to water stewardship and postgraduate water research, worth R15.7 million.

The programme recognises that social inequality means that the climate crisis disproportionately burdens the poor. In a highly unequal country, this means that food and water security, and access to sufficient, safe and affordable water, risks perpetuating poverty, if water management remains feeble, inept and ineffective.

The Programme focuses on innovative water security solutions for the most vulnerable, and postgraduate science and research to push for improved legislative and policy reform and accountability.

These are just some of Wits’ many programmes and initiatives that together ground academic pursuit in the values that contribute to making the world a better place for more people. C

THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD

Iwas sitting in traffic, driving to work, trying my best to drown out the white noise of the talk radio host having an in-depth discussion on “where missing socks go”. In an attempt to get my mind out of the missing sock drawer, I took a virtual journey of my life, and where I have ended up. While I used to have an exciting career as a journalist, it hit me that for the first time ever, I really love what I do.

Sitting in that car, I was actually looking forward to getting to work, and I asked myself, “Why do I love what I am doing?”

It didn’t take me long to answer that question. “I get to be fascinated every day!”

I get to see, learn and write about the really incredible ways in which the world works, and get to interact with – and learn from –some of the brightest people on the planet while doing so.

For instance, one day I get to walk in the veld in the Cradle of Humankind with Lee Berger – a world leader in palaeoanthropology, while he casually points out the boulder that I am leaning against is a 250 000 year old petrified tree

stump, and the shard of rock I had ignorantly stepped on was a stone tool that was probably discarded by my great, great, great grandmother, some hundreds of thousands years ago.

From there, we walk to Gladysvale, the site recently reopened by one of the bright new stars in the field of palaeoanthropology, where I see a surge of emotions well through Doctor Keneiloe Molopyane, as she realises she may have made her first hominid find.

The next day, I might find myself in the Structured Light Laboratory of Professor Andrew Forbes – a world leader in photonics and quantum physics – where one of his students is manipulating a microscopic element within a human cell, using, as a tweezer, a powerful beam of light.

From there, I might step into the office of one of our world-class geologists, such as Professors Roger Gibson and Lewis Ashwal for a scheduled 15-minute interview on meteors. Three hours later, I emerge, fascinated by how intricately connected the inner workings of our planet – and solar system – are, in order to sustain life on Earth.

Telling the stories of Wits’ research and academics might hopefully light a fire in the mind of the world’s next Einstein, says Schalk Mouton.

SHIVAN PARUSNATH

After each of these interactions, I almost always ask, “Why didn’t they teach me about this during my undergrad studies?”

I must admit that growing up I was probably one of the most disinterested teenagers ever. I had no special interests, except for playing rugby, writing and reading adventure novels. My fascination with science and how the world works didn’t come naturally – and especially not from the first three years of struggling through physics and chemistry 101.

Bored to death attempting calculations on mole values and vectors, I had no idea where I was going and what I was doing. I had no idea that what my lecturers were trying to teach me was merely the language of science, and, like learning any language it could open up new, fascinating worlds. If I had known, I could have ended up working alongside Roger Deane (another world leader in astrophysics), as part of the team that took the first picture of a black hole, instead of taking pictures at a primary school rugby game as a cub sports reporter – the job I resorted to after my failed attempt at getting a BSc 30 years ago. Roger is intent on transforming the ageing Planetarium into a world-class Digital Dome by the way.

My eyes were first opened to the world of science when I was invited to a science journalism workshop, about 20 years ago. Here I had a conversation with a scientist who worked on the Square Kilometre Array project. Completely ignorant, I asked him what a black hole actually was, and as he explained it to me, I was completely hooked. It stirred a fascination about how our world and the things in it work, and I realised that I wanted to know more.

My fascination with science and research grew, and I was lucky enough to be employed in what I believe is one of the best jobs in the world – writing about Wits and its researchers, and learning fascinating things about our world every day.

However, this job also comes with a responsibility. That responsibility is to share the University’s science and research, and my fascination, with the rest of the world – hoping that it might light a fire in some bright young mind that could turn out to be South Africa’s next Nobel Prize winner. I share this responsibility with every person who works in a higher education institution in this country. Ours is a country in desperate need of hope for a brighter future. Our children grow up in a world where they are told that there are no jobs, that unemployment and crime are out of control, and that climate change is going to make life unbearable – if not life threatening – for them. This is in an environment of political uncertainty, cloaked in the darkness of regular load shedding, which will more than likely be with us for the next 10 years.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my colleagues called a news editor at the public broadcaster to invite a reporter to a globally important science news announcement, in which Wits was a major player. The editor replied that due to all the problems in South Africa they could not afford to send a reporter to cover the event as it was deemed too academic and of no consequence to the average South African.

What the news editor failed to see was the importance of the hope, fascination and the spark that the story could ignite in a young bright mind. The editor who declined the invitation later called the Wits communications team, after seeing the global scope and importance of the story, to request an interview.

Our children are in a desperate search for hope. By lighting a little spark in a young person’s mind, it might just be the spark lighting the next generation’s Einstein.

Our researchers and scientists also have the responsibility to set the record straight in a world dominated by social media and fake news, by communicating our findings and expertise. This was especially highlighted during the Covid-19 saga, where mistruths were spread from all quarters – including government departments. Were it not for scientists – notably from Wits –speaking up during the pandemic, many of our national Covid-19 responses would have been even further misplaced than they were, and could have cost a lot more lives.

As staff members, academics and students at Wits University, we work and live in a privileged environment. It is our responsibility to share that privilege and knowledge to empower those around us –not just to sell hope.

Our knowledge has the power to change lives, and to create a better life for all, and we owe it to the public to share that knowledge with enthusiasm and honesty.

Scientists and scholars at research-intensive universities can no longer think that their job is done once they have published their work in an academic journal. Most of their research was paid for and is therefore owned by taxpayers, who have a right to know where their money went.

Researchers have an obligation to share their work in every way that they can, whether it is through lectures, social or traditional media, or informal talks and presentations.

That is why Curios.ty is such an important vehicle. This magazine was established to share Wits’ research, work and values in a way that makes research accessible to everyone, with the hope that it can inspire and inform – and perhaps even have the power to influence the policies that will lead to a brighter future for all. C

A PHILOSOPHY FOR GOOD

Amongst the first doctoral qualifications that Wits University conferred 92 years ago was a DPhil to Professor Otto Christian Jensen, on 5 April 1930, for his thesis titled The Unity of Good.

TIISANG MONATISA

Jensen served as the Acting Head of the Philosophy Department at Wits in 1930 and had a successful academic career during which he published in internationally respected journals. His works comprise four journal articles on metaethics (1934, 1936, 1942, and 1966), two monographs on applied logic (1954 and 1957) and one journal article on aesthetics (1953). Meta ethics is an area of Philosophy that explores the nature of ethical terms and concepts and the underlying assumptions and commitments behind moral theories.

Unfortunately, no copy of Jensen’s DPhil exists for interrogation today. The Unity of Good manuscript was likely destroyed in the 1931 fire that gutted Central Block, the University’s first building, which housed the library on the top floor.

“The idea of the unity of the good often refers to ideas about the nature of value discussed by Plato and Aristotle, two philosophers from the ancient Mediterranean, whose work European and Islamic philosophers have taken as foundational to their traditions,” says Wits Professor of Philosophy, Lucy Allais. “The thesis of the unity of the good holds that there is something significantly common in the way in which all good things are good, and that the good is the ultimate reason for all our undertakings. It is difficult to state the idea further without

going deep into Plato’s scholarship.”

Despite the loss of The Unity of Good manuscript, Jensen’s The Nature of Legal Argument was published in 1957 and this work remains available in Wits’ libraries. Sixty-five years later, this research on applied logic and legal argumentation continues to be cited across disciplines, including in law, philosophy, psychology, and computer science.

Wits still has philosophers working on topics in moral philosophy from the Platonic tradition, as well as other traditions, including African approaches to value. Wits also offers a Master’s degree in Applied Ethics for Professionals (which does not require a background in philosophy), for those who want to think about foundational questions related to value, right and wrong, and how we should live our lives. C

SOURCES:

- Molatelo Pampa, Records Management Coordinator, Central Records Office, Wits University

- Professor Lucy Allais, Department of Philosophy, Wits University

- David Martens, retired from the Wits Philosophy Department

Almost a century since Wits awarded its first doctoral degree, the University in July 2022 awarded its first PhD published in isiZulu to Dr Dumisani Ephraim Khumalo for his thesis, titled Ucwaningo olunzulu ngesu lokusetshenziswa kwesathaya emculweni kaMaskandi nomthelela ekuphilisaneni kwabantu, an African Indigenous Knowledge Systems cross-disciplinary study of ethnomusicology, sociolinguistics and heritage studies.