NEWS UCTALUMNI HONOURS SPotLIGHT ON THE NEW REGISTRAR: NEVILLE GRADUATE SCHOOL AMOORE PASSES ALEXANDER OF BUsiness THE BATON UCT IN CONVERsatION WITH ItseLF 2015-2016 UCT ALUMNI NEWS 2016 ContEnts 2 30 54 Foreword from the Vice-Chancellor A healing stage - Lara Foot and the Convocation medal to Mthatha law Baxter Theatre Centre at UCT doyen 3 34 56 Executive Director’s report Discomfort needn’t be a bad thing, David Barnes and the gift of MISSION says Elelwani Ramugondo modern neurosurgery UCT aspires to become a premier academic meeting 4 36 57 point between South Africa, the rest of Africa and News from your alma mater ‘Race’ is an invention: Parting We salute our donors the world. Taking advantage of expanding global words from Prof Crain Soudien networks and our distinct vantage point in Africa, 6 39 61 we are committed, through innovative research UCT in top 10 in world subject Why the furore about a statue, asks A new tradition - celebrating our rankings Shula Marks “Golden Grads” and scholarship, to grapple with the key issues of our natural and social worlds. We aim to produce 7 42 62 Africa can emulate China’s Tribute to Neville Alexander, by Dr Notes from alumni chapters graduates whose qualifications are internationally development, says Dlamini-Zuma Lydia Cairncross recognised and locally applicable, underpinned by values of engaged citizenship and social justice. 8 46 64 UCT confers seven Honorary Amoore bows out on a high note A call to action - message from the UCT will promote diversity and tranformation within Doctorates in 2015 Alumni Advisory Board our institution and beyond, including growing the 10 48 65 next generation of academics. New senior leaders help UCT usher Phindi Sithole-Spong is positively In Memoriam in a bold future positive 18 51 66 Excellence and achievement - the 100 year old skydiver is speaker at Alumni and donor events in UCT Graduate School of Business Fuller Hall Reunion luncheon pictures 26 52 Smartphone app empowers small- UCT alumnus is “Humanitarian Hero scale fishers Of The Year” 28 53 The SKA - answering questions we Groomed by the Green Mile for the have not even asked yet green and gold NEWS UCTALUMNI HONOURS SPotLIGHT ON THE NEW REGISTRAR: Editor Photographers Produced by the NEVILLE GRADUATE SCHOOL AMOORE PASSES ALEXANDER OF BUsiness THE BATON Elle Williams Michael Hammond UCT Development and Je’nine May Alumni Department Writers Roger Sedres Abigail Calata UCT Alumni news is the Carolyn Newton Graphic Design annual magazine for UCT Yusuf Omar Banss Design Lab Alumni. It is also available Birgit Otterman online at www.uct.ac.za/dad/ Helen Swingler alumni/publications/uct_alum- Andrea Weiss ni_news UCT IN CONVERsatION WITH ItseLF Cover image: Taken by photographer Roger Sedres during the 2015-2016 impromptu university assembly during the UCT #FeesMustFall campaign, this photograph demonstrates the historic impact of the campaign. 3 UCT ALUMNI NEWS 2016 forEword FROM THE VICE-CHANCEllor any alumni are concerned about the meaning of the This edition of UCT Alumni News events of the past few months, particularly as they highlights the significant achievements of relate to UCT’s position as the leading university on the Mcontinent and UCT’s commitment to global excellence. your alma mater over the past 18 months. I hope that from the pages that follow you will not only be reassured that UCT continues to grow from strength to strength but that you These months have been amongst the will experience enormous pride in UCT’s thoughtful leadership on many fronts. Scholarship, research and teaching at the highest level EXECUTIVE most tumultuous in UCT’s history since remain at the core of the institution’s mission and UCT continues to the advent of democracy in 1994. produce graduates of the highest calibre, sought out in South Africa and in many other parts of the world. DIRECTOR’s REPORT A legitimate question many alumni ask is about how transformation impacts on UCT’s standing in the world and its commitment to excellence. The answer to this question lies in what our understanding In the midst of probably one of the most difficult periods of transformation is. in the university’s history, UCT has recently launched its This year UCT will be adopting a new strategic plan. This plan has been widely discussed amongst all of the university’s constituencies, “Distinguishing UCT” campaign. The campaign is focused on including the Alumni Advisory Board, and will in due course become a public document. In this plan, UCT proposes to integrate growing UCT’s endowment, writes Dr Russell Ally, Executive transformation into the very fabric of the core activities that made UCT a great university even in the darkest days of our apartheid past. Director of the Development and Alumni Department. Transformation promotes excellence and enhances UCT’s reputation through the unique added value that derives from he Distinguishing UCT In this article Professor Marks traces of declining state subsidy, UCT is able substantial diversity of faculty and students, who bring different campaign coincides with two Rhodes’s life and the role he played in to upgrade its laboratories with the latest perspectives to their fields of study. That diversity of thought, culture, significant milestones in the Southern Africa. equipment, to attract the top researchers history, life experience and perspective gives our work, and the university’s illustrious history: There is no doubt that Rhodes remains in spite of the weakened exchange rate, experience of studying at UCT something other global universities T2018: UCT’s centenary as a dedicated a significant historical figure. UCT’s to grant scholarships to top PhD students cannot offer. degree–issuing university removal of his statue will certainly not who would otherwise not be able to study It should not be necessary to say this, but I will state the obvious: 2019: UCT’s 190th birthday since its result in Rhodes being written out of further, and to build another residence that it is in no-one’s interests, and certainly not in the interests of founding as the South African College. history. Our decision to remove Rhodes’s so that more students can benefit from black or women academics, to drop any standards for appointments Endowments are by their very statue was based fundamentally on the “res experience” with its academic or promotions. That has never been proposed and we will not do that. nature indicative of a commitment to what this statue as a centrepiece of the support, stable secure environment, easy And with regard to teaching and curricula, I challenge you to find permanency. architectural landscape of the university 24/7 access to the campus, libraries and any parent of a recent UCT student who was her/himself at UCT, Given the protest movement of last year, was saying about the values that UCT labs, and the camaraderie that produces who does not think that the standard of education and expectations many alumni are asking whether they was subscribing to as an African lifelong networks. of their children are higher than they were 30 years ago. should still support their alma mater. university in a post-apartheid democratic Many of our alumni have already Central to the strategic plan is an interrogation of the values and These questions seem to have been more society. stepped forward and to date have assumptions that shaped UCT when it was a predominantly white urgently asked following the decision As to subsequent events at the pledged about R100 million towards the university that excluded the majority of our citizens. Inevitably this that UCT took to remove the statue of university, management acted against campaign. UCT is deeply appreciative of will mean confronting cultural artefacts and symbols that have their Cecil John Rhodes during March/April violence, the destruction of property and this wonderful display of support, which origins in the colonial and apartheid legacies of the past. For however 2015. For some of our alumni this was arson. In addition to ongoing disciplinary inspires us to believe that we will be able much UCT may have tried to oppose the worst excesses of our past, interpreted as UCT wanting to “erase” its processes, the sanction of the courts to grow our undesignated endowment to as a part of the broader society it was unavoidable that this past would past and as the thin edge of the wedge to has also been sought in cases where the R1 billion by the end of the campaign. also have influenced the values, curricula and cultural landscape of UCT’s ultimate decline. executive believed that this was necessary. By becoming champions of the the university before our transition to democracy. This was reinforced when protests at Each generation is only the custodian Distinguishing UCT campaign and by UCT thus has to strive to find the balance between building on the university took a more violent form of UCT for the generation to follow. Our donating generously, our alumni will be what was the best about the university during that period while earlier this year and alumni saw those duty is to hand over a university that is securing UCT’s premier position while Vice-Chancellor, Dr Max Price at the same not being afraid to embrace a future that is not about horrendous images of art works going up better and stronger. forging an inclusive identity for future assimilating others into the historically dominant culture but about in flames. Building the university’s endowment generations. developing an inclusive identity that has changed in response to In this edition of UCT Alumni News shows a deep commitment to this increased diversity.