360º perspectives issue 5 web

360ยบ PERSPECTIVES | ISSUE 5 | 2016/2017

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ISSUE 5 | 2016/2017

The Student Experience UWC views the student experience on campus as a strategic focus area and a pedagogically sound contributor to academic throughput and success.

Crocothemis erythraea (Broad scarlet male)

Diplacodes lefebvrii (Black Percher female)

DRAGONFLIES

Orthetrum Ort t caffrum (Two-striped Skimmer female)

Crocothemis erythraea (Broad Scarlet female)

© UWC NATURE RESERVE UNIT NIT

Sympetrum fonscolombii (Nomad female)

Sympetrum fonscolombii (Nomad male)

360º PERSPECTIVES | ISSUE 5 | 2016/2017

Tel: +27 21 959 2911 • Email: info@uwc.ac.za www.facebook.com/uwconline • twitter.com/uwconline www.uwc.ac.za

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360º PERSPECTIVES | ISSUE 5 | 2016/2017

Foreword Professor Tyrone Pretorius Rector and Vice-Chancellor

Welcome to the 2016/2017 edition of the 360° Perspectives Magazine.

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ur magazine celebrates the achievements of the University of the Western Cape’s stakeholder family, and the contributions to the growth of our institution made by academics and professional staff, our students, alumni, donors and the many members of the public who support our work.

The contentious issue of student fees was a constant presence in the background of all our activities, reminding us of the realities of pursuing our academic mission in a faltering economy and a society with many developmental needs.

Our students, academics and support staff rose admirably to the challenges of the past year, helping the University to deliver a solid performance across all areas, not least of which was the satisfactory completion of the academic calendar. Our students should be commended for their performance in the examinations in trying circumstances.

Several articles in this issue highlight our progress in the sciences, particularly in terms of research and innovation. Among many accolades, we were pleased to be ranked first in Physical Science research in Africa in 2016 by Nature Index. The discovery and development by UWC scientists of the medical or pharmacological efficacy of several endemic botanical species are particularly exciting, especially as they occurred in

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collaboration with community-based traditional practitioners or in exploring indigenous knowledge that had existed for centuries. It is hoped that the commercial exploitation of these emerging new technologies and treatments will contribute significantly to the University’s future sustainability.

Our strength in science education and research not only means that we are able to compete with larger, better-resourced universities to attract the brightest academic talent, but we are also increasingly seen as a valued partner in national and international collaborations with other universities, research institutions and industry leaders.

Our institution has a strong environmental awareness and has demonstrated ecological responsibility in many ways. Thanks to our students and staff we have been voted South Africa’s greenest campus several times, we are leaders in exploring hydrogen fuel cell technology as an alternative clean energy source, and have been able to use our nature reserve to teach many learners about the benefits and necessity of nature conservation.

A UWC research team is developing a solution to the unsightly dumps of fly ash waste produced by South Africa’s coal-fired power stations. The solution will not only improve the environment at the dump sites but will boost the construction industry through the use of fly ash in building materials.

UWC views the student experience on campus as a strategic focus area and a pedagogically sound contributor to academic throughput and success. We have made much progress in investing in the quality of teaching, student accommodation, sport and other facilities. As reported in this issue, the sporting and academic achievements of our students demonstrate the value of the strategy, both in terms of our students’ progress and the prestige of our institution.

Professor Tyrone Pretorius Rector and Vice-Chancellor

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PERSPECTIVES Managing Editor: Luthando Tyhalibongo Production Editor: Nastasha Crow Editor: Nazeem Lowe Editorial: Harriet Box Myolisi Gophe Nicklaus Kruger Asiphe Nombewu Aidan van den Heever Shirwileta Williams Wrap It Up PR and Communications Conversations Squared (C2) Images: Je’nine May Photography Design: Kult Creative Printing: Kult Creative Copyright: University of the Western Cape (UWC) unless used with permission of any third party and referenced accordingly. No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the publishers.

360º Perspectives is published annually

by UWC. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of UWC.

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360ยบ PERSPECTIVES | ISSUE 5 | 2016/2017

PERSPECTIVES

Contents

Foreword

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The Plan

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Casting light on dark matter and dark energy

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Traditional medicine may lead to cancer treatment

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Chemistry team seeks solution to skin ageing

An extraordinary career lauded Alumna chose child development over corporate career Improved method for HIV and AIDS detection discovered

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Alumna chose child development over corporate career

1980s oriented alumnus to public service

Marriage law not recognising gender choices

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A concrete solution to environmental waste

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App provides virtual pharmacist for Deaf people

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SANBI database reveals gene-disease relationships

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Happy to be obese?

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Researchers look for treatment for drugresistant TB

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Chemistry team seeks solution to skin ageing

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App provides virtual pharmacist for Deaf people

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Inspired by son to succeed Looking to the oceans to treat land-based diseases Energy storage research reaches pivot point Common wetland plant may alleviate male fertility and reproductive health problems Understanding water scarcity in the Western Cape

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Tracking the spread of TB 52

Elevated to new heights

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The ability to adapt and move on

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Keeping his eye on the ball

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Reaching out to give back

Like father like son

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56 Facing foes on and off the field

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Book reviews

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2016 in a nutshell

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The ‘write’ approach to creativity

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Dream comes true for cricketer

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At the top of her game

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Understanding water scarcity in the Western Cape

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Reaching out to give back

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Like father like son

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Casting light on dark matter and dark energy The Universe may indeed be infinitely complex, but University of the Western Cape cosmologist Professor Roy Maartens believes many elusive questions could be answered when the world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), is fully operational.

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rof Maartens, who holds the SKA Research Chair in Cosmology at UWC, says the location in South Africa of the SKA telescope represents the greatest opportunity ever for science and technology in Africa. UWC Astrophysics is involved in developing the research and training excellence that is needed for South Africa to produce world-

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class science from the SKA. South Africa is building its own SKA precursor, an array of 64 dishes (each of 13.5 metres) called MeerKAT, which will be fully operational from 2018. MeerKAT has already discovered many new galaxies with only half of its dishes built.

It will be the world’s best radio telescope until the SKA is completed – UWC Astrophysics is playing a leading role in

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MeerKAT science. Cosmologists study the Universe as a whole, from its beginnings billions of years ago, to the time when galaxies started to form, up to today. Prof Maartens explains that the Universe is made up of three basic ingredients. “The first is atoms, that make up everything we can see – the Earth, humans, animals, clouds. But atoms account for only five percent of the >>

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Prof Maartens (right) with two of his students at the UWC Department of Physics & Astronomy.

“We want to take forward the development of science in South Africa and in Africa. That’s the bigger picture for us.”

matter in the Universe.” The second is dark matter, which accounts for a further 25 percent. “Dark matter is needed to hold the galaxies together and explains how galaxies grew much faster than they would with only atoms available. We know it must be there, but we have not yet been able to detect the dark matter particles,” he says.

The third ingredient is dark energy. Until this century, scientists believed that the rate of expansion of the Universe was slowing down.

“It turns out, however, that in the last few

billion years the Universe has in fact been expanding faster and faster,” says Prof Maartens. And the simplest way to explain this, is the energy of the vacuum (empty space) called dark energy, which has the effect of pushing galaxies apart from each other. Unfortunately, this simple model has many problems and we have to work harder to develop a better understanding.”

Dark energy affects the rate of growth of galaxies and the distribution of galaxies. Prof Maartens and his team are working to unlock the secrets of dark energy by analysing three-dimensional maps of the galaxies in huge volumes of the universe.

“With SKA, we will be able to create the largest ever maps of galaxies, which we’ve never been able to do before. We need as many galaxies as possible to pick out the characteristic patterns in how galaxies are clustered and how they are distributed, because these patterns contain vital pieces of information on dark matter, dark energy and the beginning of the Universe,” Prof Maartens says.

Prof Maartens hopes the mapping process will begin with the MeerKAT telescope, “so that, by the time the SKA became operational, we would be ready to make the bigger maps needed to provide new insights into the dark sector and the birth of the Universe.

“One of the things we are really trying to do at UWC is to contribute to building a new generation of scientists who can use SKA to do some world-class science.

“We want to make sure South Africa is not just exporting the data being collected here, but is also actually able to do science with it.

We want to take forward the development of science in South Africa and in Africa. That’s the bigger picture for us.”

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An extraordinary career lauded

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WC Extraordinary Professor Praneet Valodia has always been fascinated by medicines – how they work, their effects on people’s bodies and the high pace at which medicines are developing.

“The thing about medicine is that it evolves very fast. There are lots of innovations and it is an area that is difficult to keep up with. There are so many new medicines on the market,” Prof Valodia explains.

Prof Valodia’s sterling work in the field of pharmacy over the past three decades has been recognised with four awards in two years, three of which were achieved in one year. In 2015, the University of the Western Cape (UWC) honoured him with the Chancellor’s Award for an Outstanding Alumnus, in the Health Sciences category.

In 2016, the South African Pharmacy Council awarded Prof Valodia two awards in one evening – the National Pharmacy Award for research, consultancy and clinical work and the overall National Pioneer Pharmacy Professional Award. In the same year the Board of Healthcare Funders of Southern Africa gave him its Titanium Lifetime Achievement Award, which was open to all disciplines in Southern Africa.

“It’s great to get recognition for

the work one has put in over the years. This may be for the 30 years of work, and culminating in this way is certainly satisfactory. I’m pleased about it,” Prof Valodia says.

Born in Lansdowne in Cape Town, Prof Valodia obtained both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in pharmacy at UWC >>

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(his third child is in her second year of pharmacy studies at UWC). After serving on the academic staff at UWC for 16 years, he joined Metropolitan Health in 2002, which he served as a director of medicine risk management, clinical executive, head of product development, research and development executive and chairperson of the company’s drugs and therapeutics committee.

In 2009, Prof Valodia was appointed as an advanced specialist in medicines and beneficiary management in the Health Intelligence Unit at Medscheme, and joined the Independent Clinical Oncology Network (ICON) as an executive manager for innovation and development in 2011. He also served as the chairperson of the oncology formulary committee at ICON. With vast experience in managed healthcare, public health, pharmaceutical policy and training, and a strong track record in healthcare innovation, Prof Valodia has worked with world-renowned experts on data analysis and statistical models and has developed unique models to measure the value of healthcare interventions. He also published the first health outcomes study in the world showing the value of clinical pharmacokinetics in epilepsy management. His current interest focuses on the delivery of affordable and quality healthcare in South Africa.

He was a member of the national Department of Health Pricing Committee from 2005 to 2016 and was the chairman of that committee’s pharmacoeconomics task team.

“I think healthcare is far too expensive and new innovations are required to reduce the cost of healthcare. I’m hoping to play a leading role in this going forward.”

In 2015, Prof Valodia started his own independent healthcare consultancy offering services in the fields of data analytics, medicine management, disease management, clinical trial evaluation, pharmaco- and health economics, innovation in healthcare, developing market access solutions for medicines, health outcomes research, advisory services to managed healthcare and medical schemes, harm reduction programmes and healthcare advocacy.

“As a consultant I study new medicines, evaluate and give advice on them,” says Prof Valodia. One of his key goals is to produce a paradigm shift in the way healthcare delivery takes place in South Africa. “I think healthcare is far too expensive and new innovations are required to reduce the cost of healthcare. I’m hoping to play a leading role in this going forward.”

Prof Valodia believes that one of the main challenges facing the healthcare sector is to improve access to medicines and to empower patients to use medicines appropriately. “Even if people have access to medicines, if they don’t use those medicines appropriately there will be a huge wastage of resources.”

He says new medicines are beyond the reach of many South Africans. “I do a lot of work in the area of cancer medicines.

However, many of them are expensive. How do we improve access to expensive medicines? It’s a big challenge for us.”

Prof Valodia credits UWC for laying a good foundation for his successful career. “UWC is a special place for me. It shaped my career and instilled certain values in me that I use in the business environment. Values such as caring, compassion for others, integrity, working as a team and becoming independent.”

Prof Valodia has been appointed by UWC as an extraordinary professor six times since joining the corporate sector.

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Alumna chose child development over corporate career UWC law alumna Cindy Ross has helped run a non-profit company for the past five years without receiving a single cent in compensation.

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he children’s successes are all the payment she needs, says Ross, a co-founder and director of the Jala Peo Foundation (jala peo means ‘plant a seed’ in Sesotho).

Ross, who graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree, recently gave up her job as a legal advisor at a listed corporation in the chemical industry to run her own labour consultancy, and to give more of her time to the beneficiaries of the foundation.

The sports development programme of Jala Peo, which is focused on mountain biking, has won acclaim locally and abroad, and has expanded its focus to include enterprise

development and life skills programmes. It began literally by chance in 2012.

“It was all because of a chance meeting between my brother and William Mokgopo when André rode his first Absa Cape Epic.

They started training and riding together ahead of the next Epic and suddenly there were six other children joining in.

“Then we had 20. That was when André asked whether I could sit and read to the little ones to keep them busy. Suddenly we had 30 children, then 70, then 180, and now we have 400 children involved,” she says.

Mokgopo is now a professional mountain biker who is also studying sports management and works as an assistant coach at the foundation. >>

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“They know we only want them to better themselves, and they are constantly proving us correct.”

Ross hasn’t forgotten those difficult first months when corporates weren’t interested in the Diepsloot children with dreams of becoming involved in a sport perceived as expensive and even elitist.

“I remember when we first started we had to really fight people’s perceptions of Diepsloot being nothing but a haven for criminals where the children would amount to nothing. One person we approached for funding said he would give us two years before quitting, and that the children would steal the bicycles.” At one of the first races they attended a woman’s cellphone went missing, and the Diepsloot children were immediately wrongly blamed.

After starting off with the flagship Diepsloot Mountain Bike Academy the foundation, which is chaired by André Ross, now has three satellite academies in Naledi Village, Muldersdrift and Cosmo City. It also

runs Girlignite, a leadership programme for girls from Grade 11 and older; the Foodcycle programme which trains chefs and kitchen staff, and feeds the children; and a bicycle mechanic training initiative.

To date, the foundation has created meaningful employment, access to employment, upskilled beneficiaries and access to education for over 100 beneficiaries.

Ross feels nothing but happiness that they’ve proved all the naysayers wrong.

“We’ve pushed through those barriers. Our children know that we genuinely care about them and they abide by the strict rules we set.

They know we only want them to better themselves, and they are constantly proving us correct,” says Ross.

One of the foundation’s beneficiaries, whose father had told him to quit school and get a job because he was “too stupid”, went on to represent South Africa – and take fifth place – at the All Africa Youth Championship in Botswana in 2014.

And while he may not have been cut out for university, he and 33 other youngsters were trained to become bicycle mechanics, and are now employed full-time by the foundation and outside companies such as Cycle Lab. Ross says learning to ride a bike is like planting a seed. Once the children are taught to overcome the challenge of learning to ride, they begin to believe that overcoming other challenges is equally possible.

“We know that we’re turning out confident youngsters with plenty to be proud of.”

Ross has received public recognition for her work at Jala Peo. She was named PPS Professional Woman of the Year in 2015, won the Owami Women-BrandSA Play Your Part Recognition Award last year, was a top four finalist for the Africa region in the Commonwealth Youth Worker Awards 2016, and was a L’Oréal Women of Worth honoree for 2016/2017.

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Your alma mater wants to keep you updated with the latest UWC news, events and information. Update your contact details at www.uwc.ac.za/alumni or send an email with your details to alumni@uwc.ac.za.

Alumni Relations Office Department for Institutional Advancement, University of the Western Cape Office No. 41, Nursing Building, Robert Sobukwe Road (Old Modderdam Road) Tel: +27 21 959 2143 | Fax: +27 21 959 9791 | Email: alumni@uwc.ac.za www.uwc.ac.za | www.facebook.com/uwcalumni | http://twitter.com/UWConline

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Improved method for HIV and AIDS detection discovered In 2011 a group of UWC researchers from the Biotechnology Department in the Science Faculty began searching for ways to improve the current method of HIV and AIDS detection, which has a 50% false positive detection rate.

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50% false positive detection rate requires an individual to do follow-up tests to establish whether the initial diagnosis was accurate, which adds significantly to the cost of the current tests on the market.

Dr Ashley Pretorius, Dr Marius Belmondo Tincho and other participating researchers reasoned that since the antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) – peptides that are part of the body’s immune defence system – had to first bind with certain viral proteins to attempt to neutralise the virus, this could be exploited to detect the virus, or specifically p24, one of the earliest HIV markers following infection.

Professor Mervin Meyer from the UWC Nanotechnology Innovation Centre and researchers from the King Abdullah University of Technology, Saudi Arabia, and Medical Diagnostech Pty Ltd are also involved in the project. The Technology Innovation Agency provided funding for the project.

The group of researchers used a technology called site-directed mutagenesis to improve the binding affinities of the top-ranked AMP to ensure a stronger binding to HIV proteins gp120 (for therapeutic purposes) and p24 (for diagnostic purposes).

The AMPs were then sent to Medical Diagnostech for the development of a

diagnostic kit for commercialisation purposes.

For a more accurate, convenient and easy visualisation of the test results, gold nanoparticles were employed. The kit is the first of its kind to make use of peptide (aptamer) technology rather than the traditional antibody technology.

The project has been expanded to include therapeutics as it was shown that several of the AMPs can neutralise HIV as well as inhibit the growth of several bacteria of medical importance, specifically those that have become antibiotic resistant.

Among the results of the project, which is still in its pre-commercialisation phase, are two MSc projects and one PhD project (resulting in two publications), as well as the filing of an international patent to protect the intellectual property produced in the project.

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UWC’s Dr Ashley Pretorius.

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THE PLAN UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE 2016–2020 UWC’s Institutional Operating Plan is framed as a broad and integrated operational framework for 2016–2020. It represents a strategic interpretation of UWC’s role as a public South African university.

Our five themes intersect with eight goal areas concerned with issues of national transformation and social justice, inclusiveness and diversity, sustainability and innovation, and the need for local and global partnerships – built on the underlying principle that resources follow strategies.

THEMES

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3

THE UNIVERSITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE

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RESEARCH INTENSIVENESS

INNOVATION

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INTERNATIONALISATION

THE 21ST CENTURY GRADUATE

4 5 GOAL AREAS

1. THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

2. TEACHING AND LEARNING

5. FINANCIAL VIABILITY

6. ENHANCING UWC’S STANDING AND PROFILE 7. DEVELOPMENT OF

3. RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

THE CAMPUS AND SURROUNDING AREAS

4. EXCELLENT TALENT

8. LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE

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From left, Tiza Ng’uni, Aasiyah Chafekar and Prof Burtram (Bertie) Fielding.

Traditional medicine may lead to cancer treatment A South African indigenous plant which UWC researchers have proved kills cancer cells in a laboratory setting, could potentially lead to a treatment for breast cancer and melanomas.

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he research team, led by UWC professor of molecular biology, Burtram Fielding, is studying kraalbos (Galenia africana), a small yellow shrub commonly found in the Northern Cape and parts of the Western Cape.

South Africa’s indigenous people have historically used the plant, also known as

geelbos, to treat skin and eye conditions, and it was also chewed for relief from toothache.

Professor Fielding says that the impetus for the project was work on kraalbos done by colleagues in the agriculture space, which had identified some of the chemical constituents of the kraalbos. “Cattle, sheep and goats eat kraalbos, but we know that if they eat too

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much it makes their stomachs swell, and can result in liver damage,” Prof Fielding says.

Other researchers in South Africa had studied kraalbos as a potential treatment for malaria and tuberculosis.

Although traditionally researchers look for anecdotal and historical evidence about plants that hold potential to fight modern diseases, it didn’t happen that way for Prof Fielding and his team.

“We definitely didn’t know whether it would work when we started out at a very basic level about six years ago to see whether kraalbos would work on cancer cells. But it does. In the laboratory it is killing cancer cells,” says Prof Fielding.

To date they have tested kraalbos most successfully on melanomas and breast cancer cells, but have also tested it on cervical, liver and oesophageal cancer cells.

“We found that efficacy varied in the different scenarios, but that didn’t disappoint us. That’s good because this wasn’t going to be a magic bullet. Testing showed kraalbos efficacy was specific to particular cancers,” Prof Fielding says.

As a treatment would have to work physiologically, further testing was done on normal non-cancerous cells, which showed kraalbos was non-toxic.

Exciting new work is also being done to see how kraalbos works in conjunction with western cancer treatment drugs, specifically the breast cancer drug cisplatin, to which many cancers are fast becoming resistant.

“We are looking to see whether we can use kraalbos to make cisplatin more effective, and we are seeing some synergism.”

Prof Fielding’s cancer research team includes two PhD students, Tiza Ng’uni and Aasiyah Chafekar, as well as two master’s students and an honours student.

Prof Fielding says they had grappled with the issue of whether to register a patent

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ahead of publishing their results, but had decided that securing a patent was likely to be unsuccessful because some of the chemicals in kraalbos were already known to have anti-cancerous properties.

He says they may still apply for a patent pending the results of their drug combination, chemotherapy and radiotherapy studies.

The team has done some fractionisation to identify the active anti-cancer compound in kraalbos, and their molecular work has identified 32 genes that could be involved in the process of killing the cancer cells. The next step would be to study exactly how the cells were being killed.

The research has been internally funded thus far, with some additional funding from the National Research Foundation, but negotiations are under way with the University of Cape Town and a private company to do other studies, including animal testing.

“We want to test against a wider selection of cells, including oestrogen-independent breast and different stage melanoma cells,” Prof Fielding says.

Kraalbos (Galenia africana)

South Africa’s indigenous people have historically used the plant, also known as geelbos, to treat skin and eye conditions, and it was also chewed for relief from toothache.

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Chemistry team seeks solution to skin ageing Those beautiful amaryllis, clivia and agapanthus which commonly brighten up local gardens could well hold the future solution to ageing problems.

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lthough the value of the global anti-ageing products and services market is hard to accurately determine, with people increasingly living longer, it’s safe to assume that this segment of the cosmetics market will grow more important.

Professor Ahmed Mohammed, who left UWC’s Chemistry Department last September to take up a full professorship at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, is driving

a research project that seeks to discover plant-based treatments for ageing.

“South Africa boasts amazing flora. Our work with age-related diseases started a long time ago with Alzheimer’s disease, and was then followed by trying to find natural solutions from traditional herbal medicine to treat premature ageing, especially skin ageing,” Prof Mohammed says.

Some of the most effective drugs in the market for the treatment of Alzheimer’s were

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isolated from the Amaryllidaceae family, the highest global diversity of which is found in southern Africa.

These include two species of Amaryllis endemic to the Western and Northern Cape, along with two species of Crossyne.

The research team was particularly searching for new bioactive alkaloids in the Amaryllis family of plants. The team succeeded in scientifically proving the efficacy of some plants used in traditional medicine, as well as new sources for treating ageing problems. To date, their work on age-related diseases has resulted in more than 90 scientific papers published in international journals and seven patents. The research into age-related diseases led to researching potential treatments for skin ageing.

Having determined that all premature ageing symptoms could be linked to immune system defects, they began working to correlate the immune booster plants with specific premature ageing issues.

“We got excellent results from some,” says Prof Mohammed, adding that their current work was in the initial stages of evaluating some of the ‘undiscovered’ species of the immune-boosting plants in respect of their chemistry and biology.

Some of the most effective drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer’s were isolated from the Amaryllidaceae family, the highest global diversity of which is found in southern Africa.

Amaryllis belladonna

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The primary aim is to find solutions to improve or treat premature ageing conditions.

“In most cases, we need more time, but I am certain this work will ultimately improve on the current concept of how to treat ageing problems,” he says.

Prof Mohammed supervised several master’s and PhD students at UWC, some of whom are continuing their work with him at CPUT. Prof Mohammed hailed the “good and competitive” work of his growing research team, which was of an international standard.

His initial interest in the chemistry field in respect of natural products was drug discovery or identifying new lead compounds.

Intensive investigation by his students and collaborations with many different universities had created a scientific base from which to continue the work.

“What we are now looking for in this phase is to implement all of this knowledge to equip new human capacity in South Africa with scientific knowledge.

“We also want to set the stage for a new vision about how to sustainably use South Africa’s huge natural resources in the field of drug discovery,” says Prof Mohammed.

Mushrooms are now also on the radar of Prof Mohammed and his team.

“The chemical and biological evaluation of the mushroom is a priority, not in the same way as higher plants necessarily, but rather for their potential in the near future as an excellent source of both medicines and food,” he says. Novel metabolites in mushrooms and other unconventional natural resources, like microorganisms, could well serve as a template for the development of new drugs.

“We are building our capacity to increase the number of ‘perfectly identified’ collected species, and we will investigate their potential against specific biological targets,” Prof Mohammed says.

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JOIN THE

UWC ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Get your free UWC Alumni T-shirt and much more for only R170 per annum (or R70 for the first two years after graduation)! To join, download and complete the alumni membership form at www.uwc.ac.za/alumni

Contact us at alumni@uwc.ac.za or telephone 021 959 2143 if you have any questions.

Alumni Relations Office Department for Institutional Advancement, University of the Western Cape Office No. 41, Nursing Building, Robert Sobukwe Road (Old Modderdam Road) Tel: +27 21 959 2143 | Fax: +27 21 959 9791 | Email: alumni@uwc.ac.za www.uwc.ac.za | www.facebook.com/uwcalumni | http://twitter.com/UWConline

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1980s oriented alumnus to public service Dr Hilton Fisher, who is currently serving as the South African Ambassador to Chile, is one of many UWC alumni of the 1980s to have taken up public office.

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r Fisher was raised by a stay-athome, hard-working mother and a father who was employed as a teacher in rural Piketberg. They instilled in him the conviction that, in the words of the late President Nelson Mandela, “education is the great engine of personal development.” Dr Fisher completed a Bachelor of Arts

degree in 1988, followed by a Higher Diploma in Education at UWC, before he began his teaching career in Mitchell’s Plain in 1990. He obtained his honours in 1993, also at UWC. He recalls that studying at UWC in the 1980s was not easy, especially being a first-year student amid student boycotts, mass meetings and police violence. After lectures were suspended for six months Dr Fisher ‘failed’ his first year, but continued his studies with the support of his family. >>

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“In those heady days when the riot police turned their weapons on protesting students from the top of the railways building opposite the old campus entrance, it was not easy to focus on studies,” says Dr Fisher.

However, those days at UWC were also key to his consciousness of life and public service.

“Those formative days laid the foundations for my ability to make a contribution to the future of South Africa,” he says.

Dr Fisher recalls that when he registered for his master’s in public administration, students had to introduce themselves and he proudly indicated that he had an eight-month-old son.

He later overheard one lecturer telling his

In those heady days when the riot police trained their weapons on protesting students from the top of the railways building opposite the old campus entrance, it was not easy to focus on studies.

Students demonstrating at UWC in the 1980s.

colleagues that the student with the eightmonth-old son would not make it.

“I approached the lecturer and informed him that I was that student and that his prediction would not become true. Two-anda-half years later I graduated with only six other students from the original group of 40 and I reminded the lecturer about his comments,” says Dr Fisher. His son, Darren, is now a second-year student at UWC. In 1996 Dr Fisher joined Parliament as a translator/editor in the Language Services Section and was promoted to Senior Editor in the Legislation and Proceedings Section. He later worked at National Treasury where he was seconded to the Government Employees’ Pension Fund as the Head of Communications and Client Services.

Dr Fisher completed a PhD in public affairs at the University of Pretoria (UP) in 2006 and also completed his honours in international politics at the University of South Africa.

Dr Fisher served in the Cabinet Secretariat before President Jacob Zuma appointed him as South Africa’s Ambassador to the Republic of Chile in 2013.

Dr Fisher believes that UWC students of the 1980s were pioneers of sorts who are now in management/leadership positions in business, government and other spheres of influence.

“It is these pioneers who are in the fortunate position of straddling the end of apartheid and the beginning of democracy – they straddle the old and the new – and they therefore have the opportunity and responsibility to make a difference in the South Africa of today.”

Dr Fisher maintains close ties with UWC and UP as a lecturer and external examiner. “It is important for alumni to make a contribution to their alma mater since it provides young students with positive role models,” he says.

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Marriage law not recognising gender choices For his Master of Laws degree (LLM), Glenton Matthyse wrote a thesis on the right to remain married, wherein he examined the position of homosexual and transsexual marriages under the South African Marriage Act, Act 25 of 1961.

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arling-born Matthyse’s research mainly focuses on how the law is heteronormatively and cisnormatively conceptualised.

“The thesis emphasises the problematic relationships that exist between the marriage law and the people who were married under the South African Marriage Act as a couple (initially legally deemed heterosexual), where one spouse later affirms his/her gender socially, or medically through hormone therapy and/ or surgical intervention, and legally by amending the birth certificate to reflect the same sex as the partner.

Before an amendment of their affirmed sex on their marriage certificate can be effected, couples are forced to divorce each other under the Divorce Act in order to remarry under the Civil Union Act (particularly designated for same-sex couples),” says Matthyse.

As the Divorce Act only makes provision for a marriage to be dissolved in the event of the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, or the mental illness or continuous unconsciousness of a party to the marriage, Matthyse says the couple would have to perjure themselves in order to get the marriage dissolved. >>

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Matthyse argues that these couples should have a right to remain married under the Marriage Act and that the forced divorce is unconstitutional, as it unfairly discriminates against the couple based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.

The research notes that LGBTI people in South Africa have been able to secure human rights which has been progressive but, with the conflation of sexual orientation and gender identity, transsexual people have not been able to claim their rights and assert their existence as humans being effectively within a constitutional democracy.

South Africa’s law of marriage is unable to accommodate spouses who married as a heterosexual couple but where one spouse subsequently undergoes gender affirmation, conforming the relationship to what is perceived as homosexual.

On account of this, the Department of Home Affairs is subjecting these couples to compulsory or forced divorces by refusing to recognise the transsexual spouse’s affirmed gender on the marriage certificate.

The transsexual spouse either remains married under the Marriage Act and recognised by the birth-sex, or submits to a compulsory or forced divorce for the affirmed gender to be recognised on a marriage certificate issued under the Civil Union Act upon ‘remarrying’.

The thesis investigates the history of marriages in South Africa that were prohibited based on designations such as race.

It looks at how the State imposed its legal terms and conditions on the social relationships people formed. This thesis questions whether the State is acting in a way that is administratively just and argues that the success of a divorce decree is dependent on at least one party voluntarily applying for it.

The thesis draws on the current South African human rights discourse that has been

developed by and for the LGBTI community especially as it relates to the law of marriage.

The study argues that the social and legal inequalities faced by same-sex couples today results from the hegemony which the dominant gender identity and sexual orientation, cisgenderism and heterosexuality has over the law.

The study also shows that this hegemony is sustained by religion, medical discourse, culture and tradition.

The study concludes that, if the aim of the law is merely to seek to socially include post facto same-sex couples within its narrow heteronormative and heterosexist understanding of transgender and homosexual politics, it is clear that equality for people with non-normative sexual orientations and gender identities remains and may continue to be elusive.

In not transforming in such a way that it seeks to understand and respect difference, the law will fail in its ambition of affording protection to all by ending up affording protection only to the status quo.

It is clear that equality for people with non-normative sexual orientations and gender identities remains and may continue to be elusive.

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Jonathan Kiangani and Prof Leslie Petrik

A concrete solution to environmental waste The coal-ash dumps of the Highveld and Mpumalanga that pose a significant environmental threat could become a thing of the past thanks to groundbreaking research at UWC, in collaboration with the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).

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rofessor Leslie Petrik of UWC’s Department of Chemistry is leading the research, which aims to prove that fly ash, the residue from burning coal at power stations, can provide a cost-effective alternative to cement in South Africa’s building industry.

Fly ash constitutes about 40 percent of the low-grade coal – as much as 35 million tons annually – burned in South Africa’s coal-fired power stations. The ash is dumped near the power stations, much of it mixed in slurry dams with the brine (extremely salty water) condensed from spent steam that has to be removed from the power stations during the process of electricity generation. But as new legislation will prohibit this practice, finding solutions has become imperative.

“We are working with industry to find ways for their waste to be reused, and the fly ash problem is an obvious one to tackle considering its negative environmental >>

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“The process kills three birds with one stone. We are getting rid of waste by using it productively; replacing cement saves a huge amount of energy; and the end products will be very versatile and can be used widely in the building industry.” impact. We are proving it can be reused very productively and constructively, particularly in the building industry,” Prof Petrik says.

The ash consists of very fine particles which are corrosive and abrasive. Containing many toxic metals like mercury and chromium and soluble salts, they pollute both the surface and groundwater.

The UWC-CPUT team is developing a prototype that will prove this ash can be turned into lower-cost roof tiles, bricks, paving stones, and building elements like lintels, fire-retardant panels and insulation material.

“Our research began about seven years ago with Sasol. Once that funding ended we received funding from the National Research Foundation to carry on our work, which we believe will provide a major boost for the building industry,” says Prof Petrik.

Most of South Africa’s buildings are built using brick, concrete and plaster. The building industry already uses up to 6 percent of fly ash in concrete and plaster, as a cement extender.

During the production process of cement, the ingredients must be heated at very high temperatures to produce the rock-like substance, which is then ground into fine-powdered cement. This is hugely costly in terms of carbon dioxide generation. The UWC-CPUT research team aims to show that cement can be entirely replaced with fly ash.

“Fly ash has already been mined in the form of coal, and has been through the combustion process during power generation. It is there lying on the ground. If you activate it chemically, it turns into the equivalent of concrete without using cement. This means that it’ll be cheaper, and offer huge energy savings,” says Prof Petrik.

The team now has funding from the Technology Innovation Agency to develop prototype roof tiles, in collaboration with CPUT’s Professor Tunde Ojumu and his students, who are process engineers. “[The process]… kills three birds with one stone. We are getting rid of waste by using it productively; replacing cement saves a huge amount of energy; and the end products will be very versatile and can be used widely in the building industry,” Prof Petrik says.

Fly ash is also fire-retardant, which could offer alternatives in low-cost housing to replace chipboard and gypsum board, which are highly flammable.

Commercial partners will be approached once the prototype is completed.

“But we first need to get the stamp of approval on our products. So we are in the process of doing all the testing – for strength, leaching and stability. That will allow us to get a certificate of production because we have to comply with all the building standards,” she says.

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I give a small amount each month through an HR deduction. It’s easy and hassle free. But over time, my contribution adds up and makes a meaningful difference. I give to Access to Success because I feel strongly about the mission of empowering our nation and the African continent. I appreciate the opportunity to give back to the community and our students.

Mandla Gagayi UWC Director of Sport

For more information, visit accesstosuccess.uwc.ac.za or contact Somayah Barnes at sbarnes@uwc.ac.za or call 021 959 9568.

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App provides virtual pharmacist for Deaf people When most people go to the pharmacy to collect their medication, they are able to talk to the pharmacist, ask questions about their medication and read the printed directions on the product label.

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his is not the case for many Deaf people. According to Professor Bill Tucker, Associate Professor in Computer Science at UWC, many Deaf people are textually illiterate and are primarily literate in sign language. Unable to discuss their needs with the pharmacist, disadvantaged Deaf people tend to merely collect their medicines and rely on families and friends to advise them on how to take them.

Seeking a solution that would allow Deaf people to independently access information about their prescribed medication, Prof Tucker – together with doctoral students Prangnat Chininthorn, Mariam Parker and Andre Henney, and several other postgraduate students – developed an app suite for mobile phones that provides Deaf people with the information they need about their medication and illness in sign language. The main app, a video application for mobile phones dubbed ‘SignSupport for

Pharmacy’, was developed in consultation with Deaf people as well as pharmacists and other experts. Pre-recorded videos in South African Sign Language (SASL), which cater for a range of medical needs, are loaded onto phones and can be accessed via the app. The apps can be accessed on mid-range phones costing about R1 300.

“Once they are on the phone it doesn’t cost the end users anything. That’s key for us as we are dealing with economically disadvantaged people,” says Henney.

‘SignSupport for Pharmacy’, was developed in consultation with Deaf people as well as pharmacists and other experts.

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From left to right, Andre Henney, PhD candidate in Computer Science at UWC; Prangnat Chininthorn, PhD candidate in Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft; and Bill Tucker, Associate Professor of Computer Science at UWC.

One of the problems the team had to overcome was that there are many variations of South African sign language. People in different communities have developed their own variations in SASL, in the same way that regional dialects developed in other languages.

However, Chininthorn says, “Even though there are multiple dialects [in SASL] there’s enough commonality among Deaf people. It is possible for good signers to sign in a way that more people can understand, for instance in a video.”

“We had an industrial design engineer work with Deaf people to get their input, and a PhD student in Pharmacy who made sure everything adhered to proper pharmacy protocols. Then we handed all this work to computer scientists who coded the mobile app,” says Prof Tucker.

Another challenge is to clear up misunderstandings. This requires a call centre staffed by trained and certified SASL interpreters to provide remote video interpreting. “We aim it at the lowest-end phone that has a front-facing camera so when Deaf people have questions, they can connect to a remote interpreter to clarify information.”

However, unlike using SignSupport, video relay, with video running in both directions

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from a phone, would be very expensive, unless subsidised by a mobile operator.

The team has worked with the Deaf community since 2001 and on the app since 2010. It feels the app suite – including SignSupport for Pharmacy, an authoring tool to create additional scenarios, and a mobile video relay – is ready to be handed to an organisation to take further. Ideally, this organisation would be owned and run by Deaf people. According to the researchers, DeafSA estimated that there were about 600 000 Deaf South Africans in 2006. Despite this huge market, getting the government to buy into the concept has been difficult. SASL is still not an official language in SA. “We have had meetings with the government, which went well, but then nothing happened. What we need is to form an organisation that will take ownership of this project. This needs to somehow be commercialised, even if for free, which is how I would like to see it,” says Prof Tucker.

Prof Tucker says the app was not intended for all people with hearing loss, but for a specific segment of that community.

“Deaf – with an upper case ‘D’ – denotes people who primarily use sign language as their mother tongue and as their identity.

Cultural identity is attached to your language.

“With a lower case ‘d’, ‘deaf’ people are usually older people who suffer from hearing loss and can communicate with hearing people as they have been reading, writing, speaking and hearing all their lives. These ‘deaf’ people are more likely to be able to lip read, talk and use a hearing aid.

“Our target audience is ‘Deaf’ people, for whom SASL is a sense of identity and community. For instance, children of Deaf parents might be able to hear, but their first language is sign language. They would also call themselves Deaf even though they can hear – as that is the language they use,” says Prof Tucker.

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SANBI database reveals gene-disease relationships

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cientists at the South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI) of the University of the Western Cape have developed a database which is revolutionising how bioscientists and geneticists process genetic information by using computing to speed up the analysis of data.

“Currently we use DNA sequencing technology to try to disentangle the genetics of rare diseases,” explains Professor Junaid Gamieldien, a computational biologist, associate professor and principal investigator at SANBI. “In genetic disease studies the norm before was to look at one ‘usual suspect’ gene, or at most, a few, with many cases left unsolved if the initial guess was wrong. With DNA sequencing having become fast and relatively cheap, we can look at all genes to find the one with a disease-causing mutation. This is however like looking for a needle in a haystack of needles. Our database is an important part of our computational approach to finding the right needle.”

At SANBI, Prof Gamieldien and his team have programmed accurate pipelines to process the raw data obtained from DNA sequencing instruments to the point where the database is able to detect differences between individuals’ DNA, their parents or siblings, and an improved version of the internationally used standard reference genome.

What makes the database unique is its ability to refine the results from these pipelines into useful information. “This database allows us to integrate – into a central database – as much existing knowledge as possible about biology, biomedicine and genes and how they work,” says Prof Gamieldien.

Referred to as a semantic graph database, “it stores facts in much the same way as a scientist and biotechnologist would store the knowledge in their own brain, but in a much bigger way,” Prof Gamieldien says.

“We have routines in the software that ask and answer questions in the same way a scientist would and then return a list of evidencebacked possibilities in the form of a report that a scientist or expert then evaluates further.

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“If you structure knowledge in a way that humans think about it, then you can facilitate scientists’ access to knowledge. At the time that we started this project, there were many information sources, but little of it was integrated, so it made sense to formally collate a lot of it. It also came from my acceptance that no matter how advanced a biomedical geneticist you were, you would never have all the facts in your own mind, nor be able to make a decision based on them even if you did,” says Prof Gamieldien.

While “the final decision on which mutated gene best explains the disease is always made by a biomedical scientist and/or geneticist and/or clinical specialist,” Prof Gamieldien says SANBI wants to extend the database in future to automatically suggest clinical treatment options to scientists and clinicians upon identification of a gene, especially in the case of rare disorders.

The project has created opportunities for postgraduate students to learn how to “make sense of big data”.

Before, a postgraduate student could need months to identify gene candidates for disease in biomedical literature. Now, with a database that stores nearly a billion facts, the same search delivers answers in minutes instead of months, allowing students to focus their time and research skills on refining their findings.

In 2016 the project acquired unexpected personal relevance for Prof Gamieldien when an eight-year-old family member was diagnosed with a genetic disease known as MELAS (mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, lactic acidosis and stroke-like episodes), which causes muscle weakness and pain,

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constant headaches, loss of appetite, vomiting and seizures, and stroke-like episodes as sufferers age. There is no specific treatment for it.

“The study of rare diseases needs to gain a lot more priority in South Africa or we might never know when a South African Steven Hawking or the next Nelson Mandela failed to reach their full potential because they did not get treatment due to an inaccurate or missed diagnosis.

“The reality is that as a collective, rare disease is not as rare as we think. Massive progress is being made internationally with genomics and we have what it takes to contribute, bearing in mind that rare disorders could teach us a lot more about common illnesses too,” says Prof Gamieldien.

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Happy to be obese?

Earlier this year, at a public hearing on the proposed sugar tax on sugary drinks convened by Parliament’s Finance and Health portfolio committees, the World Health Organisation was quoted as saying South Africa could prevent almost half a million deaths over 40 years by applying the tax.

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he government has argued that the sugar tax could be pivotal in halting rising mortality due to diabetes and kidney disease.

The question of whether South Africa’s envisaged sugar tax will positively address increasing obesity levels was thrown into sharp focus by research which revealed an unexpected stumbling block – a large number of South Africans seem to be quite happy to be overweight.

The research, published last year in the UK-based peer-reviewed journal BMC Public Health, was the work of a University of the Western Cape-Chronic Disease Initiative for Africa (CDIA) research team. Based at the

University of Cape Town, the CDIA is a network of multidisciplinary researchers from the Universities of the Western Cape, Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Harvard, the South African Medical Research Council and the local and national Departments of Health. The research is the latest in a series of studies by the researchers highlighting challenges to tackling obesity-related health threats.

The researchers were Dr Kufre Okop, a UWC School of Public Health PhD graduate who is now a postdoctoral research fellow at UCT; UWC doctoral fellow Ferdinand Mukumbang; UWC senior researcher Dr Thubelihle Mathole; CDIA Director and head of diabetic medicine and endocrinology at

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UCT, Professor Naomi Levitt; and UWC School of Public Health Emeritus Professor Thandi Puoane. They found that overweight, middle-aged black women, unlike their normal weight female and obese male counterparts in the study, had no issues with their weight. Not only were they content, but many indicated they wanted to pack on even more kilograms.

The women were among nearly 80 men and women from Langa, aged 35 to 70, involved in the study, titled Perceptions of body size, obesity threat and the willingness to lose weight among black South African adults. Although the overweight women had a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25 to 29.9kg/m2, as opposed to the 18 to 24.9kg/m2 of the normal weight participants, and cited overeating and fatty and sugary foods as causes of weight gain, they were adamant that being overweight equaled happiness.

Only those who had struggled previously with a chronic disease wanted to lose weight.

These attitudes are particularly concerning given that a study published in the BioMed Central journal last year reported the prevalence of overweight and obese South Africans at 85 percent, up from 65 percent four years previously.

A 2000 study blamed excess body weight (BMI over 25) for 87 percent of Type 2 diabetes, 38 percent of heart disease and 45 percent of strokes. More concerning news from the UWC-CDIA study was that women of all sizes believe their culture or their genetics determined their size.

“We have big bones…Overweight is something we inherited,” one said.

Another added: “According to our values and culture, it is important for a woman to have a large body. It makes you to be respected (sic).”

The authors found that while opinions on thinness and overweight differed, the

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common opinion was that thin was bad, while overweight was “socially desirable”.

If a woman was thin, she was viewed as unhealthy and associated with people living with HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis or cancer. She was also considered likely to have mental health issues such as depression.

One of the women in the overweight category went so far as to say that if her child lost weight, she’d be concerned.

There were indications, however, that younger women (aged 36 to 40) thought differently, and this could indicate a shift in perceptions in the longer term.

Women in this age group, in both the overweight and obese categories, challenged the persistent cultural tolerance of large body size, the authors reported.

One participant, who said she believed things were changing, pointed out that women ate because of men’s view that overweight women were “desirable”.

Not only did the women in the overweight category fail to see themselves as being at risk of obesity, they also appeared oblivious to the associated health risks.

The authors said the fact that threequarters of the study participants were unemployed and of low socio-economic status and education levels could slant their views. However, they remained concerned, arguing that appropriate strategies to boost awareness of the risks associated with obesity were critical.

With almost 70% of women and 39% of men overweight, South Africa has the highest obesity rate in Sub-Saharan Africa. www.heala.org/resources

39% 69.3%

OBESE OR OVERWEIGHT

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Courageous Café Conversations The University of the Western Cape’s (UWC) Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic, Professor Vivienne Lawack, is inviting all alumni to participate in the Courageous Conversations discussion series, (Re)creating/(Re)thinking the Intellectual Identity of UWC, including transformation of the curriculum and scholarship of engagement.

The conversations will be led by a panel of UWC alumni. Each panel discussion will be followed by a cocktail event.

Cape Town: 19 October 2017, 18h30 for 19h00 African Pride 15 On Orange Hotel, Orange Street, Cape Town City Centre Port Elizabeth: 10 November 2017, 18h30 for 19h00 Radisson Blu Hotel, Corner of Marine Drive and Ninth Avenue, Summerstrand, Port Elizabeth

Alumni Relations Office Department for Institutional Advancement, University of the Western Cape Office No. 41, Nursing Building, Robert Sobukwe Road (Old Modderdam Road) Tel: +27 21 959 2143 | Fax: +27 21 959 9791 | Email: alumni@uwc.ac.za www.uwc.ac.za | www.facebook.com/uwcalumni | http://twitter.com/UWConline

www.uwc.ac.za

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Researchers look for treatment for drug-resistant TB Due to South Africa’s high burden of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) cases, including extensively drugresistant tuberculosis (XDR TB), it is imperative that compounds be developed to treat drug-resistant TB.

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ycobacterium tuberculosis is the causative agent of tuberculosis.

According to Dr Ruben Cloete of the South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI) at the University of the Western Cape, 10 percent of infected individuals have the latent form of the bacteria, which could become active later in life. This makes the discovery of novel compounds very important to reduce the critical reservoir of potential new cases of TB. The Christoffels Laboratory at SANBI is collaborating with the Division of Molecular Biology and Human Genetics in the Faculty of

Medicine and Health Sciences at Stellenbosch University, to analyse M. tuberculosis genomic data to understand mechanisms of drug >>

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resistance. According to Professor Alan Christoffels, these insights will lead to better drug target identification and ultimately improve drug discovery.

The computational drug discovery platform started with the PhD thesis of Dr Cloete that prioritised nine targets in the M. tuberculosis genome. This work was used to leverage funding from the Technology Innovation Agency to purchase computationally identified compounds for experimental testing against M. tuberculosis that is ongoing at the University of Stellenbosch Medical School. The drug discovery platform has expanded to include another PhD student, Anati Nkaule, who is interested in the use of computational methods to filter potential drugs as therapeutics against M. tuberculosis.

Biofilm of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

A second postdoctoral researcher, Dr Mohammed Shabaaz, joined the team in June 2017. The research to date has fuelled collaboration with the Seattle Structural Genomics Center to determine the 3-D protein structures of the newly prioritised drug targets, as well as the search for efflux pump inhibitors with the School of Pharmacy at the University of the Western Cape.

The work is funded through the DST/NRF Research Chair in Bioinformatics and Public Health Genomics and the Medical Research Council Bioinformatics Unit at SANBI.

Ten percent of infected individuals have the latent form of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, which could become active later in life.

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Inspired by son to succeed

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uthando Mzilikazi’s youth was fraught with many challenges. Raised in a township by a single mother, she fell pregnant at 15 and was asked to leave Sans Souci Girls’ High School. She restarted her schooling at Rhodes High School, where she witnessed violence that made her realise how privileged she had been before.

She could have given up at this point but, says Mzilikazi, “I did not want to remain stuck in that life and neither did I want my child to be exposed to it.”

In 2009 she finished matric and registered for a BCur Nursing degree at the University of the Western Cape. But after six months, she knew it was not the right choice and quit her studies to work in a call centre.

One night while watching a TV show she became intrigued by a character, a black businesswoman who also happened to have been a teenage mom. “That character made me realise I could choose a different path and that there is a place for black females in the corporate world,” says Mzilikazi.

Supported by three strong role models – her mother, an internationally educated nurse who had singlehandedly raised three children while working two jobs; her sister, who is now a chartered accountant; and her grandmother, who encouraged her to be independent – Mzilikazi decided to change her future. She started planning with the end goal in mind, working backwards to determine the steps she needed to take to become a qualified business analyst. She focused on becoming >>

Alumna Luthando Lulu Mzilikazi from Khayelitsha overcame early setbacks to become a business development consultant at Allan Gray. (Photo: Lynne Rippenaar-Moses)

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“Knowing that there was this little being whose life trajectory depended on me made me wake up in the early hours of the morning to continue studying for an exam and made me go over that assignment one more time to ensure it was perfect.”

eligible for some of UWC’s degree programmes and South Africa’s top bursaries and in her first year was awarded a fellowship from the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, which she received for three years thereafter.

She excelled academically at UWC and was a top three academic achiever every year.

Luthando also tutored and mentored fellow students and did internships to improve her own marketability. For her honours degree, she registered at the University of Cape Town (UCT) as a Mandela Rhodes Scholar.

Mzilikazi was awarded a BCom in Finance and Economics (summa cum laude) from UWC and BCom Honours (cum laude) in Finance from UCT. A qualified business analyst, she is involved in a pilot programme for previously disadvantaged graduates at investment management company Allan Gray. The Rotational Business Analyst programme provides graduates with the opportunity to work in a range of dynamic structures in the company.

During 2016 Mzilikazi worked in various analytical teams at Allan Gray including the investment team, the Institutional Client Servicing team and the marketing team, where her main focus was on writing articles.

She has since been permanently appointed as a business development consultant in Allan Gray’s distribution team where she will be responsible for developing the businesses of the top financial advisors that invest in Allan Gray on behalf of their clients.

Mzilikazi puts her knowledge in financial management and investment to good use by investing 40% of her earnings in various Allan Gray funds. At Allan Gray, Mzilikazi’s mere presence as a black female business analyst in a traditionally white male-dominated space is transformative. “By working at Allan Gray, and having worked in their most analytical teams, I am already challenging the status quo. My natural inclination to speak my mind means that I am able to walk into each team and provide constructive criticism on inefficiencies and therefore improve the way they do business. Since I found my value add to the business quite early on, I never feel inferior to anyone in my team and the rest of the business,” says Mzilikazi.

“One of the reasons I joined Allan Gray was that there are opportunities to drive change.

It’s also a company that rewards independent minds, so I saw Allan Gray as an opportunity to be a change agent rather than a critic.”

She is a founding member of the Khayelitsha Educational & Development Trust which will launch later this year. The Trust will support learners who are enrolled at schools in Khayelitsha through a resource hub which will connect them with academic, financial and emotional support structures.

When asked where she found the strength to persevere, she says, “The answer is quite simple. My son kept me going.

Knowing that there was this little being whose life trajectory depended on me made me wake up in the early hours of the morning to continue studying for an exam and made me go over that assignment one more time to ensure it was perfect. That is what made me a disciplined perfectionist and I was always rewarded for putting in the extra work. I was also always motivated by the prospect of success.”

Mzilikazi is completing an MCom in Financial and Risk Management at UCT.

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UWC ALUMNI PHONATHON 2017

…to all our alumni.

We really enjoyed talking to you.

Alumni Relations Office Department for Institutional Advancement, University of the Western Cape Office No. 41, Nursing Building, Robert Sobukwe Road (Old Modderdam Road) Tel: +27 21 959 2143 | Fax: +27 21 959 9791 | Email: alumni@uwc.ac.za www.uwc.ac.za | www.facebook.com/uwcalumni | http://twitter.com/UWConline

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Looking to the oceans to treat land-based diseases

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n February this year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) released a list of 12 families of bacteria whose resistance to antibiotics posed the “greatest threat to human health.” The list highlights the lack of effective antibiotics for the treatment of serious infections such as tuberculosis and pneumonia.

At the University of the Western Cape, microbiologist Professor Marla Trindade and her research team at the Institute for Microbial Biotechnology and Metagenomics (IMBM) in the Department of Biotechnology, are looking to the oceans to find new medicines to combat multi-drug resistant diseases.

“We are looking specifically at bacteria that have been sourced from remote places like deep-sea ocean sediments, water and glacial ice in Antarctica, and those that are in a symbiotic relationship with marine invertebrates like sea sponges and tunicates,” explains Prof Trindade, who is the Director of the IMBM and holds the DST/NRF SARChI Research Chair in Microbial Genomics.

“We study microorganisms that produce bioactive compounds – chemical compounds with pharmacological and biochemical properties that may have therapeutic potential – with anti-cancer, anti-infective and anti-inflammation properties, with the aim to optimise them for pharmaceutical development.”

Through the Ocean Medicines Project, the

IMBM has joined an international network of academic partners, research centres and small-medium enterprises collaborating to develop novel bioactive compounds from marine microorganisms. The IMBM’s cuttingedge research in microbial biotechnology has made it a leader in the field in South Africa.

The IMBM laboratory is well equipped with state-of-the-art equipment. Postgraduate students do not only benefit from using this laboratory, but from opportunities to attend national and international conferences while studying, and from participating in international exchange programmes where they engage with and receive training from other leading researchers in the marine biodiscovery and biotechnology fields. And, they get to work on multidisciplinary research projects like the Ocean Medicines Project.

“Our students learn a range of techniques including genomics, bioinformatics, structural biology and analytical chemistry. While these are all independent fields of study, the research we do brings them together in one space.” The Oceans Medicines Project is an extension of the four-year EU-funded PharmaSea Project which involved 24 partners from 13 countries focused on finding novel bioactive compounds. The IMBM has accumulated a culture collection of over 3 000 microorganisms with an enormous range of bioactivities which are being investigated for

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University of the Western Cape microbiologist Prof Marla Trindade.

applications as antibiotics and anti-inflammation and central nervous disease treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

Prof Trindade and her team are now focused on developing lead compounds out of these organisms by sequencing their genomes.

“By sequencing the genomes of organisms, we obtain their genetic information and can identify the genes that give an activity, predict the compound structure and genetically engineer the organisms to increase the production and/or modify the active properties. The compounds we produce must be able to be mass produced, because if you can’t produce enough of them in an economical way, you can’t sell them,” says Prof Trindade. But why exactly have scientists turned to the oceans for new medicines?

“The sedentary lifestyle of many organisms requires that they build up a chemical means of defence against a range of bacteria and the rate at which the compounds they release to protect themselves become diluted, means that these organisms must produce natural products that are highly potent and help them survive in an environment with unique, harsh and fluctuating conditions. Extreme environments such as hot springs, the Antarctic or deep-sea thermal vents are also filled with microorganisms that have to adapt to that environment differently than microorganisms contained in a plant, for example,” says Prof Trindade.

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Energy storage research reaches pivot point With most areas averaging more than 2 500 hours of sunshine annually, and many coastal regions experiencing the strong, steady winds required for effective wind energy generation, South Africa is seen as an ideal producer of renewable energy.

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he annual 24-hour global solar radiation average in South Africa is about 220 watts per square metre (W/m2), compared with about 150 W/ 2 m for parts of the USA, and about 100 W/m2 for Europe and the UK. But once the sun goes down and demand for power goes up, all this daytime energy is

of little use unless there is a cheap and reliable method of storing the energy until it is needed. Currently, energy produced by solar or wind sources costs around 60c per kilowatt hour produced, and roughly R1 per kilowatt hour for coal-fired power stations. However, the cost of storage raises the cost of renewable energy above that of coal-fired

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“Just like we saw with the introduction of mobile phones where landlines became redundant, effective energy storage solutions will enable us to leapfrog many of the traditional aspects of the energy grid. With the implementation of wind, solar and storage you can penetrate the areas that are not currently on the grid.”

power stations. Led by Professor Bernard Bladergroen, researchers at UWC’s Energy Storage Innovation Laboratory (ESIL) are working to find a solution to the energy storage problem. Prof Bladergroen and his team aim to make the cost of solar and wind energy comparable if not lower than that produced by coal-fired power stations.

“If you can beat coal-fired power stations, you can also beat nuclear,” says Prof Bladergroen.

The team has already carried out successful field tests on lithium ion batteries, but larger storage batteries are still several years away from the market. The biggest challenge to their development is finding funding to keep the research going.

The lithium ion batteries made famous by Elon Musk and the Tesla Gigafactory are similar to those being produced at UWC. The big difference, however, is that Musk and some large Asian manufacturers are commercially producing lithium ion batteries in massive quantities.

“Musk has been able to invest R75 billion on the plant,” Prof Bladergroen says. “So if you want to compete with Elon Musk then you have to think about building a similarsized factory.”

While lithium ion batteries have a much longer productive life than the lead acid batteries in everyday use in most cars, they are not suitable for large-scale storage of energy.

“What we are looking for is a battery that is

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not very capital intensive, that is able to store large amounts of energy and that will last 10 to 20 years. That’s where all our research is heading,” says Prof Bladergroen.

A better prospect for large-scale energy storage, Prof Bladergroen believes, is the vanadium redox flow battery that has great potential in South Africa, especially as this country is a large producer of vanadium and has the third-highest estimated reserves of the metal.

“Energy storage has enormous potential to change the world,” Prof Bladergroen says. “I think many people do not comprehend the implications of this research. With the correct type of energy storage you can have the whole world running on clean, cost-effective solar and wind power.”

Prof Bladergroen believes that undeveloped rural areas will benefit most from this technology.

“Just like we saw with the introduction of mobile phones where landlines became redundant, effective energy storage solutions will enable us to leapfrog many of the traditional aspects of the energy grid. With the implementation of wind, solar and storage you can penetrate the areas that are not currently on the grid.

“We are right on that pivot point where the combination of renewable plus storage becomes the cheapest way of doing things.

It is a very exciting time, and it is up to the researchers to break through that cost target,” he says.

Prof Bladergroen is encouraged by the many working prototypes in the field. What is needed now is funding to build the factories that will produce the large megawatt storage batteries.

“As soon as you start mass manufacturing, the prices come down very quickly. I am looking forward to seeing that happen very soon,” says Prof Bladergroen.

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Alumni Relations Office Department for Institutional Advancement, University of the Western Cape Office No. 41, Nursing Building, Robert Sobukwe Road (Old Modderdam Road) Tel: +27 21 959 2143 | Fax: +27 21 959 9791 | Email: alumni@uwc.ac.za www.uwc.ac.za | www.facebook.com/uwcalumni | http://twitter.com/UWConline

www.uwc.ac.za

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Common wetland plant may alleviate male fertility and reproductive health problems Almost everywhere in southern Africa, wherever there is a body of freshwater, one finds the plant Typha capensis.

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he cousin of the European bulrush and North American cattail, the plant is known in the Western Cape as papkuil, matjiesriet or palmiet, as ingcongolo in the Eastern Cape and ibhuma in KwaZulu-Natal. It has been used by traditional healers for generations to improve circulation, assist childbirth and treat ailments such as dysmenorrhea, venereal diseases, dysentery and diarrhoea, and to enhance the male potency, libido and fertility problems.

In 2006, Professor Ralf Henkel, who heads the Department of Medical BioScience in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at UWC and researches male reproductive biology, began a research project to determine the medical efficacy of T. capensis.

Professor Henkel says that men in South Africa are consulting traditional healers not only for fertility problems, but also when experiencing male ageing problems such as weakening of the bones, decreasing testosterone levels and prostate cancer.

The research shows promising signs that using T. capensis may assist the body to burn >>

Professor Ralf Henkel, head of the Department of Medical BioScience in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at UWC, began a research project to determine the medical efficacy of T. capensis.

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fat and could help with male age-related obesity, especially weight gain around the belly. It might also help remedy certain female fertility and maternity complications. However, more funding is needed to promote more research to obtain clinical data on T. capensis.

Previous studies by the team of Prof Henkel revealed that T. capensis had a beneficial effect on male reproductive functions and male ageing symptoms.

A member of Prof Henkel’s research team, Dr Abdulkarem Ilfergane, devoted his PhD dissertation to T. capensis. The aim of Dr Ilfergane’s study was to investigate the effect

of Typha capensis and its phytochemicals on male reproductive function. The effects of the T. capensis rhizome extract on Leydig cells (the cells that produce the testosterone in the testes) and prostate cancer cells were investigated.

Dr Ilfergane fractionated the aqueous extract using high-performance liquid chromatography. The results revealed that the extract significantly boosted testosterone secretion. At the same time, it also exhibited cytotoxic activity towards prostate cancer cells compared to normal cells.

Subsequently, Dr Ilfergane chemically identified the bioactive compounds using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometry as naringenin and quercetin.

Both compounds exhibited the same effects as the crude extract in an acute and chronic exposure of the cells.

Thus, Typha capensis and its bioactive compounds enhanced testosterone production and might be useful in treating male infertility and male ageing problems, including prostate cancer. Another finding of the study sheds light on a possible seasonality of the production of the active compounds in the plant.

Prof Henkel’s group has also identified the genes that are regulated and/or inhibited by these bioactive compounds of T. capensis, which possibly opens avenues in identifying novel drugs targeting specific genes for testosterone synthesis and the inhibition of prostate cancer.

The aim of Dr Ilfergane’s study was to investigate the effect of Typha capensis and its phytochemicals on male reproductive function. The effects of the T. capensis rhizome extract on Leydig cells (the cells that produce the testosterone in the testes) and prostate cancer cells were investigated.

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Understanding water scarcity in the Western Cape Cape Town cannot just sit back and wait for rain, nor continue to rely almost exclusively on freshwater dams for its dwindling supply.

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hat’s the view of Professor Yongxin Xu, of UWC’s Earth Science Department in the Faculty of Natural Sciences, who holds the UNESCO Chair in hydrogeology. Prof Xu says water scarcity is somewhat subjective. What is considered water scarcity in the Western Cape differs from what it means in the Upington area of the Northern Cape, for example. In Cape Town, the drinking water

supply would not be a problem if people were willing to change practices from what they’re accustomed to, like taking long showers and watering their gardens.

“I don’t believe people in Cape Town even know what water scarcity means. They know it only from the viewpoint of having sufficient available water resources to meet people’s needs. But those needs are themselves very subjective. How much water >>

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“Without proper resources we may face economic water scarcity. That’s when you can’t renew capacity at the right place and time. The water is there, but you can’t get it.”

do people need? It’s based on how much they can afford, an issue of affordability.

“We’re not going to run out of drinking water,” Prof Xu says. “But what everyone’s really concerned about right now is decreasing water usage for gardens, toilets and showers, which accounts for 85 percent of major urban water consumption.”

Prof Xu says there is a need to pay attention to investment in water resources,

studies about potential resources and institutional human capacity.

“Without proper resources we may face economic water scarcity. That’s when you can’t renew capacity at the right place and time. The water is there, but you can’t get it,” he says.

Water scarcity could be different for people in informal settlements as opposed to residents of affluent areas. Water requirements in urban areas are also affected by population changes, such as immigration.

Water scarcity is almost inevitable in cities that rely exclusively on freshwater dams without investigating alternative sources such as groundwater, desalination or a third pipe option, which supplies non-potable water for open space irrigation, toilet flushing, and in other ways in agriculture and industry.

The biggest issues in the equation are probably the uncertainty of climate change, and global change which triggers migration.

“Because of these reasons we particularly have to face the question of whether we can keep doing things the way we have in terms of water sustainability and utilisation,” Prof Xu says.

“If we continue to rely solely on dams, we will have a problem. We need to look at how to utilise other sources, like the Cape Flats Aquifer and desalination plants, for example.

We know it’s economically feasible. The third pipe concept is also really vital and can be considered for most areas.”

Most importantly, people need to understand the real issue so they can view the water crisis in perspective, rather than the narrow view of only how long they can hold out until the rains come and refill the dams.

“Right now people are worrying unnecessarily, without knowing the real implications of water scarcity. We need everyone to get involved in a participatory process to save water and to use our reserves wisely,” says Prof Xu.

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However you see your future…

…if you have ambition, ability and drive, UWC is the place to be!

FROM HOPE TO ACTION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE.

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Tracking the spread of TB

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ost people know that tuberculosis is a highly infectious disease spread through airborne Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria and through contact. Much less is known about the patterns of movement through which the disease spreads. University of the Western Cape (UWC) alumnus and IBM research scientist Dr Darlington Mapiye and Toby Kurien, an engineer at IBM’s Johannesburg laboratory, have designed a simple tag device

that could improve understanding of how the disease spreads and help curb the spread of tuberculosis in Africa.

TB is a serious threat to human health. It’s the biggest killer of HIV-positive patients worldwide, and one of the biggest causes of mortality in South Africa (which has one of the highest rates of TB infection in the world).

Dr Mapiye completed his PhD at UWC’s South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI) in 2016. He says he is continuing the work he did while at SANBI, which has conducted research projects in TB drugs and diagnosis for a number of years.

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Dr Mapiye says because there is a stigma attached to people who have TB, the device was developed to de-stigmatise the disease as well as further understanding through the data it collects, of what kind of treatment patients need.

“With the kind of information collected by the tags, we are able to optimise what strategies are put in place and better understand how people come into contact with one another to contract the disease,” he explains. The device was developed in the Maker Lab at IBM’s second Research Lab in Africa, situated at the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

“The tracking device is a simple tag, useful for both the sick and the healthy,” says Dr Mapiye. “The device measures the proximity of TB patients. The longer it is in operation and the more data it collects, the more useful it becomes. And if it’s successful, the concept could probably be extended to other diseases.”

The tag is designed to be comfortable and not draw undue attention to the wearer.

“We are trying to make the device as invisible as possible by designing it as bracelets or watches,” notes Dr Mapiye. “No two devices will look the same, meaning that even when people who are wearing the device come into contact with one another, they will not know whether the other is indeed wearing one.”

Kurien adds that the device only tracks proximity to other devices, and does not include a GPS or recording mechanism. It’s a data collection tool, not a spying device.

Dr Junaid Gamieldien, the Acting Director of SANBI, is proud of his former student’s accomplishments. “Mapiye came here with a strong background in statistics; able to tackle

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his research topic exceptionally well, despite it being a fairly difficult area,” Dr Gamieldien says. “He completed his master’s quickly, made a new finding, published it, and truly shone here as a PhD student. He’s a quick

Dr Darlington Mapiye (on the right in blue) pictured with staff from IBM.

learner and even when it is a new field, he is able to make rapid and impressive progress.”

While the project is still in the research phase, the team is hoping to conduct trials soon in Johannesburg and thereafter in Kenya, where IBM’s other African research lab is based.

When rolled out, the tag will be distributed only to those who voluntarily accept its use – whether they have have the disease or not.

“I’m serious about efficient and effective TB prevention, and I feel as a UWC graduate that everything is possible. We are producing some of the top-notch graduates on the continent, and I’m proud to be one of them,” says Dr Mapiye.

Dr Mapiye sees his research at IBM as a good opportunity. For now he is focused on his research and is not pursuing further postgraduate studies. Dr Mapiye is a keen runner and soccer player who enjoys his free time with his wife, Marceline, and one-yearold son, Dylan.

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The ability to adapt and move on In 1989, after being excluded from an economic science degree programme at Wits University, Sibusiso Blessing Buthelezi headed to the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and registered for the only degree programme with space to accommodate him.

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hree years later he graduated with a BA in Anthropology and Economics and joined the Central Witwatersrand Metropolitan Chamber to assist with local government transition on behalf of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress (ANC).

“The ANC and the SACP had just been unbanned and I was thrown straight into the deep end as a negotiator and facilitator to work with a team of experts focusing on infrastructure and transport. We had to engage with what was considered to be the enemy at the time to create a new framework, a new transport master plan and integrate the township with the city,” says Buthelezi.

“It was a steep learning curve, but there was a lot of repository information to draw on and the grounding I received at UWC also helped. One had to often stay up the whole night to read all the information at your disposal to be able to engage effectively in discussions the next day.”

By the time the Greater Johannesburg Transitional Metropolitan Council (today the City of Johannesburg) was established, Buthelezi was appointed as a councillor in the Northern Local Council and a member of the Executive Committee of the Metropolitan

Council for the next three years.

In 1998, he became Project Manager of the City Deep Special Economic Zone, an initiative of the Department of Trade and Industry, and two years later, was appointed Head of Department (HOD) of the Gauteng Housing Department.

“Looking back, and even though RDP houses are probably not something that South Africa should be proud of, we were able to deliver 50 000 housing units per year.”

Along with Housing MEC Paul Mashatile, he established the Gauteng Partnership Fund to leverage private sector funds for the development of social housing.

In 2005 he became the HOD of Gauteng’s Department of Public Transport and Road Works and guided public transport projects such as the Bus Transformation Project and the GauRide initiative.

Buthelezi left government in 2009 and established Phumuntu Consulting and Projects which consults to government and corporates on economic development, transport, housing and telecommunications projects.

Buthelezi also serves as Chairperson of the Council of the Robben Island Museum. In 2012 he launched his personal blog (www.thesbu. com) through which he shares his views on

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national governance and public policy issues.

“Lifelong learning is extremely important. I worked in government for many years, but in different departments, so I had to learn new things all the time. It was not superficial learning either, but learning with the intent to master my knowledge and to do what needed to be done for the people. I also learned that this world is not shaped according to our own desires. Things can happen and we must be able to adapt and move on,” says Buthelezi.

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Reaching out to give back

A university education is a rare privilege in a developing country and many young graduates, conscious of the obstacles they had to overcome, feel the urge to not only give back to society, but to assist other young people to reach their goals.

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oon after leaving university, UWC alumnus Siyabulela Maya and a close friend co-founded Table of Honour and began to organise other graduates, mostly UWC alumni, to support orphaned and disadvantaged children.

Table of Honour was conceived as a platform for young professionals to not only

help one another to establish themselves in their careers, but also to address pressing issues in society, and consciously become change agents in their communities.

“My work really began for me when we set up what we called Table of Honour,” says Maya (BAdmin, 2011; BCom Hons, 2012).

“Seven other former UWC students were involved, and we all wanted to find ways to grow and give back.

“We were guided by the objective of creating a support platform to which people could bring challenges, and we could help them with ideas of how to propel themselves forward and tackle matters in their lives, careers and immediate environment, in

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creative ways.” Around 2015, Table of Honour began assisting the Siyaphambili Children’s Home in Langa, with members working with the children as active mentors.

The members benefited enormously in terms of personal growth, through the information shared and discussed at their gatherings, says Maya.

At that time Maya worked at Nedbank Business Banking, first as a graduate trainee and later as a credit analyst. In November 2016, leaving Table of Honour in the capable hands of his fellow alumni, he took a position as a credit analyst at the National Urban Reconstruction and Housing Agency (NURCHA) in Johannesburg. NURCHA promotes the supply of affordable housing by providing bridging finance to housing developers and contractors.

One Saturday morning soon after Maya arrived, he accompanied his cousin Mteto Mvusi, also a UWC alumnus, to a meeting of tutors who give free lessons to children at the Amazing Grace Children’s Home in Lenasia. The very next weekend Maya was already hard at work, helping children with their English. The tutoring programme at Amazing Grace, where Maya and eight other English tutors and five maths tutors volunteer their time, is an outreach initiative of the Black Professional Scholarship Fund (BPSF), which aims to improve access to tertiary qualifications for black youth.

Interestingly, the BPSF originated very much like Table of Honour.

Founding chairman Thuto Motsie and five of his university friends decided soon after graduation in 2011 that they wanted to effect social change through education. “We tutor about 25 children in all, with the number

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expected to grow to 45. The English tutors work once or twice a month and the maths tutors twice a month due to the extra time and complexity required for maths. They get nothing in return financially, but so much from the successes they see with the children,” says Maya.

“As we work, we must all be very aware of the delicate balance we need to strike. We are not just teaching the children, there are also emotional issues that must be taken into account. We need to provide a helping hand, but also guide them, sort of like older brothers and sisters.

“We have professionalised and formalised our approach to tutoring, getting workshops from teachers in respect of best practice.

And now we are slowly growing and trying new approaches,” Maya says.

Maya says the tutors, who range in age from 23 to 29 years, relish the weekends they spend working with the children, and are adamant that the fact that the youngsters were dealt a tough start in life shouldn’t deprive them of a very bright future.

The outreach programme had its biggest success last year when four Grade 12s who were part of the programme passed matric, some with university entrance passes.

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The ‘write’ approach to creativity

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verybody has a story to tell. That is the simple conviction behind UWC Creates, a programme introduced at the University of the Western Cape to help students hone their creative writing skills.

The UWC Creates programme was started

by UWC academics, writers Dr Meg Vandermerwe and Professor Antjie Krog in 2009, with writer Sindiwe Magona joining in

2011. At the time it was the only trilingual creative writing programme in South Africa and is offered in English, Afrikaans and Xhosa.

“When we started UWC Creates, we sought to work across languages and across cultures, with a focus on isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans. Antjie Krog works with the Afrikaans speakers, Sindiwe Magona works with the Xhosa speakers and I work with the

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English speakers. But we also bring writers together to translate, write and listen to each other’s narrative so that we can try and shape fresh literary perspectives and voices in this country,” says Dr Vandermerwe.

“We have creative writing groups on campus once a week which anybody can join. There is an Afrikaans group, a Xhosa group and an English group. We also do outreach work for free in the community.

We mentor and support people who come to us with manuscripts and we do workshops within communities where people wouldn’t qualify to enter university but show real talent or potential. We either work individually with them or we do group workshops with them.”

The programme aims to nurture voices that haven’t been heard before. Group members are encouraged to work with their own stories and to hone their natural storytelling voices.

UWC Creates regularly invites writers and poets to work with the students, and has hosted acclaimed South African and international authors such as Athol Fugard, Zakes Mda, Sunjeev Sahota and Graham Mort.

“Our intention is to help people write better, regardless of their backgrounds or their language and regardless of how they fit into the institutional framework,” says Dr Vandermerwe. “UWC Creates is dedicated to craft for craft’s sake and to expression for expression’s sake.”

Publications of UWC Creates ‘graduates’ that have achieved critical acclaim in recent years include: Pat Fahrenfort’s Spanner in the Works (2012); Jolyn Phillips’s short story collection Tjieng Tjang Tjerries (2016) and her just-published Afrikaans poetry collection, Radbraak; and Sixolile Mbalo’s Dear Bullet: Or a Letter to My Shooter (2014). Students’ works have also been published in local and international anthologies.

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In March 2017 UWC Creates organised and hosted the second international Writing for Liberty Conference, in partnership with Lancaster University and Cape Town’s Centre for the Book. In 2016, the Cape Times said of the programme, “[UWC Creates]…is fast becoming known as the best creative writing programme in South Africa.”

“It is a very powerful thing to help someone write better about their experiences, so that they become the voices of their own communities, and to allow them to shine a light on communities and experiences that have not been seen in publication before.”

Dr Vandermerwe says the programme reflects UWC’s wider and ongoing commitment to change and to empowering communities who remain voiceless.

“All kinds of important initiatives are being born from UWC Creates in terms of empowering people, fostering diversity, imagining the ‘other’, translating and building bridges of empathy. We are honing true creativity, promoting hybrid multilingualism and generally fostering intellectual, academic and creative excellence.”

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Access to Success has offered me more than help. It has become my partner in achieving my dream.

Babalwa Ngcofe B Admin

For more information, visit accesstosuccess.uwc.ac.za or contact Somayah Barnes at sbarnes@uwc.ac.za or call 021 959 9568.

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Dream comes true for cricketer

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ndrie Steyn, a second-year sports science student at UWC, is a rising star in women’s cricket in South Africa. She has earned about 25 caps for the national senior women’s team.

Steyn was part of the squad that toured Bangladesh in early 2017 where she scored 66 runs in a one-day game.

More recently, she managed a knock of 117 runs against Ireland in a quadrangular match in Potchefstroom, her highest score to date. “It’s fun but also kind of daunting,” says Steyn about playing for the national team. “You are suddenly playing alongside your role model,” she says, referring to Proteas captain Dane van Niekerk. >>

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Steyn, who grew up in Durban, began playing cricket when she was very young. “I saw the boys play and it looked really fun,” she remembers. “Then I started to play mini-cricket with the boys in Grade 1 and was introduced to girls’ cricket in Grade 4. Although I did swimming, soccer and hockey when I was smaller, cricket is the one I enjoyed the most.”

The specialist right-hand batter represented the South Africa under-19 squad at the age of 15 and was promoted to the senior national team in 2014 when she was just 16 years old, the youngest player in the team. Her selection came after she excelled for the Northerns provincial cricket team.

Steyn was the 15th player selected to the squad and played in the warm-up matches of the 2014 ICC Women’s World T20 against the West Indies and the host country, Bangladesh.

“I enjoyed being selected into the senior national team but it was also terrifying at the

“I enjoyed being selected into the senior national team but it was also terrifying at the same time.”

same time. Being 16 years old and playing for your country was a bit daunting.”

Steyn says Nic Kock, whom she met when she arrived at UWC, helped her transition to university life, “particular in sport, as he made it very easy for me.”

She now plays for the UWC cricket team, Western Province and the national team, and she plays hockey for fun in winter. In her spare time she enjoys outdoor activities and is also a grade three drummer.

Striking a balance between her studies and sport has been a feature of Steyn’s life since her school days. She says although there is more work at university, “You just need to manage your time well and not find excuses to not do things.”

Steyn aims to establish herself in the Proteas team and encourages other women to join the sport. “The game of women’s cricket is getting bigger so start playing.”

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At the top of her game Jaumbuaije Zauana has been at UWC for only one year but she has already made her presence felt. Not only because she is probably the tallest woman on campus, at 1.95 metres, but her stellar performances on the netball court have earned her the 2016 UWC Sportswoman of the Year accolade.

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auana, who hails from Namibia, helped the Udubs netball team to qualify for the 2017 Varsity Netball tournament for the first time, and was part of the Namibian national university team that won the plate finals at the 2016 International University Sports Federation’s World University Netball Championships in Miami.

She also played in the Western Cape netball team that won the Spar National Championships in Durban, where she was named the Best

Goal-Shooter of the Tournament, and participated in the Western Province team at the inter-provincial tournament in Langebaan. >>

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“2016 was definitely a successful year for me as I achieved a whole lot,” comments Zauana, who completed a certificate in economic development last year. “Being awarded UWC’s Sportswoman of the Year definitely sealed the deal. I was up against UWC’s greatest females. But what brought

“I knew UWC was the place where I wanted to be, it was a gateway for me to continue with my involvement in netball.”

me to the top was representing my country at national level and tertiary level. I showed exceptional performance throughout the season and I was academically sound too.”

The first-year BCom student credits her coaches and mentors for her success, as well as the attributes that suit her to her sport. “I am a very confident and faithful person. I knew I could do anything through the Lord who strengthens me. There is also a range of physical and mental components that contributed to my success.”

Growing up, Zauana tried other sports such as high jump, basketball and volleyball, but says “they never really tickled my fancy.” She started playing netball in Grade 4 after she was encouraged by her primary school teachers because of her height.

After completing high school, UWC was an obvious choice for her. “I knew UWC was the place where I wanted to be,” she says. “It was a gateway for me to continue with my involvement in netball.

“Through it I meet people, I have fun and I live a varsity life every student strives for.

Before joining UWC netball club, I never strove to be on top. But as I grew through it, I realised that ‘on top’ is the only place I want to be. I always strive for excellence through sports.”

Zauana has found balancing sport and studies tough. “There are times when I cannot attend classes because I would be away with netball, but I’d know I need to catch up somehow. Not to mention the sleepless nights. Nothing comes easy, but I have told myself this will be my lifestyle for the next couple of years, so I’m good.”

As much as Zauana is enjoying her life on campus, there are weird and funny moments, too.

“Everyone looks at my tall frame and goes ‘damn, she’s tall’. I get that all the time. I could be the tallest girl on campus. It’s fine to look at me.”

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Elevated to new heights

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ne season, four trophies and six players called up for national duty sums up UWC Ladies’ Football Club’s phenomenal performance in 2016, the most successful season in the club’s history.

Under the guidance of Nathan Peskin, who has been in charge of the club for six years, UWC Ladies’ won the Western Cape Sasol League for the first time, the SAFA Cape Town Coca-Cola Cup, the University Sport South Africa club championships and the District Knockout Cup of the Northern Suburbs Local Football Association.

Team captain Amogelang Motau and teammates Thembi Kgatlana and Leandra Smeda were called up to represent the senior national women’s team, Banyana Banyana, at the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon in November. Drishana Pillay, Thalea Smidt and Charmel Wiltshire were selected for the SASCOC team that participated in the 2016 Africa Union Sports Council Region Five Games in Angola in December. The achievements took

many people by surprise but not Peskin and his charges. “There is no real secret to success,” Peskin says. “For me it’s all about commitment and hard work, and we have a very talented squad.”

According to Peskin, the achievements are the rewards for a consistent scouting programme, hard work, a greater focus on over-performance and promoting a belief in team effort and a winning culture.

“Our achievements last year are the fruition of very long-term goals,” he says. “It took patience, focus and continuous hard work to achieve what we have as a team. This has not been a success story of one season. It has been a work-inprogress and everyone who contributed over the past six years needs to be saluted.”

Peskin adds that the team’s success has elevated them to new heights and made the Udubs team one of the top football clubs in the country, “if not the top institution given the outstanding achievements in all competitions.”

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Keeping his eye on the ball Landing a professional contract is every footballer’s dream, a dream that became reality for UWC’s Shakeel Sadien when he signed a three-year deal with National First Division (NFD) team Milano United in 2016.

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he 20-year-old goalkeeper’s rapid rise followed his star performance at the South African Football Association’s South African Breweries League (SAB) national championships in 2016 where he was voted Goalkeeper of the Tournament.

The competition involved the nine provincial SAB League winners and the University Sport South Africa (USSA) team for which Sadien played. The SAB League is South Africa’s fourth-tier football league.

“Signing a professional contract was a new experience for me, a very good one which involved a lot of emotions and nerves,” Sadien remembers. “I knew when I signed the contract that I needed to work hard and improve myself because obviously I had no experience.

“Some people will question why they [Milano] signed me because I came from an SAB team straight to an NFD team. That is why I just need to work hard, keep my head focused, keep my mind on the prize and keep my goals straight. I do not want to let the people who supported me down.”

Cape Town-born Sadien registered at UWC in 2015 for the diploma in economic

development. He decided to take a gap year in 2017 to focus on his demanding professional football career and also to try to get into the biokinetics programme.

Sadien was part of the UWC football team that made history by winning the first-ever Varsity Football tournament. He also regularly played for the University’s SAB League team.

A product of the Farouk Abrahams Goalkeepers Academy, Sadien credits UWC for his promotion to professional football.

“Udubs gave me major confidence,” he says.

“Obviously, if I had not played in the SAB national championships for the USSA Under-21 team I would not have been spotted

by Milano’s scouts. I also started regularly for the UWC SAB team. That gave me more confidence under the poles and made me match fit. That is what I needed at the end of the day.”

Sadien has advice for other footballers.

“Always believe in yourself, work hard and make positives out of negative situations.

There is no one-way to success. There will be many downfalls, many failed attempts in order to get to successes.”

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Like father like son

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or Shane Willenberg, UWC’s Sportsman of the Year for 2016, playing chess is in the blood.

“Playing chess kind of runs in the family, it is in the genes,” says Willenberg, who is pursuing his master’s in chemistry at the University. “My father, uncles and all my paternal cousins have been playing and coaching chess for many years.”

Having been taught by his father at an early age, Willenberg has become one of the most promising chess players in South Africa, and has already been selected for national duty.

Born in Secunda in Mpumalanga, Willenberg moved to Cape Town 11 years ago.

He says that although his father and his uncles were good players in high school, they could not showcase their talents in the formal chess league because of apartheid restrictions. That did not deter them from forming their own clubs and participating in informal competitions until chess became unified in South Africa.

The Willenberg fathers passed on their knowledge and love of the game to their children. Willenberg says that his cousins, Kenny and Craig, are more successful chess players. “They are on a different level. They have won the South African National Junior championships on numerous occasions, >>

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played internationally and also coach national junior teams,” he says.

Willenberg was selected to the national Under-20 team which took part in the African Junior Championships in Algeria in 2013. He led the UWC chess club to triumph at the Federation for Africa University Sports Games in Johannesburg in July 2016. He was part of the University Sport South Africa team that won the Confederation of Universities and College Sports Associations Africa Region Five Games in Zimbabwe in August 2016. He finished the tournament unbeaten.

Willenberg says his family has good reasons for being obsessed with chess. “We have all taken an interest in playing and growing the game because we have seen how chess improves lives,” he says. “Chess improves your thinking, it improves maths and science skills and also takes kids off the streets.

“Chess imitates life. Everything that happens on the chess board is basically how life happens. You get struggles here and there and push through until you get to the best position. You plan towards a specific goal and that is to checkmate the king. In life it is the same, be it setting goals in your studies, work, spiritual or personal successes.

That is why I like it.”

A fervent advocate of the game on and off campus, Willenberg has worked tirelessly to promote the game since he first enrolled at UWC for his undergraduate studies in 2012.

He frequently holds coaching clinics at primary schools and offers private lessons.

Balancing his sporting and academic interests has not been without challenges.

“The thing about chess is you play the whole weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Basically, you come from campus and go straight to the tournament and before you know it it’s Monday again and you are back to your books. I try to finish all my academic work during the week and when it’s tournament time, I just focus on the tournament. If I can’t I don’t play at all, though. My studies come first.”

Willenberg says the Sportsman of the Year award came as a surprise. “I know there are lots of sports people from other codes who are good at their crafts. It was a humbling experience and an honour to be named Sportsman of the Year. It just shows that chess exists at UWC and we have been growing in strength.”

“Everything that happens on the chess board is basically how life happens. You get struggles here and there and push through until you get to the best position. That is why I like it.”

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YEARS OF UWC RUGBY

Facing foes on and off the field This year marks 53 years since the University of the Western Cape’s Rugby Club was established. For more than half that time the club had much more to contend with than the opposition’s fifteen men.

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dvocate John Walters, who graduated with a BA LLB in 1980 and is now Ombudsman of Namibia, remembers that not much rugby was played because of student protests. “I had the honour to captain a bunch of formidable players,” says Walters, who played rugby at UWC from 1976 until 1980.

Walters was also the chairperson of the club and says resources were scarce at the time. “But we persevered and three of us were in the winning team when Tygerberg won the

South African Cup in 1978.” Former captain Gary Boschoff arrived in the 1980s to find conditions for playing even more difficult. “I was selected for the SARU [South African Rugby Union] team the previous year and I was very excited about the year ahead.

However, it was not to be. 1985 was thrown into turmoil when the South African Police invaded our campus.”

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academic activity from June to December that year, “a very traumatic period in the history of UWC”.

The club struggled to operate after the suspension of academic classes and even more so after the campus was officially closed in June. They somehow continued to fulfil league fixtures under very difficult circumstances.

“I had the privilege of being captain during that period and to lead a bunch of committed players, week in and week out, and dare I say, getting whipped week in and week out. It was depressing, but it also built character. In the end we were all the better for it,” says Boschoff.

Those were difficult times to play sport at UWC, he says. “I remember retreating from campus in the middle of the night to evade the advancing riot police who invaded the campus almost at will, hounding and harassing students. Fear ruled the streets of Belhar and Bellville South and everyone experienced some degree of distress.”

Nicky van Heerden was captain and the late Rodger Adams a player-coach in 1989. The national politics of the day was always an integral and proud part of the consciousness of the members of the club. “Hence, the debates at UWC sport eventually led to the watershed moment in 1991 where, with the advent of democracy, the club had to decide on a direction,” says Van Heerden.

The transition to democracy and unification of structures around 1991 was not without

“I remember retreating from campus in the middle of the night to evade the advancing riot police who invaded the campus almost at will, hounding and harassing students. Fear ruled the streets of Belhar and Bellville South and everyone experienced some degree of distress.”

conflict and some members even decided to leave the club. The restructuring of university sport was finally completed with the formation of University Sports South Africa.

Ilhaam Groenewald, who was involved in UWC sport from 2000 until she moved to Stellenbosch University in 2014, remembers that UWC Rugby had a number of difficulties, with a poor run of form that lasted for several seasons.

When she was appointed as the Head of Sport in 2005, sport at UWC required radical re-engineering and restructuring. “We knew that it was important for the University to embrace sport as an integral tool for student development. With the implementation of the Athlete Support Programme (ASP), notable improvements were introduced in the institution’s sporting profile, at club, provincial and national levels.”

The programme was followed up by the UWC RFC Business Plan 2005–2010, drafted by key stakeholders including UWC staff, the club executive and alumni.

“From 2009 to 2014 we also implemented a new sports strategy, which required improvement for monitoring, evaluation and reporting. During this time the club regained its position in the Western Province Rugby Super League, the top club league in the region,” says Groenewald.

Last year the club narrowly missed promotion from Varsity Shield to the Varsity Cup, the premier division of university rugby in South Africa, when they lost both the final of the Varsity Shield and the promotional play-offs. But the team bounced back by bagging the trophy at their home ground in April 2017.

After 53 years, the UWC Rugby Club has become an integral tool for student development on campus and is a force to be reckoned with in the university rugby fraternity in South Africa.

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Book reviews

Nomme 20 Delphi Straat

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niversity of the Western Cape alumna, Shirmoney Rhode, has published her first book of poetry titled Nomme 20 Delphi Straat.

Published by Modjadji Books, the poems concern socio-economic issues and Rhode’s family experiences while growing up in Elsies River on the Cape Flats – although Rhode says the poems aren’t necessarily autobiographical. Written in Kaaps, the form of Afrikaans spoken on the Cape Flats, the poems are based on her upbringing and the title is derived from the actual address of her grandmother’s house, in which she was born and brought up.

The author doesn’t shy away from the reality of growing up in a working class neighbourhood and having to do without even basic necessities. Yet, as illustrated in the poem titled Double sides story, she tries to show the good and the bad.

The poems are written from the perspective of a young girl, a normal girl who had blonde Barbie dolls, who shared a mattress with her cousins in a sometimes overcrowded house, and whose faith and outlook were shaped by the grandmother to whom she dedicated the book.

Rhode, whose own brother died as a result of gang violence, touches on the Western Cape’s problems with drugs and gangsterism, but her poems show more than the narrow, stereotypical view of the Cape Flats.

Hers is an insider’s view of a neighbourhood that she feels made her what she is and gave her a sense of belonging. Even though she

The author doesn’t shy away from the reality of growing up in a working class neighbourhood and having to do without even basic necessities. Yet, as illustrated in the poem titled Double sides story, she tries to show the good and the bad. lives elsewhere now, Shirmoney Rhode is still from Elsies. Rhode, who holds a BA Honours degree and Postgraduate Certificate in Education from UWC, teaches Afrikaans at Claremont High while dreaming of being a full-time writer. She is an avid performance poet and has performed at the McGregor Poetry Festival, Franschhoek Literary Festival, Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees, Prince Albert Leesfees, Adam Small Literary Festival and Woordfees.

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Capturing the voice of Gansbaai

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niversity of the Western Cape PhD candidate Jolyn Phillips has published a collection of short stories titled Tjieng Tjang Tjerries and other stories.

UWC Professor and poet Antjie Krog has described the book as “an impressive debut that brings across voices never heard before in South African English – not only in rhythm and timbre, but plumbing the unspoken.”

Phillips aimed to capture the culture and

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feel of Gansbaai, where she was born. The stories are written in English but frequently use Afrikaans, her mother tongue, because she wanted the stories to reflect the way people speak.

“Something about the way people speak is more than just the words. I wanted the rhythm to come through. As I wrote, I sounded it out loud, keeping words in that enabled a kind of cultural translation,” she says.

Phillips says the offer by Modjadji Books to publish her collection of short stories came after she participated in the Open Book and Franschhoek Literary Festivals. Her writing has been featured in Aerodrome, an online literary website, an anthology This Land I Call Home (UWC Creates) and Ghost Eater and Other Stories (Umuzi).

Philips says her writing is inspired by writers like Alice Walker and Dalene Matthee.

She recalls how she related to the characters and kept on returning to the novels The Color Purple and Fiela se kind while growing up.

While participating in her first workshop of the newly launched Creative Writing module in the English Department at UWC, students’ first task was to interview family members about the oldest story they knew.

Because of distance Phillips had to tap into her memories and imagine her mother sitting with her as she did when she was a little girl, outside on their stoep in the sun, telling stories. Phillips says short fiction taught her discipline, as it “ultimately wants to be a portrait.”

Phillips completed her Master’s in Creative Writing at UWC in 2013. In 2014 she was a Mandela Rhodes Scholar. She is currently pursuing her PhD as a student within the Arts Faculty. Tjieng Tjang Tjerries and other stories is her first book.

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Book reviews

An African Court for African Crimes

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new book co-edited by Professor Gerhard Werle and Dr Moritz Vormbaum was launched at the University of the Western Cape’s Kader Asmal Moot Court on 27 February 2017.

The book, titled The African Criminal Court: A Commentary on the Malabo Protocol, is the tenth volume in the International Criminal Justice Series published by T.M.C. Asser Press.

The publication of the volume follows a conference in Berlin in 2015, part of the summer school at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin attended by UWC LLM students in the ‘Transnational Criminal Justice and Crime Prevention – An International and African Perspective’ programme. In June 2014, the African Union (AU) met in Malabo, Equatorial

Guinea, and adopted the Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (known as the Malabar Protocol). The Protocol extends the jurisdiction of the yet to be established African Court of Justice and Human Rights (ACJHR) to international and transnational crimes. The Malabo Protocol was intended to be complementary to the functions of the International Criminal Court (ICC) but recent negative African sentiment and allegations of the ICC’s perceived anti-African bias have highlighted the importance of regional jurisdiction.

The keynote lecture at the launch was given

by Prof Dire Tladi, a professor of International Law at the University of Pretoria. Prof Tladi contributed a chapter to the book, examining Article 46A bis of the Malabo Protocol (Annex), which deals with the controversial issue of immunity from the jurisdiction of the ACJR for heads of state and heads of government, as well as for high-ranking officials.

Aside from analysing the history and background of the Malabar Protocol, the volume offers a comprehensive analysis of its key clauses, with chapters discussing how the Malabar protocol not only raises the possibility of the ACJHR having jurisdiction over the four core crimes under international law – war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and aggression – but also jurisdiction over the crimes of unconstitutional change of government, piracy, terrorism, mercenarism, trafficking in persons, trafficking in drugs, corruption, money laundering, trafficking in hazardous waste and illicit exploitation of natural resources. Prof Werle is

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an Extraordinary Professor at UWC, Professor of German and International Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure and Modern Legal History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Director of the South African-German Centre

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for Transnational Criminal Justice at UWC. Dr Vormbaum is a senior researcher at Humboldt-Universität, as well as a coordinator and lecturer at the South African-German Centre for Transnational Criminal Justice.

Natures of Africa English lecturer Dr Fiona Moolla has edited a book titled Natures of Africa: Ecocriticism and Animal Studies in Contemporary Cultural Forms. Published by Wits University Press, the volume features new research in environmental and animal studies from East Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and South Africa.

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he main focus of the book is African ecocriticism, with contributors examining the relationship between the environment and literature from different national, cultural and genre perspectives, but always with Africa and African themes as their subjects.

In his foreword, Kansas University English professor Byron Caminero-Santangelo writes, “The chapters engage one another conceptually and epistemologically without an enforced consensus of approach. In their conversation with dominant ideas about nature and animals, they reveal unexpected insights into forms of cultural expression of local communities in Africa. The analyses explore different apprehensions of the connections between humans, animals and the environment, and suggest alternative ways of addressing the challenges facing the continent.” Some of the contributors discuss African religions and cultures in

manifestations of various forms of orature, song and poetry. More modern ‘genre’ examined include environmental literature and visual tropes of nature employed on “voluntourism websites.”

Others chapters discuss the interplay of nature and culture revealed in specific literary works. UWC Emeritus Professor Wendy Woodward, for example, writes about animal narrators in Patrice Nganang’s Dog Days: An Animal Chronicle and Alain Mabanckou’s Memoirs of a Porcupine.

Dr Moolla teaches African Literature at the University of the Western Cape where her work focuses on the nexus between oral, print and digital cultures, highlighting human, animal, environmental and cosmic relationships. Dr Moolla has authored numerous articles, several works of short fiction as well as the 2014 monograph Reading Nuruddin Farah: The individual, the Novel & the idea of Home.

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Book reviews

My own Liberator

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ormer Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa and UWC extraordinary professor, Judge Dikgang Moseneke, launched a memoir titled My Own Liberator at the Chandelier Lounge at the Artscape Theatre on 28 November 2016. The event was co-hosted by the University of the Western Cape and Pan Macmillan South Africa.

In his book Judge Moseneke describes his childhood, imprisonment on Robben Island and his life after being released from prison. His story begins with the people and places that helped to define and shape him, including his ancestors, parents and family. In 1963 Dikgang Moseneke arrived at Robben Island prison as a Pan Africanist Congress activist to serve a

ten-year sentence. He was one of the first political prisoners of the apartheid era, and at 15 years old, also the youngest. While the language is dispassionate, Moseneke does not spare his account of the abuse, torture and injustices suffered at the hands of warders during the ten years on Robben Island. At the launch of his book, Judge Moseneke said, “I talk about the pain and how we found techniques to convert ourselves from the conquered to the conqueror, which then converted victimhood into triumph.” His intention in telling this story was to remind the youth of their personal and public agency, that they were their own liberators.

Robben Island was his political school and there was no shortage of teachers as many senior members of the PAC were imprisoned.

Moseneke also used his time in prison to complete his schooling as well as a Bachelor of Arts in English and political science and a BJuris degree. He later obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of South Africa.

He was admitted as an attorney in 1978 and became an advocate in 1983 (his admission ended the whites-only policy of the Pretoria Bar) and senior counsel ten years later.

Throughout this time he continued to work in the PAC underground structures. In 1993 he helped draft the interim Constitution and also served as deputy chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission, overseeing the historic first democratic elections.

Judge Moseneke was appointed a High Court judge in 2001, a judge of the Constitutional Court in 2002 and Deputy Chief Justice in 2005. He retired in 2016.

Judge Moseneke and Pan Macmillan intend publishing a second memoir, focusing on his 15 years as a judge of the Constitutional Court and the cases over which he presided.

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Pioneering South African women anthropologists recognised Associate Professor Andrew Bank of the Department of History at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) has published a new monograph titled Pioneers of the Field: South Africa’s Women Anthropologists.

Professor Bank presents an alternative, women-centred narrative of the development of the field of Anthropology in South Africa through finely drawn biographies of six anthropologists.

The six were, Winifred Hoernlé, the first South African woman to occupy a university position in anthropology; her British successor as head of the anthropology department at Wits University, Audrey Richards; and four of the next generation of scholars – Monica Wilson, Ellen Hellman, Hilda Kuper and Eileen Krige. They played a large role in establishing anthropology as a discipline and a career in South Africa.

Prof Bank uses public archival records and the personal correspondence and diaries of his subjects to show the connections between the women’s personal lives, their academic work and their anti-segregationist and anti-apartheid politics. At a time when the nascent field of anthropology was colonial, anti-humanist and often racist, he contends that his subjects collectively bequeathed to the field a humanist legacy, having adopted a more engaged approach to the African communities they studied than contemporaries in this and other fields.

Sharing a liberal perspective, several of the subjects took this engagement beyond their academic life. Hoernlé, for example, was a co-founder and president of the South African

Institute of Race Relations. Hellmann was also active in the SAIRR and Kuper left South Africa in 1961, partly to escape the increasing repression of anti-apartheid dissent.

Working in a 20th century male-dominated world where women in academia were at best seen as a supporting cast, Bank argues that these women actually took centre stage, as innovators in ethnographic fieldwork and social anthropology in South Africa.

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CHECK OUT THE LATEST UWC ALUMNI PUBLICATIONS! www.uwc.ac.za/alumni

We would love to hear from you! If you would like to be profiled, or want to suggest a topic or contribute a story, email us at alumni@uwc.ac.za

Alumni Relations Office Department for Institutional Advancement, University of the Western Cape Office No. 41, Nursing Building, Robert Sobukwe Road (Old Modderdam Road) Tel: +27 21 959 2143 | Fax: +27 21 959 9791 | Email: alumni@uwc.ac.za www.uwc.ac.za | www.facebook.com/uwcalumni | http://twitter.com/UWConline

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2016 in a nutshell

UWC dentists conferred international fellows On 24 February 2016, a number of UWC dentists and dental specialists joined the class of international ‘outstanding professional achievers’ when they were inducted as fellows of the International College of Dentists (ICD).

UWC Beach Volleyball Club triumphs Leo Williams and Grant Goldschmidt won the first tournament of the Flying Fish National Beach Volleyball Series on 31 January 2016.

New Centre for Diversity in Counselling and Psychotherapy UWC launched its Centre for Diversity in Counselling and Psychotherapy (CDCP) on 14 March 2016, in partnership with the CDCP at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto in Canada, Christ University in India and the University of Verona in Italy.

Pharmacy and Public Health graduate receives the 2016 Jakes Gerwel Award

HySA and Implats introduce first hydrogen fuel cell forklift prototype

On 17 February 2016, the Jakes Gerwel Award was presented to Evans Sagwa (third from right), a graduate of UWC’s School of Public Health, for his contribution to introducing a holistic approach to strengthening national pharmaceutical systems.

On 31 March 2016 at Impala Refineries in Springs, Naledi Pandor, the Minister of Science and Technology, unveiled South Africa’s first prototype fuel cell forklift and refuelling station built by UWC’s Hydrogen Systems South Africa (HYSA Systems).

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Honorary doctorate for Hassen Adams Astronomers discover mysterious black hole phenomenon Researchers from UCT and UWC using deep ratio imaging discovered that supermassive black holes in 64 galaxies are all spinning out radio jets in the same direction.

Prominent businessman Hassen Adams (third from right), was awarded an honorary doctorate in Commerce at UWC’s Autumn Graduation ceremony.

The avid racehorse owner and entrepreneur is well known for bringing the Burger King fast food franchise to South Africa.

Honorary doctorate conferred on Fred Robertson The University of the Western Cape conferred an honorary doctorate in Commerce on respected businessman, philanthropist and trustee of the UWC Foundation, Fred Robertson, at the Autumn Graduation.

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Distinguished editor honoured UWC conferred an honorary doctorate on media legend Mathatha Tsedu during the Autumn Graduation. Tsedu is the Executive Director of the South African National Editors’ Forum and former editor of the Sunday Times and City Press newspapers.

New UK-SA bilateral research chairs Food security research at UWC received a much-needed boost, thanks to the Newton Fund and the National Research Foundation UK-SA Bilateral Research Chair Initiative (SARChI). South African Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor, and the British Commissioner to South Africa, Dame Judith Macgregor, launched three new bilateral research chairs on 4 May 2016.

Minister Naledi Pandor launches the Southern African Systems Analysis Centre The Minister of Science and Technology has launched the Southern African Systems Analysis Centre (SASAC). SASAC is hosted by UWC in collaboration with the universities of Limpopo, Witwatersrand and Stellenbosch, and directed by UWC’s Director of Research, Professor Thandi Mgwebi.

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UWC and University of Missouri celebrate 30-year partnership The year 2016 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the partnership between the University of the Western Cape and the University of Missouri. Since 1986, more than 600 staff and students from the two institutions have participated in exchange visits and collaborations.

HySA Systems in new collaboration HYSA Systems, hosted by UWC’s South African Institute for Advanced Materials Chemistry, has entered into a collaborative tri-partite agreement with Europe’s largest independent manufacturer of fuel cell proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell components and systems.

UWC researcher is runner-up for African innovation prize

New data analysis and business intelligence programme UWC is offering Africa’s first Postgraduate Diploma in Data Analytic and Business Intelligence from January 2017 – a part-time course presented over 18 months.

Dr Imogen Wright, of UWC’s South African Bioinformatics Institute (UWC-SANBI), won the runner-up prize at the Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) Awards in Gaborone, Botswana. She received the prize for the development of the exatype software solution with UWC spin-off company, Hyrax Biosciences.

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UWC-SLCA brings state-of-the-art science labs to Western Cape schools UWC shines in recent global assessment of Physical Science research In 2016, Nature Index, covering the period 1 June 2015 to 31 May 2016, ranked the University of the Western Cape first in Physical Science in Africa.

On 2 August 2016, the University of the Western Cape Science Learning Centre for Africa (UWCSLCA) and the Garden Cities Archway Foundation opened new science learning centres at three Western Cape schools.

Mama Africa – The Musical UWC hosted the first-ever performance of Mama Africa – The Musical, a tribute to legendary South African singer, Miriam Makeba. The musical showcase is a celebration of the 30-year partnership between the University of Missouri-St Louis and the University of the Western Cape.

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UWC launches Master’s in Creative Writing anthology The UWC Faculty of Arts launched its first published Master’s in Creative Writing poetry anthology entitled ‘Harvest’ on 10 August 2016.

UWC hosts National Science Week 2016

UWC wins women’s varsity beach volleyball competition

National Science Week (NSW) was hosted at UWC on 6 August 2016. NSW is an annual event that highlights the roles that science, mathematics, engineering and technology play in everyday life, and encourages young people to follow careers in these fields.

After winning the 2016 Volleyball South Africa Easter Splash Festival in Port Elizabeth in March, the female trio of Bejancke Della, Tsidi Dlamini and Kayla-Lee Provins defended their Varsity Beach Volleyball title for the third consecutive year on home soil in May.

Orthrum| ISSUE julia capicola_teneral 360º PERSPECTIVES 5 | 2016/2017 (CapeI Skimmer)

DRAGONFLIES Diplacodes lefebvrii (Black Percher male)

Orthrum julia capicola (Cape Skimmer male)

Sympetrum fonscolombii (Nomad female)

© UWC NATURE RESERVE UNIT NIT

Orthetrum caffrum (Two-striped Skimmer male)

Anax imperator (Blue Emperor male)

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www.uwc.ac.za