360º Perspectives Issue 7

PERSPECTIVES A year of UWC excellence in review ISSUE 7 | 2020/2021

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360º PERSPECTIVES | ISSUE 7 | 2020/2021

Foreword » Welcome to this special edition of 360° Perspectives that celebrates the achievements of UWC over its six decades of existence.

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HAT MAKES THIS A UNIQUE EDITION is

the fact that it melds together the past and present achievements of our university.

Through the anecdotes of our alumni, we get a glimpse of the transformative role that the institution plays in the lives of our students and alumni. Dr Randall Carolissen, who recently stepped down as administrator of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) and has been appointed as the Dean of the University of Johannesburg Business School, says: “No other institution offered generations a gateway out of poverty.”

SARChI Chair in the Development of Human Capabilities and Social Cohesion through the Family, Prof Nicky Roman, whose husband Allan and two sons also pursued their degrees at UWC, says: “During the apartheid era, if you were not white you were made to feel lesser than or incapable. I was never going to go to a university other than UWC because UWC was home, a space where I could be myself and where I was not going to be compared to someone other than myself. I could grow and become.”

The university’s impact on international students is shown in the article on Namibia’s Minister of Justice, Yvonne Dausab, who came to

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the institution in 1993 to study law after realising that “UWC would be a good place to be and to grow intellectually, emotionally and politically”.

Several articles on recent research endeavours and innovations offer a sense of where the university is currently located on its evolutionary path – from a college for coloured students to a respected research-led institution and one of the leading public universities in South Africa.

Take, for instance, the cutting-edge DNA test kit prototype developed by Prof Maria Eugenia D’Amato and her team, which has the potential to narrow down male perpetrator suspects in sexual assault cases in the Southern African region. Then there is the Biolabels Research Unit in the Department of Biotechnology that is developing an antibacterial product based on biogenic nanoparticles extracted from plants that will indirectly aid the fight against COVID-19.

The evolution of the university and the programmes that it offers to keep abreast of technological and industry trends are also highlighted in an article on new qualifications offered in artificial and virtual reality, including a postgraduate diploma.

We have indeed much of which to be proud. This university has managed to develop its academic standing in the world against significant odds and has graduated fine students who have become leaders within society.

We cannot allow ourselves to be satisfied with the achievements of yesteryear. Rather, we have to keep our gaze firmly on the future in order to continue to meet the needs of our students. The global pandemic that still affects us all reminds us that we have to continue to strive to do more and deliver more to our students and the society in which we are located. These are uncertain times and they require us to stand together as a campus community that is caring and compassionate.

Professor Tyrone Pretorius Rector and Vice-Chancellor

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PERSPECTIVES Managing Editor: Nastasha Crow Production Editor: Nastasha Crow Editor: Nazeem Lowe Editorial: Gasant Abarder Harriet Box Giovanna Collins Nashira Davids Cardré Goliath Myolisi Gophe Grant Cyster Carlo Jonkerman Nicklaus Kruger Anel Lewis Jesi Townsend John Thwaits Amy Meyers Annie Moyo Yazeed Kamaldien Wrap It Up PR and Communications Barefoot Teacher Guest Writers: Robin Adams Buntu Gotywa Dumisani Koyana Images: Jeffery Abrahams Daniel Born Je’nine May Photography Nickay Photography African News Agency SA Rugby Gettyimages/FIFA.com 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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360º PERSPECTIVES | ISSUE 7 | 2020/2021

PERSPECTIVES

Contents

02 Foreword LIMS for 06 Baobab biobanking 60 years of hope 08 Celebrating equity in ICT is 12 Gender simply good business bacteriophages to biosurfactants 14 From metal hydrides 17 Novel fuel storage cell development

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Cape’s indigenous community to profit from UWC research

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DNA test kit but one result in genotyping research project

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Young scientist has her eyes firmly fixed on the stars

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Prototype strengthens fight against coronavirus

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Industry and science combine to combat neurodegenerative diseases

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Still ‘loving it’ after 25 years

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University unit offers research services to agricultural industry and beyond

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Soccer’s loss was music’s gain

When imagination becomes real and the real, imaginary

Research enhances small-scale farming practices

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in service of the South African nation 41 Justice driving 43 Collaboration digital literacy ash in 45 Notheflpan of rising to 47 Athecareer challenge and promise fulfilled 49 Hope the Cape’s 51 Revealing hidden history of recycling 53 Evangelists

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Law Faculty uses CHE review to roll out improvements

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Rugby legend comes full circle after three decades

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UWC is a home from home for the Romans

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Achieving his academic goal

Book reviews

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Boxer edges closer to Olympic dream

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Appointment of an activist minister Rugby star assumes top leadership role at Rugby Africa

Former student’s footballing career takes off

2020 in a nutshell

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Baobab LIMS for Biobanking » SANBI develops accessible management technology for African biorepositories.

IOREPOSITORIES use laboratory information management systems (LIMS) to track and manage the collection, processing and storage of biological specimens and associated metadata for research. In many low and middle-income (LMIC) countries, particularly in Africa, exorbitant commercial LIMS licensing fees make it difficult for scientists to properly manage large study cohorts or ‘biobanks’ of specimens by employing database technology.

This could cause researchers to question the processing and storage procedures as well as the quality or integrity of the biobank’s specimen collection.

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The South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI) at the University of the Western Cape has developed Baobab LIMS, an open-source software resource that research facilities can access to help manage biospecimens.

“On the African continent, several users and test sites have employed the software, a number of training and engagement events have taken place and the Baobab LIMS team has customised the software for specific projects,” says Dr Dominique Anderson, a SANBI senior researcher.

Baobab LIMS was funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme through the B3Africa consortium as one of “a suite of tools” developed “to harmonise e-infrastructure for biobanking” in LMIC countries.

Prof Alan Christoffels, the Director of SANBI and DST/NRF Research Chair in Bioinformatics

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and Health Genomics, originally co-developed Baobab LIMS with Dr Hocine Bendou. The system has been enhanced and is managed by Dr Anderson, working with developers Ziphozakhe Mashologu, Quinton Coert and Lunga Baliwe, among others. Throughout the project, Dr Anderson, who has a background in biotechnology and bioinformatics and prior experience in quality management and accreditation, worked closely with researchers and the developers to ensure that the final interface matched what users needed.

International best practice recommends that biobanks implement quality management systems (QMS). The LIMS forms one component of the QMS processes and enhances quality and compliance and accurate record-keeping. The system enables scientists and researchers to manage the life-cycle of biospecimens, including tracking where the biospecimens were sourced and shipped, the sample type and quantity received, minimal associated metadata, where the biospecimens are stored in the laboratory, and whether specific laboratory analysis has been performed on the biospecimens.

“There are many commercial LIM systems that can be used as part of the quality management in biobanking, biorepositories or biocollections, but these systems are expensive. The annual licensing fees for these systems, as well as training and any modification requirements may not be

» Baobab LIMS is an open-source software resource to help manage biospecimens. «

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sustainable for resource-limited laboratories.

So, while a pharmaceutical company, for example, will be able to afford a commercial LIMS, other researchers who are doing very valuable research, especially in the low and middle-income countries, cannot afford these fees,” says Dr Anderson.

The fact that commercial LIMS are built with proprietary software means that the source code cannot be altered except by the company that developed it. Because Baobab LIMS is built with open-source code, the code is publicly available and can be customised and made fit for purpose.

Baobab was built using Bika LIMS, which was initially developed for the wine biotechnology industry. With Bika’s approval, SANBI collaborated with Prof Akin Abayomi and Dr Carmen Swanepoel from NSB, a small academic biobank in the Division of Haematology, NHLS and Stellenbosch University, and used their working systems to build various modules to transform Bika LIMS into a human biospecimen LIMS. The current version of Baobab LIMS is a feature-rich system with a number of functionalities geared toward sample management. It allows scientists to not only capture detailed information about samples but to share this information with clients through system-generated reports.

“It is fully configurable and allows scientists in the biobanks to actually set up the features on the LIMS to reflect, for example, what their freezer looks like,” says Dr Anderson.

“Because we are working with very sensitive information, scientists have to actually install the software code onto their secure servers. Once it is installed, it belongs to that person or facility and that facility then configures the system to its needs.”

The system is accessible via any web browser, but only to individuals who have authorised access.

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» In 1959, the apartheid Parliament passed the Extension of University Education Act, which ironically limited black people’s access to higher education to ethnically defined institutions.

HE PLAN WAS TO GROW a class of black intelligentsia who would collaborate with and support the apartheid project. In 1960, the University College of the Western Cape, a constituent college of the University of South Africa, admitted the first group of 166 so-called coloured students.

Its all-white Afrikaner faculty offered limited training for positions in schools and civil service institutions serving coloureds.

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The hostile academic staff, drab buildings and poor amenities were uninspiring, and the location surrounded by railway yards, sand and dense vegetation was disparaged as a ‘bush college’ by the students themselves.

The student leaders who met in the cafeteria to discuss these problems were not as docile as the authorities had hoped. By the end of the decade, influenced by the South African Students Organisation (SASO), the students

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began to rebel, challenging issues as petty as the enforced wearing of ties to the more serious absence of black lecturers and the favouring of Afrikaans. Among them were two brilliant future lecturers and ViceChancellors, Jakes Gerwel (BA 1967) and Brian O’Connell (BA 1969).

By 1970, the University College of the Western Cape had an enrolment of 936 students. Along with the Universities of the North, Zululand, Fort Hare and DurbanWestville, UWC was granted university status and the right to award its own degrees. Despite the university’s attempts to suppress student politics, eight of the 11 SRC members of 1972 were SASO members, and when Turfloop SRC president Onkgopotse Tiro was expelled for condemning apartheid in a graduation speech,

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» The legendary Richard van der Ross was appointed as Rector in 1975 and declared that U-W-C represented the ‘University of the Working Class’.« the UWC campus joined the solidarity strike in his support. From that point on until the demise of apartheid, UWC students were always in the thick of protest action.

The legendary Richard van der Ross was appointed as Rector in 1975 and declared that U-W-C represented the ‘University of the Working Class’. Often criticised by students, especially when unable to prevent police from invading the campus, Van der Ross’s tenure coincided with tremendous institutional growth, the demographic transformation of the academic staff and more vibrant student life. >>

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» In June 1987, incoming Rector Jakes Gerwel dubbed UWC ‘an intellectual home of the Left’ and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu began his long tenure as Chancellor in the same year (serving until 2011). « Many of the changes were quiet revolutions, such as the protected status awarded to the UWC nature reserve in 1978 and the impact of UWC’s inspired group of theology lecturers led

by Jaap Durand (also UWC’s first vice-rector).

In 1982, the University Senate rejected race as a criterion for admission and the coloured university project was effectively over with the passing of the University of the Western Cape Act in 1983, giving UWC autonomy on the same terms as white universities.

Every year from 1983 to 1989 saw disruption of the academic programme, confrontations with police and arrests and detention of students. In June 1987, incoming Rector Jakes Gerwel dubbed UWC ‘an intellectual home of the Left’ and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu began his long tenure as Chancellor in the same year (serving until 2011).

With an already strong foundation in the humanities, UWC was developing centres of excellence in the sciences, law, community health, pharmacy and dentistry by the end of the decade. Several UWC law luminaries were drawn into writing the new democratic constitution and then persuaded to enter government itself after 1994, including Dullah Omar, Brigitte Mabandla and Bulelani Ngquka.

The Rector became the Director-General in the Presidency.

The five-year term (1995–2000) of Prof Cecil Abrahams as Vice-Chancellor coincided with a period of immense pressure on the higher education landscape. The efforts of the university to improve access to higher education almost worked against it as student debt ballooned and the economy stagnated.

Despite losing staff to better-resourced institutions, government and other agencies in the new democracy, UWC managed to improve its research productivity. Between 1990 and 2004, the number of its NRF-rated researchers increased from 6 to 65 and the enrolments of PhD students increased from 131 in 1996 to 321 in 2005.

In 2001, Brian O’Connell, the student leader who swore he would never come back after graduating, was appointed as Vice-Chancellor.

UWC nearly lost its individual identity during the restructuring of higher education in 2002 but fought off the merger with the Peninsula Technikon (now CPUT). In the twelve years that Prof O’Connell was at the helm, the campus was physically transformed, with imposing new and refurbished buildings, public art and new

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residences. Academic progress was consolidated. In 2004, the University of Stellenbosch’s School of Dentistry was incorporated into UWC, and UWC also became the sole provider of a first degree in Nursing in the Western Cape. By the time Prof O’Connell retired in 2014, UWC was ranked as one of the top South African and African universities.

In 2015, university campuses erupted as students protested against the high cost of university tuition. By the end of 2019, the situation had normalised under a new leadership team led by Prof Tyrone Pretorius.

Plans for the 60th-anniversary celebration scheduled for March 2020 had just been finalised, when a deadly novel virus surfaced in China.

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» A tiny college founded to further a warped ideology was transformed into a modern multi-campus university respected for its teaching quality and leading research. « Respice, Prospice. Looking back, there is much to be proud of. A tiny college founded to further a warped ideology was transformed into a modern multi-campus university respected for its teaching quality and leading research, where half the teaching staff hold doctorates and 20 percent of the students are postgraduates.

Looking forward, all indications are that the achievement of the next 60 years will dwarf the first.

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Gender equity in ICT is simply good business » Women are increasingly well represented in leadership in civil society, including all tiers of government, Parliament and the judiciary.

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OWEVER, THE EQUITABLE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN in business leadership is still

a (slow) work in progress. According to the 2017 BWASA Women in Leadership census, women constitute 51% of the South African population but only 20,7% of directors, 29,4% of executive management positions and just 11,8% of board chairpersons’ positions. Only 3,3% of JSE-listed companies have female CEOs and just one Top 40 company has a woman CEO, Naspers’s Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa.

In the ICT sector, most companies are led by men, although some large corporations have or have had women CEOs. In March 2019, UWC alumna Lillian Barnard was appointed as Managing Director of Microsoft SA, the first woman to lead the ICT giant’s South African operation. Although identified early as top talent and given opportunities that challenged her limited experience, Barnard still had to earn her spurs the hard way as a leader in ICT. After graduating with a BCom Honours at UWC in 1993, she joined IBM, kicking off a 15-year career in managing sales teams, including overall responsibility for sales and business operations in France and Switzerland, before Lillian Barnard. >

returning in 2010 to take executive responsibility for IBM’s sub-Saharan Africa partner business.

“Working outside South Africa was a great opportunity in that it set my career on a new trajectory. I grew as a person, both personally and professionally, and my world view has significantly changed in a very meaningful way,” Barnard says.

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In 2011, she left IBM to challenge herself and built a successful consultancy based in Johannesburg. She joined the boards of Mango Airlines and Vodacom as a non-executive director before returning to the corporate sales environment in 2014 as Chief Sales Officer for Vodacom’s Enterprise Business.

In May 2017, she joined Microsoft SA as its public sector director and was almost immediately identified as a potential managing director (MD). The first week of her tenure as MD coincided with Microsoft launching its first Azure cloud data centres in Africa, in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Barnard says the data centres will not only aid the transition to the fourth industrial revolution in South Africa, but will facilitate digital innovation for Africa by providing cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and edge computing access. Data research firm IDC predicts that spending on public cloud services will grow to R11,5-billion by 2022 and create 112 000 new jobs.

» Having women represented in these fields is not only a matter of fairness, but our economies and societies also lose out when we fail to engage half of the world’s brainpower in our engines of innovation. « Barnard is excited about the opportunities that technology brings and the power it has to transform business and society.

“Some of the technologies that we think will make an impact on the local market include productivity and collaboration tools, cloud and data platforms and artificial intelligence,” she says.

Barnard is also keenly aware of the need to transform the ICT space, and has focused intentional investments into initiatives that support ICT transformation and have led to Microsoft SA being recognised as a level one

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BBBEE contributor. Microsoft SA fully supports the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition’s Equity Equivalent Investment Programme (EEIP), which allows eligible multinationals to recognise BEE ownership without diluting existing shareholding. Through its EEIP programme, Microsoft invests in technology solutions to digitally transform key industries. The Microsoft EEIP investment also allocates funding to the skills development of South Africa’s young software developers through Microsoft AppFactories.

Barnard is committed to improving access to ICT for women and promoting gender equity.

Women constitute 28,6% of the total workforce of the global company. She says, “We have a strong commitment to building a diverse and inclusive workforce where all employees have the chance to succeed. Culture improvement takes commitment, feedback, listening and investment.

“We need to encourage interest from the early years of development, combat stereotypes, partner with our teacher community to inspire girls to pursue STEM careers, develop curricula that are gendersensitive and mentor girls and young women to adopt different mind-sets.”

Barnard says girls represent 52% of the total beneficiaries of YouthSpark, a multipronged Microsoft funding initiative in 55 countries that enables youth to learn computer science.

YouthSpark also spawned DigiGirlz, an initiative that enables schoolgirls to learn about technology careers, connect with Microsoft employees and participate in hands-on computer and technology workshops.

Citing the WEF’s Gender Gap Report, Barnard says, “Having women represented in these fields is not only a matter of fairness, but our economies and societies also lose out when we fail to engage half of the world’s brainpower in our engines of innovation.”

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From bacteriophages to biosurfactants: exploring the multiverse of microbiology

» There are more bacteriophages on earth than the combined number of all other organisms, possibly as many as 10 quintillion (that’s 10 followed by 30 noughts).

HE 45 UNIQUELY OBSESSIVE PEOPLE who work at UWC’s Institute for Microbial Biotechnology and Metagenomics (IMBM) know they won’t discover more than an immeasurably tiny percentage of this group of viruses that only infect bacteria, but they’re happy to devote much of their careers to it. The IMBM has identified more than 130 phages that live on human skin and many others that thrive in a range of extreme environments.

The IMBM researches microbial life, but it has a purpose beyond simply discovering tiny life forms. It was established as a research institute in the Department of Biotechnology in 2007 (its earlier guise, the Advanced Research Centre for Applied Microbiology, was established in 2001) to develop useful biotechnological applications of research in microbiology. Based in the Life Sciences

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Building, the Institute’s work includes international collaborations encompassing disciplines such as microbiology, genomics, molecular biology, enzymology, biochemistry, structural biology, nanotechnology, bioinformatics and analytical chemistry.

Typifying its collegial, collaborative approach, it routinely makes its advanced laboratory facilities available to researchers from other departments and institutions.

“Collaborations with industry and academia have been invaluable towards facilitating our involvement in multidisciplinary projects, where we can focus on our core expertise while still ensuring that what we initiate can be translated and developed further along the discovery pipeline. This has also been crucial for skills and knowledge transfer, especially for postgraduate students, many of whom have received the opportunity to exchange with an internationally leading laboratory to advance aspects of their research projects,” says Professor Marla Trindade, the Director of the IMBM. One of the IMBM’s areas of interest is studying the adaptations of organisms thriving in extreme environments such as

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deep ocean trenches and hot springs, in the hope of finding useful applications in biotechnology. For example, in the international Ocean Medicines Project, the IMBM team collected marine invertebrateassociated microorganisms (symbionts) that produce bioactive compounds with pharmacological properties that could be optimised for pharmaceutical development, such as the treatment of infections caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens.

The IMBM also conducts important research on potentially high-value biochemicals, including functional polymers and biosurfactants, for application in industries as diverse as cosmetics, food, agriculture and mining.

» Biosurfactants have the potential to replace any synthetic surfactant and, moreover, introduce some unique properties. « In scientific parlance, surfactants are ‘amphipathic molecules with both hydrophilic and hydrophobic moieties that partition preferentially at the interface between fluid phases such as oil/water or air/water interfaces’ (in plainer English, they align part of themselves to water and part to the other substance at the interface, reducing the surface tension and acting like a bridge). They’re what make detergents foam, mayonnaise emulsify and cooking spray non-stick.

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Synthetic surfactants are, however, increasingly considered an environmental risk because of their toxic nature and their difficulty in being degraded in the environment. Biosurfactants (biologically produced surfactants) are biodegradable and generally more environmentally friendly.

“Biosurfactants have the potential to replace any synthetic surfactant and, moreover, introduce some unique properties.

Biosurfactants have therefore gathered a lot of interest as potential alternatives for application in detergents, personal care products, agricultural chemicals and in food processing in the last ten years,” says Prof Trindade.

The IMBM has discovered a novel biosurfactant, a lyso-ornithine lipid (from a South African lake). The genes encoding the production of the lipid were isolated using metagenomics. The IMBM has received national and international industry interest in this compound for inclusion in personal care products, to co-formulate with a green biocide that has been commercialised for industrial water treatment, as an adjuvant for biocontrol and plant growth stimulants, and as an ingredient in food, beverages and dietary supplements. The patent for the biosurfactant has now been registered in Europe and South Africa, a very important (and expensive) step towards its commercialisation. Through numerous collaborations, the IMBM is in the next phase of development to increase production to an industrial scale.

The IMBM is not only contributing to UWC’s reputation for scientific research through its rigorous scholarship and enthusiasm (epitomised by Prof Trindade, who holds the prestigious DST/NRF SARChI Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and was the 2015 winner of the DST Distinguished Young Women Researcher award), but also to the university’s strategic objective of promoting innovation and economic growth.

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360º PERSPECTIVES | ISSUE 7 | 2020/2021

CELEBRATING 60 YEARS OF

HOPE TO ACTION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE

VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE: WWW.UWC.AC.ZA

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Novel metal hydrides fuel storage cell development

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IVE YEARS AGO, HYDROGEN SOUTH AFRICA (HYSA) SYSTEMS at the University of the

Western Cape (UWC) unveiled the first forklift and refuelling station prototypes in Africa to be powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Dr Mykhaylo Lototskyy, a key technology specialist in hydrogen storage and related applications at HySA, and his team developed the prototypes in

collaboration with the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and Impala Platinum (Implats). The novel metal hydrides used to store the hydrogen that powers the fuel cells of the forklift and to compress the hydrogen for the refuelling station were engineered by HySA by combining certain metallic alloys with hydrogen. >>

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Dr Lototskyy, who is also a Senior Lecturer at the South African Institute for Advanced Materials Chemistry (SAIAMC) at UWC, says: “While scientists have known of so-called AB2-type intermetallic hydrogen storage alloys since the early 1980s, the metal hydrides engineered at HySA Systems and used in the prototypes are unique.

Conventionally, the AB2-type alloys make use of a number of specific elements which are made up of both A and B components like titanium, zirconium, chromium, manganese and iron. However, our alloys contain these and some other components in certain amounts that results in precise matching of their properties with the requirements of an end-user.”

The metal hydrides also serve as ballast to ensure proper weight distribution and the stability of the prototype forklift. Currently, commercial forklifts use hydrogen stored as a gas in high-pressure composite gas cylinders, which are too light and require manufacturers to place additional ballast in the forklift.

“Through the use of the metal hydrides we engineered, we were able to ensure that the hydrogen pressure in the metal hydride hydrogen storage system on board the forklift does not exceed 185 bar. That is almost two times lower than the typical hydrogen pressure of 350 bar in a commercial fuel cell forklift,” says Dr Lototskyy.

» The novel metal hydrides used to store the hydrogen that powers the fuel cells of the forklift and to compress the hydrogen for the refuelling station were engineered

by HySA by combining certain metallic alloys with hydrogen. « HySA Systems is one of three Centres of Competence (CoCs) in the DSI’s HySA Programme, which aims to stimulate innovation along the hydrogen fuel cell technology value chain in South Africa through local manufacture of hydrogen and fuel cell products, and job creation and economic development through the mining and sale of platinum group metals (PMGs).

PMGs are used as catalysts in fuel cells to provide a high rate of electrochemical reactions through which hydrogen and oxygen are converted into electricity.

The UWC centre focuses on developing hydrogen fuel cell systems, demonstrators, products and prototypes, performing technology validation and system integration in hydrogen fuel cell technologies. An internationally recognised researcher in the fundamentals of metal hydrides and their application in hydrogen storage, hydrogen compression, hydrogen separation and purification, Dr Lototskyy was appointed Key Programme Manager for the HySA Programme in 2019.

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Hydrogen fuel cell storage technology is environmentally friendly and has benefits that set it apart from battery-based energy storage technology.

Dr Lototskyy says, “Hydrogen fuel cells offer higher energy storage densities per unit volume varying from 0.33 to 0.51 kWh/litre depending on the storage method. The highest value achieved for rechargeable Li-ion batteries is less than 0.14 kWh/litre. A hydrogen-fuelled fuel cell system can be refuelled in several minutes while a battery needs to be charged for several hours.”

Other advantages are: • Electric power withdrawn from a hydrogen fuel cell system is constant throughout its operation cycle while the maximum power that can be withdrawn from an ordinary battery decreases as the battery discharges.

» Hydrogen fuel cell storage technology is environmentally friendly and has benefits that set it apart from batterybased energy storage technology. «

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• Hydrogen fuel cells last longer than batterybased energy storage systems, which reduces operating costs.

• The machines are less noisy than those powered by internal combustion engines, do not emit harmful gases and are safe to operate in a confined space.

• Metal hydrides are a more efficient way to store hydrogen than storing it as a compressed gas or in liquid form. Hydrogen stored as a compressed gas (350–700 bar) is potentially unsafe in high-pressured fuel cell systems, while liquid hydrogen evaporates easily.

• Hydrogen is only released from metal hydrides at high temperatures while metal hydrides can use waste heat instead of electricity to drive hydrogen compression, a potential benefit to industrial customers.

Dr Lototskyy and his team are developing a second prototype of a metal hydride hydrogen storage tank where fast refuelling can be achieved at lower pressures of 100–150 bar.

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Revisiting ancient wisdom to solve modern problems » Ex Africa semper aliquid novi.

‘Africa always brings forth something new’.

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HUS WROTE THE ROMAN NATURALIST PLINY THE ELDER almost two thousand years

ago, referencing an earlier observation on African biodiversity by Aristotle.

Wise words, but what were novel discoveries to these philosopher-scientists were probably old hat to the thousands of Khoi-San people roaming southern Africa at that time.

Africa’s natural pharmacopoeia continues to draw the attention of modern scientists, with regular announcements of the latest wonder drug confirming the efficacy of Africa’s indigenous medicines.

Rooibos, buchu, pelargonia, hoodia, sutherlandia, aloe, cannabis and hundreds of other plants were deployed alongside animal

and mineral-derived medicines in Khoi-San healing techniques that included poultices, aromatherapy, massage and ingested pharmaceuticals. One of the latest plants to excite the research interest of UWC’s Medical Biosciences Department is the unassuming kraalbos (Galenia africana).

Known variously as brakkraalbossie, kraalbrak, geelbos, iqina, muisbos, perdebos and waterpensbos, kraalbos is an aromatic woody shrub native to South Africa and Namibia that often colonises land where animals have concentrated or overgrazed other vegetation, such as in and around a livestock kraal.

Farmers regard it as a problem plant, since it is toxic if ingested and causes a potentially deadly form of ascites known as waterpens (water belly) in grazing livestock.

The Khoi-San, however, used it to treat dermatitis, fungal growths, inflammation

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and even venereal diseases. Chewing kraalbos leaves relieves toothache and an infusion will ease bronchial problems and coughs. Scientists believe its antibacterial properties may be useful in treating tuberculosis and it is being investigated as a potential treatment for skin and other cancers and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

A research team led by UWC professor of molecular biology, Burtram Fielding, found that a kraalbos extract successfully killed melanomas and breast cancer cells in laboratory conditions.

“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, different cancers,” Prof Fielding says.

Another study by Dr Farzana Rahiman of the department’s skin research laboratory and postgraduate student Banele Ndlovu compared the anti-proliferative effect of kraalbos on normal human skin cells (HaCaT) and human malignant melanoma cells (A375).

They discovered kraalbos significantly reduced the cell viability of the A375 cells in a dose and time-dependent manner, while having no effect on the HaCaT cells. This suggests a clinical rationale for kraalbos’s potential use as an anti-melanoma agent offering efficacy and low toxicity.

» Testing showed kraalbos efficacy was specific to particular, different cancers. « Prof Fielding and Dr Tiza Ng’uni have conducted toxicity testing and other research to determine whether kraalbos was safe for use as a topical treatment. Indications are that it can be safely used as a therapeutic agent, although more research is needed before market-ready pharmaceuticals can be developed.

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Kraalbos is also showing promise as an element in the future treatment of multidrugresistant pathogens, a growing global concern.

For example, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is already resistant to more than 20 antibiotic medications. MRSA is a common hospitalacquired infection that can cause sepsis, skin diseases, abscesses, sinusitis and food poisoning. A few years ago, Prof Jeremy Klaasen began exploring other applications of kraalbos and developed a biopesticidal adjuvant that can reverse the resistance of plant pathogens when mixed with conventional chemical pesticides. An eventual commercial application will likely reduce the amount of pesticide used and the risk and extent of environmental contamination.

A further discovery proved that a kraalbos extract can increase the chlorophyll level, polyphenolic content and total soluble solids content of plants, thereby improving overall plant health and yield. Kraalbos therefore has potential as a bio-fertiliser in the organic food production market.

Lastly, seeding degraded land with kraalbos can enrich soil and restore other wild plant populations, promoting sustainable land management. While bioscience today is a specialised research discipline in which UWC is playing a prominent role, and the commercial exploitation of indigenous knowledge systems holds both risks and promises for the communities who traditionally ‘own’ the knowledge and universities that may develop it, one cultural aspect of ‘progress’ is worth reflecting on.

By the time they reached adulthood, Khoi-San people often possessed extensive knowledge of indigenous natural medicine and the ability to treat almost all common ailments using nothing but the flora and fauna around them. How many people today can make that claim?

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DNA test kit but one result in genotyping research project N 2018, the Forensic DNA Laboratory at the

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University of the Western Cape, Inqaba Biotechnical Industries (Inqaba Biotec), the Lesotho Police and the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe unveiled the first DNA test kit prototype with the potential to help eliminate male perpetrator suspects in sexual assault cases in the Southern African region.

The test kit could not only help police reduce suspect pools in sexual assault cases, but also the time and resources spent on narrowing down the suspect list in subsequent investigations.

The UniQ-Typer™ Y-10 kit prototype uses 10 genetic markers found on the Y chromosome that are able to produce the highest level of discrimination in differentiating one male from another and generate a DNA profile that is

unique to a group of related men. The prototype was developed by the laboratory and Inqaba Biotec and was funded by UWC, Inqaba Biotec, the National Research Foundation, the Technology Innovation Agency and BioFISA. “We were able to identify 10 markers on the Y chromosome with short tandem repeats (Y-STRs) with a high variation from individual to individual after a larger screening using 45 markers,” explains Professor Maria Eugenia D’Amato, a population geneticist and forensic scientist, and head of the laboratory, which is based in the Department of Biotechnology.

Chromosomes are made up of genes that contain genetic material called DNA. A marker is a known region on the chromosome that is highly variable and can thus be used to identify individuals. Currently, the South African Police Service (SAPS) uses kits that

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rely on STR markers from all the chromosomes in the body to determine perpetrators in sexual assault cases. However, these kits identify both male and female DNA as bodily fluid obtained from the scene of a rape is usually mixed.

“This makes it very difficult to obtain readable genetic profiles, whereas, when you focus on the Y chromosome, you can identify and single out the male DNA from the bodily fluids recovered,” explains Prof D’Amato.

“Y-STR kits like this prototype are also powerful in eliminating suspects and exonerating innocent individuals,” she says.

Because existing kits used by the SAPS are produced for the European market, they are not as effective in more diverse populations like South Africa’s. The prototype, on the other hand, has a higher probability of distinguishing the profiles of paternally related men in Southern Africa.

Prof D’Amato’s research is based on a breakthrough made at UWC in 2003 and published in 2007 when her colleagues, Professors Sean Davison, Mongi Benjeddou and Neil Leat, “discovered many Y-STRs that were unknown then by data mining the published human genome” sequence produced through the Human Genome Project.

“Some of these proved excellent for forensic application for their discrimination power,” she says.

Prof D’Amato furthered their research in 2007 by screening local populations to identify more informative markers. The final selection of the markers for the kit was done in collaboration with the former Director of the South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI), Prof Vlad Bajic, who died in 2019.

“Since 2011, we have been genotyping anonymous donors from all over the country.

Currently, we have a collection of 3 000 profiles from Lesotho and South Africa,” says Prof D’Amato. The research that underpins the development of the prototype involved

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collecting the DNA of anonymous males with ancestry from Africa, Europe and India and local ethnic groups – Venda, Pedi, Zulu, Xhosa, Puthi, Sotho, Vundle, Ndebele, Tswana, Swazi, Tsonga and admixed groups – to understand the natural genetic diversity among men from different ethnic backgrounds.

Other than the testing kit, the research provided the foundation for the development of the UniQTyper Reference Database.

Noting that the prototype has a wider application outside forensics and can be used in genealogy and anthropology studies, Prof D’Amato says, “The reference database is only in its testing phase. We would like to still implement additional functions and statistical tools to evaluate the significance of a match.

Professor Maria Eugenia D’Amato, the head of the laboratory based in the Department of Biotechnology.

» Y-STR kits like this prototype are powerful in eliminating suspects and exonerating innocent individuals. « “This is important, because when an investigation finds a match, it alone says nothing. We need additional information, such as how often that profile is seen in a country or region, how often that profile is seen in the population group the suspect belongs to, and what is the probability of finding such a profile among different populations. But, to develop the database, we will need funding.”>>

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Young scientist has her eyes firmly fixed on the stars » Astrophysics student Nicole Thomas, who is completing her PhD at the University of the Western Cape’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, was selected to attend the 69th Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, Germany, in 2019.

ROFESSOR ROY MAARTENS, who worked closely with Thomas, said at the time that she “leaves no stone unturned in understanding the material. She doesn’t take shortcuts towards achieving her goals and she will no doubt leave this meeting [Lindau] even better prepared to make an impact in the field.”

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Thomas says the six-day Nobel Meeting was an uplifting experience.

“Being surrounded by 40 Nobel laureates as well as hundreds of the brightest young minds in physics is incredibly intimidating. It was an honour to get to listen to the laureates talk about their journeys and research leading up to their awards,” she says.

“The highlight for me was definitely getting to meet and know some of the other young scientists. This was particularly important because these young scientists will be leaders in their respective fields in 10 years’ time, and these are the people that one is more likely to collaborate with, now and in future.”

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Thomas has also visited other places on her academic journey, including the United Kingdom where her PhD supervisor lives.

“I’ve been very fortunate to travel to various cities all over the world. International conferences occur often and are important to attend to share and discuss one’s research and to network and make collaborations for future work,” says Thomas.

Thomas says she always knew she wanted to be a physicist.

“I was always interested in how things work and more specifically why things work.

From a ball falling to why there are clouds in the sky. I always wondered about things further than what I was able to comprehend at the time,” she says.

“If I had an object that I could cut in half, and then in half again, and again, and again, how much more could I keep cutting it and how small could it get? I wondered about what were beyond the stars, why there appeared to be nothing between them and was frankly upset that we couldn’t see much further than 13 billion light years away,” she says.

By the time she matriculated from Kasselsvlei High School in Bellville South, she had already decided to study physics at UWC. “Astrophysics blew my mind. I considered it to be one of the most thought-provoking fields with so many unanswered questions that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. I knew that I wanted to answer these questions and to unravel the puzzles the universe poses,” she says.

After her undergraduate studies, she completed the National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme (NASSP) at the University of Cape Town, before returning to UWC to do her master’s and now her PhD. “Other than travelling to many different places, I consider some of the latest research I’ve been able to publish a significant highlight. I would generally like to stay in

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Nicole (middle row, second from right) with the rest of the South African cohort at the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany in 2019.

academia and continue doing research,” says Thomas. “There are so many big questions that always spark interest and now, in the era of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), is the perfect time to ask them.

“What is dark energy, this strange invisible force pushing everything in our universe away from each other? What about the other equally mysterious dark matter that keeps large-scale structures together? How can something as physically small as a supermassive black hole in the centre of a galaxy be so powerful that it affects entire galaxies? And how did these supermassive black holes form and grow so quickly in the first place?

“It’s about wanting to understand the nature of our universe, why and how we’ve made it to this point in time. Some astronomers go out and use telescopes as part of their research, many use the data that come from these telescopes, while others, including myself, make and use models and simulations of the objects they’re interested in studying,” she says.

With so many questions and methodologies to explore, any one of which could easily occupy an entire career, Thomas is certainly spoilt for choice and unlikely to lose her passion for her chosen field.

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Prototype strengthens fight against bacterial infections and possibly COVID-19 » The Biolabels Research Unit, a division of the DSI/Mintek Nanotechnology Innovation Centre at the University of the Western Cape’s Department of Biotechnology, is developing an antibacterial product that will indirectly aid the fight against COVID-19.

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NLIKE VIRUSES, WHICH CAN BE CONTROLLED

EFFECTIVELY using antiviral drugs and vaccines, bacteria are conventionally tackled with antibiotics. The Biolabels Unit, however, conducts research on the development of biogenic nanomaterials and nanotechnology for applications in the treatment of bacterial infections. The unit has

obtained a R5,4-million research grant to develop a prototype of a consumer product to fight bacterial infections. The ability of microorganisms to become increasingly resistant to antimicrobial agents to which they were previously susceptible is such a serious global challenge that the World Health Organisation considers the prevalence of multidrug-resistant microorganisms a global health threat.

Professor Mervyn Meyer, the research unit’s director, says that until fairly recently, good hand hygiene practices and the use of sanitisers, disinfectants and antibacterial soaps were considered effective methods of preventing the spread of common bacterial skin infections.

“The antibacterial agent most often used in hand sanitisers is alcohol. It is recommended

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that the alcohol content be above 60%,” he says. Because alcohol has antimicrobial properties, this high alcohol content is also considered effective in killing the coronavirus on surfaces, including hands.

“However, due to the long-term use of hand sanitisers with alcohol content less than 60%, which do not effectively kill some bacteria, there are now fears that constant exposure to these low levels of alcohol has resulted in the development of resistant bacterial strains. Antimicrobial agents that we have been reliant on may not be effective anymore,” says Prof Meyer.

The increased use of alcohol-based hand sanitisers during the current pandemic may also increase the development of alcoholresistant bacterial strains, further exacerbating the problem. Due to these worrying trends, new antimicrobial agents for the control of infections are needed.

The antibacterial agent in the product under development is one of several biogenic nanoparticles produced from a plant extract.

Nanoparticles produced from plants may have several additional advantages over nanoparticles produced using traditional chemical synthesis methods. These nanomaterials are more biocompatible and

The Biolabels Research Unit team.

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Professor Mervyn Meyer, Biolabels Research Unit director.

» We are currently refining the prototype and testing its effectiveness. The next phase will be to test the safety of the prototype. « environmentally friendly. Their production costs are lower because plant extracts are used and the energy requirements for synthesis are lower.

Researchers in South Africa also have the advantage of having access to plant species that are only found here, in a region whose rich biodiversity includes the entire Cape floral kingdom’s 9 300 plant species. Many of these plants already have a history of being used in traditional medicine.

The diverse phytochemistry of these plants has great potential for their exploitation in the development of new drugs.

Prof Meyer says they are confident that the Biolabels Unit “will have a functional prototype by the end of 2021”.

“We are currently refining the prototype and testing its effectiveness. The next phase will be to test the safety of the prototype,” he says.

So how does this product relate to fighting COVID-19? The unit is also investigating whether these biogenic nanoparticles have any antiviral properties and, should the nanoparticles be able to neutralise the SARS-CoV-2 virus, whether they can be used as a novel antiviral agent in sanitisers.

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Industry and science combine to combat neurodegenerative diseases » South Africa’s unique biodiversity offers huge potential in the identification of novel pharmaceutical leads to combat a range of human diseases.

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HIS IS THE FOCUS OF THE POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH AT THE INSTITUTE OF MICROBIAL BIOTECHNOLOGY AND METAGENOMICS

(IMBM) at the University of Western Cape (UWC). However, to bring the leads from these studies to the market requires a concerted effort between academia and

industry, says microbiologist Professor Marla Trindade, Director of the IMBM. “As a university institute, we have an obligation to focus on projects that meet the minimum criteria for postgraduate studies, the nature of which is not always suitable for industry to formally engage with us,” says Prof Trindade, who is also the DST/NRF SARChI Research Chair in Microbial Genomics.

To address this, Dr Anita Burger was appointed as the Research and Innovation Manager of IMBM to promote industry partnerships by identifying points of

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intersection between industry interests and the IMBM’s research. A partnership between the IMBM and Mauritian biopharmaceutical company Axonova is a good example of the success of this approach. Axonova explores the discovery and development of drugs from the natural resources of Mauritius and other islands in the Indian Ocean, including pioneering novel drug discovery for neurodegenerative applications. Its partnership with the IMBM focuses on the development of novel, natural drug modulators for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. The IMBM collection of 3 000 marine invertebrate-associated bacteria collected from the oceans along the South African coast represent the source of the bioactive compounds for this project.

“Because many marine invertebrates live sedentary lifestyles in unique, fluctuating and competitive environments, they have evolved a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that provide chemical defence mechanisms representing unique and complex biochemical structures. These often also have activities against other diseases, such as neuroprotective activities relevant to this project,” explains Prof Trindade.

The IMBM is screening this collection for bioactive compounds that can modify or control the Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF)/Tropomyosin Receptor Kinase B (TrkB) signalling pathway.

“TrkB is a very promising therapeutic target for brain diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s as it mediates neurotrophic and neuroprotective effects when activated. We prepare chemical extracts from the selected strains which are tested by Axonova for neuroprotective properties,” says Dr Burger.

Explaining her company’s decision to partner with the IMBM, Axonova’s Scientific Director and Head of Drug Discovery, Dr Shameem Fawdar-Bahadoor, says, “We

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launched this project as part of a grant application call from the Mauritius Research and Innovation Council. We set up a consortium to include the IMBM, given their expertise in marine-derived natural products, which closely complements our laboratory activities, and their unique collection.”

» TrkB is a very promising therapeutic target for brain diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s as it mediates neurotrophic and neuroprotective effects when activated. «

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Still ‘loving it’ after 25 years » Jo-Ann de Wet’s first step on her successful corporate career path began in 1990 when she started her first year of BCom studies at UWC majoring in business economics and industrial psychology.

ER FUTURE HUSBAND Denver was also studying at UWC at the time. Today, the couple are proud parents of four sons: Brent (25), Daniel (18), Matthew (14) and Antonio (10).

After completing her studies at UWC, De Wet started as a trainee manager at McDonald’s in Cape Town in 1995, the first year of operations in South Africa of the iconic company.

Originally from Heidelberg, De Wet grew up in Kensington in Cape Town and was initially reluctant to relocate. But, as the number of franchises rapidly grew, she accepted the inevitable move to Johannesburg where her career has flourished.

“In 1997, I set my sights on becoming the first female local director of operations for McDonald’s South Africa,” says De Wet. “Over the years, I expanded my operational experience and exposure across different departments within the company.

I completed numerous

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UWC alumna Jo-Ann de Wet is chief operations officer at McDonald’s South Africa.

operations and leadership qualifications at the McDonald’s Hamburger University,” she says.

With the company offering many opportunities for growth and the encouragement of a very supportive family, she became skilled in most aspects of the fast-food industry, including budgeting, business planning, operations management

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and coaching. She was part of the team that initiated the addition of the profitable breakfast menu in 2002 and later also part of the team that scaled the McDelivery offering within the business locally in 2015. In 2008, she was appointed as the director of operations and thereafter became chief operations officer at McDonald’s South Africa, her current role, where she oversees all support functions, including franchising, delivery, and health and safety.

As a still-rare woman in corporate leadership in the industry, she has been recognised with several awards, including the Global Circle of Excellence award for the Asia Pacific Middle East Africa Women’s Leadership Network in 2009 and the Global Women’s Leadership Network award in 2016.

De Wet believes a leader should empower others and must have the ability to lead and inspire a diverse workforce in a dynamic working environment. She advocates for the realisation of the human rights of all the people within a business and overtly champions gender empowerment, consistently taking positive measures to ensure the realisation of gender equity and equality. De Wet was instrumental in developing the McDonald’s Global Gender Balance and Diversity Strategy in 2019.

“I currently serve on the McDonald’s Global Women’s Network Advisory Board, where we aim to improve the representation of women at all levels of McDonald’s, achieve gender equality in career advancement, and champion the impact of women on the business,” she says.

Jo-Ann and Denver are enthusiastic about giving back and support organisations such as the National Sea Rescue Institute, Action Aid and Kairos Secondary School in Heidelberg.

“I am at a point in my life where I enjoy giving back,” she says. “I serve on the board of the Ronald McDonald House of Charities,

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which has supported the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital, among others.”

Away from the office, De Wet says, “I enjoy spending time with both my immediate and extended family. We all love travelling, both locally and internationally, and we have an appreciation for diverse cultures. We enjoy the outdoors, whether in the bush or at the ocean, and we are a diehard Liverpool soccer club family.

“I have been blessed as Denver has always been a supportive husband. He has always served as the wind beneath my wings,” she says.

Of her time at UWC, De Wet says faculty staff, especially the Dean and his administrative assistant, Eileen, were always available and encouraging.

She says, “Over the years, I have developed an appreciation for having completed a university degree. Many of the principles I was taught at university have been applied professionally and that contributed to my success.”

» I have been blessed as Denver has always been a supportive husband.

He has always served as the wind beneath my wings. «

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When imagination becomes real and the real, imaginary

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HE UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE

(UWC) strives to enhance students’ capacities to participate in and lead local and global work environments after graduating. To do so, our students must be enabled to use the latest technology to innovate and conceive new directions for technology, particularly in the digital sphere dubbed the fourth industrial revolution.

Immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are the leading edge of this revolution (AR superimposes computer-generated imaging over the real world while VR simulates real-world experiences). Although VR has been used in simulators since the 1960s to train military gunners, commercial pilots and astronauts, a new ecosystem for rapid AR/VR development has followed advances in

computer processing power, wide availability of smart mobile devices, faster internet, the advent of big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and robotics.

UWC’s Department of Information Systems in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences and the Department of Computer Science in the Faculty of Natural Sciences have collaborated to develop three new courses to capacitate students to participate in this ecosystem. The programmes accommodate full-time and part-time students.

The immersive technologies stream of the Postgraduate Diploma in e-skills is a one-year software development skills programme offered

by UWC’s Department of Computer Science in collaboration with immersive technology company, EON Reality. Using high-end infrastructure, students learn the fundamental >>

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concepts of an immersive technology ecosystem before using computer science, information systems and project management skills to design and deploy functional AR/VR software solutions to a selected problem.

The Postgraduate Diploma in Computer and Media Applications (e-Logistics) equips graduates to apply the statistics, business intelligence, computational techniques and data management capabilities of large data sets (big data) to complex real-world problems in supply chain and logistics businesses.

The new MCom Information Management degree addresses the shortage of research in big data analytics in South Africa by exploring innovative ways to transform raw data to better inform business processes and strategies.

The postgraduate diploma in immersive technologies and the MCom degree launched in September 2018. The e-logistics diploma launched in August 2018 and the first cohort graduated in 2019.

» Our students must be enabled to use the latest technology to innovate and conceive new directions for technology, particularly in the digital sphere dubbed the fourth industrial revolution. « At the time of the launch, Professor Antoine Bagula, the head of the Department of Computer Science and an expert in the development of cyber systems frameworks, said: “UWC researchers are already well engaged and published in some of the fields related to the fourth industrial revolution, including the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, machine learning, 5G and big data technologies. This diploma is therefore a natural evolution that complements the ongoing work at UWC.” Many industries already benefit from AR/ VR tech, including retail, mining, manufacturing, construction, engineering,

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logistics, finance, ITC and real estate.

Simulation allows dangerous, real-world working scenarios to be recreated, allowing workers to practice in a safe, error-tolerable environment, and technology applications are often easily transferable between sectors.

Steel company ArcelorMittal, for example, commissioned a VR training simulation that assesses new recruits’ comfort with working at extreme heights. Similar tech could be used to test claustrophobia in trainee miners and divers, fear in firefighters and police restraint in confrontations, and simulations can be developed to improve responses.

The technology is also rapidly developing in health care training applications, mostly to simulate operating theatres and surgical procedures, but also in cutting-edge physical therapy and psychotherapy.

VR psychophysiological evaluation tools are being developed in several countries, as well as AR technology to aid dental and maxillofacial surgery, virtual dental patients (including virtual teeth drilling) and VR anatomy simulations for training medical students. A programme in Malaysia is even developing AR software to teach pre-schoolers empathy.

Prof Mmaki Jantjies, a specialist in the teaching of STEM subjects and the use of technology in education at the Department of Information Systems, says there’s a huge digital divide to be considered in designing AR/VR courses.

“Most of South Africa’s school learners come from disadvantaged backgrounds and do not speak English as a mother tongue.

Schools need properly maintained technical infrastructure to support online and offline access to digital resources, which is difficult for schools when they have many other financial needs. Data costs are a major concern as is the need for continuous teacher training and technical support, including technology-infused learning experiences while they were studying,” she says.

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Drs Lizex Hüsselmann and Ashwil Klein standing next to the Bruker ultrafleXtreme MALDI-ToF mass spectrometer instrument.

University unit offers research services to bio-economy » A partnership in the specialised field of proteomics has been steadily growing between the University of the Western Cape and the Agricultural Research Council (ARC).

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ROTEOMICS INVOLVES THE USE OF A NUMBER OF TOOLS AND EXPERTISE to profile and

identify proteins of interest in any organism. Proteins are the functional or operational units in cells and often include biomarkers for certain diseases or

physiological/ developmental status.

UWC’s National Agricultural Proteomics Research and Service Unit (NAPRSU) provides agricultural and biotechnology researchers and private companies with proteomics research capability. The unit is self-sustainable and generates revenue through industry-linked projects and diagnostic services offered to internal and external clients. The small NAPRSU team is led by Dr Ashwil Klein, the group leader of the Plant Omics Laboratory. The day-to-day

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operations and technical support of the unit are shared between Dr Lizex Husselmann, a proteomics senior officer, and Gadija Mohamed, an ARC research technician.

Their work includes advice on project design, consultations with clients, sample preparation and analysis, and coordinating training workshops for internal and external clients, including researchers, technicians and students from the African continent.

The unit has investigated a number of agricultural and horticultural crops, including maize, sorghum, wheat, peas, apples and pears. The unit offers routine and specialised services that include: • protein identification by peptide fingerprinting (PMF); • de novo sequencing of peptides using MALDI TOF-TOF mass spectrometry; • MALDI imaging mass spectrometry (IMS) for visualisation of the spatial distribution of proteins, peptides, lipids and other small molecules within thin tissue slices; • MALDI polymer analysis for accurate determination of molecular weights from narrowly distributed polymers; and • MALDI biotyping for rapid identification of microorganisms, which has numerous applications in clinical research, water quality, food safety and diagnostic-related areas of science.

In addition to providing excellent services to academic and industry clients and the broader science community, the NAPRSU trains dozens of postgraduate students annually, most of whom have disadvantaged backgrounds. This creates a stable foundation for developing the next generation of scientists and biotech entrepreneurs.

Students have largely focused their research on Africa-centric problems. One student was a finalist in an Africa-wide Women In Science competition, resulting in generous funding to attend workshops and

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training in other African countries, including Uganda and Ghana.

A National Equipment Programme grant from the NRF enabled the acquisition of state-of-the-art equipment for advanced research worth close to R10 million.

Having built a sustainable foundation, the unit’s vision is to continue contributing to a transformed, vibrant and competitive South African scientific community able to take full advantage of the national and continental wealth in biodiversity, natural resources and indigenous knowledge systems. This will place the NAPRSU in a strategic leadership position in the global knowledge-based bio-economy by 2030.

The Bruker EASY nLC Liquid Chromatograph and PROTEINEER fc II Protein spotter for peptide spotting on MTP steel target plate.

» Having built a sustainable foundation, the unit’s vision is to continue contributing to a transformed, vibrant and competitive South African scientific community. «

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Soccer’s loss was music’s gain » “I wasn’t the kind of kid who grew up loving music,” says singer, songwriter and music producer Chad Saaiman, who grew up in Crawford near Athlone.

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E SAYS, “WE WERE A SOCCER FAMILY AND I WAS SET ON BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL SOCCER PLAYER. I played for Rygersdal

Football Club in Rondebosch. I also captained the U/17 team and played in the senior first team.”

On Valentine’s Day 2000, Saaiman sang on stage with a few friends. It was a life-changing moment but he didn’t realise it then, saying simply, “I found something else that I was interested in.”

He continued playing soccer and performed in the odd music competition and events in Athlone. In 2002, Saaiman enrolled for a BA degree majoring in English Literature at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). “I only realised years later that, while a BA degree was very broad with no defined or straight career Chad Saaiman. >

path, there were so many directions you could go with the skills you acquired. When I started writing my own songs, those skills proved useful. UWC gave me a great education and allowed me to be myself in a space where I felt I belonged and could excel,” says Saaiman.

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» Mostly, I am grateful to still be relevant in this industry, 14 years after my first song was released. « In his first year at UWC, he entered the inaugural Idols SA competition but was eliminated just before the final 10 were selected.

“It was my first time in Johannesburg, my first time on a flight and my first time leaving home, but that was also the turning point for me in my professional singing career,” he says.

At the end of that year he was cast in the production Blame it on the Boogie and performed at the Baxter and On Broadway theatres. Studying full-time, playing soccer four days a week and performing six nights a week, he only reviewed his punishing schedule when Lee, his brother and business partner, said, “Chad, you are becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none.”

He quit soccer in 2004, graduated a year later and turned his attention fully to music.

While performing in Spain, Saaiman began writing his own songs.

In 2006, he met Loyiso Bala. They talked about songwriting and Bala asked Saaiman to play one of his songs. Impressed, Bala asked Saaiman to write two songs for him – Found Love and World of Mine. He later performed Found Love with Bala at a live concert at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

In 2007, Saaiman wrote and independently released his first commercial single, Moving On.

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“It was the catalyst for me to start the record label, Stereotype Records, with Lee, my producer and another investor.”

The company, now called Stereotype Talent Management, focuses on artist bookings, management and development.

His debut album, Chasing Melodies, followed and was nominated in 2009 for a SAMA award for Best Pop Album in English.

“I’ve released three albums since, but I have only released singles in the last five years, because people are consuming music differently these days,” says Saaiman, who has demonstrated the ability to identify and respond to consumer trends in the industry.

“Long before iTunes was popular in South Africa, I made my music available on that platform. I realised that consumers were just as happy to buy and download a single as an album. It also took the pressure off me to drop an album each year. Now I release a single when I feel the music and the need to create,” he says.

Saaiman has toured with American stars Brian McKnight and Tevin Campbell, released a number of chart-topping singles, written more than 70 songs playlisted on radio and performed overseas and at big local events such as the Cape Town International Jazz Festival and Huawei KDay. In 2011, Saaiman’s musical career nearly ended tragically when he was hijacked and shot. He spent a year recovering physically and mentally from the attack.

“That was another massive turning point for me. I got trauma counselling and had a strong support system of family and friends. In the end, you have two choices; you can remain bitter about it or take the opportunity to share a positive message. I chose the latter. It has taught me to be grateful for every day that I have.

“Mostly, I am grateful to still be relevant in this industry, 14 years after my first song was released, and to have co-created Stereotype Talent Management,” Saaiman says.

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Research enhances small-scale farming practices » Researchers at the University of the Western Cape’s Department of Biotechnology in the Faculty of Natural Sciences are helping smallscale farmers in the Eastern Cape to improve their practices.

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HE DEPARTMENT’S PROFESSOR NDIKO LUDIDI

has been leading the Plant Biotechnology Research Group’s efforts to help farming cooperative DI Farms, in Mthatha, become a major producer of soybeans. The research group believes soybeans could be the answer to Africa’s agricultural and food security problems.

Prof Ludidi’s collaborators are Prof Marshall Keyster of UWC and Dr Ifeanyi Egbichi of

Walter Sisulu University. Former UWC student Sisiphiwo Dingana is also assisting the research project which is funded by the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security (CoE-FS).

In 2017, Prof Ludidi started working with Mthatha farmers and introduced planting practices to improve the health of their soil.

Soybean was identified as a key crop for enriching the soil through nitrogen fixation.

Like most legumes, soybean is able to take in molecular nitrogen from the air and transfer it to its root nodules where microorganisms, in a process called nitrogen fixation, convert the nitrogen into ammonia and other nitrogenous compounds that plants can use. This eliminates the need for nitrogen fertilisers.

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The UWC research team with small-scale farmers in the Eastern Cape and a research delegation from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Some grain legumes not only grow in poor soils but tend to be hardy, tolerant of high levels of stress and able to grow under difficult climatic conditions. Legumes also fetch good market prices, adding economic value for farmers.

Prof Ludidi says soybeans are increasingly being grown as a major cash crop and animal feed. Up to 87% of global soybean production is converted into animal feed and soy oil, while the rest is consumed by humans as a protein source or used for other industrial applications.

Africa could potentially be a global leader in soybean production and other key grain legumes. Overcoming obstacles to accelerate soybean production concerns more than just farming practices. It is a societal issue too as soybean production can put a healthy meal on the table.

“Legumes such as soybean can still be a valuable protein source for the rural poor. To realise the full potential of soybean production in Africa, researchers, farmers, policy makers and traders will need to join forces,” says Prof Ludidi.

“We know that countries like Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa can capitalise on these opportunities, but there’s yet untapped potential in Central and West Africa as well.”

There are concerns that grain legumes like soybeans are losing their status as a protein source for humans globally. As income

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improves or people migrate to the urban centres, they consider meat as their protein source of choice. Many legumes have become neglected foods or ‘orphan’ crops.

Prof Ludidi and the research group have reached out to the Mthatha community through seminars on self-sufficiency and food security, and have also engaged with young people in the area.

Prof Ludidi says: “We want to see small-scale farmers in rural areas across the country, specifically targeting the former homelands, being successful in sustainable crop production.”

Prof Ludidi warns that poverty will continue on the continent because small-scale farmers, who produce 70% of the food in Africa, are not supported with resources and new technologies. Financial returns on their crops are poor while training and finance are not widely available. Small-scale farmers in Africa are also challenged by soil quality, water availability, market access, political instability and land tenure issues.

“Within that context, the large African yield gap – the difference between the maximum achievable crop yield and what’s actually achieved – is not surprising and the poverty cycles continue,” says Prof Ludidi.

Prof Ndiko Ludidi examines a soybean plant.

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social media

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UWC is the first university in South Africa to launch its TikTok_SA account!

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Follow the official UWC TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@uwconline.

Media, Marketing and Communications Office Department for Institutional Advancement, University of the Western Cape Level B, Administration Building East-Wing (Rectorate Building), Robert Sobukwe Road (Old Modderdam Road), Bellville, Cape Town Tel: 27 21 959 3637 | Fax: +27 21 959 3115 | Email: ia@uwc.ac.za | www.uwc.ac.za

FROM HOPE TO ACTION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE.

www.uwc.ac.za

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Justice in service of the South African nation » Growing up in Lenasia, Judge Shanaaz Christine Mia was convinced that expertise in the fields of psychology and law would be most needed in the country in future. When she finally had to make a choice, she chose law.

FTER COMPLETING a BA LLB degree at

A

the University of Cape Town (UCT), Judge Mia chose to complete her LLM degree in 2002 at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Judge Mia says, “UCT focused more on commercial law

whereas UWC was focused on communitybased law. Because I was a family lawyer and was interested in children’s rights I was attracted to UWC’s Master’s degree programme that focused squarely on children’s rights.”

At the time, the courts treated children as adults within the criminal justice system and they were held in the same cells as adults. The justice system also did not consider children’s voices in disputes related to their care.

Judge Mia worked as a public defender at Legal Aid SA and as a labour law researcher at UWC’s Faculty of Law. While at UWC, she >>

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» I want to encourage women to stake their claim in these spaces of leadership, to be aware of stereotyping in the workplace and to call out individuals who perpetuate discrimination. « volunteered as a legal advisor at the NICRO Women’s Support Centre in Cape Town. In 1999, she joined Y Ebrahim Attorneys and soon after moved to the legal department at the South Peninsula Municipality. She also practiced as a family advocate. In 2002, she moved to the bench, progressing from acting magistrate to senior magistrate, acting Judge and Judge in the Western Cape, Free State and Southern and Northern Gauteng divisions of the High Court. In 2009, she was appointed to the Land Claims Court.

“I spent 18 months at the Land Claims Court and while it was a sharp learning curve, I enjoyed the work because I felt I could really make a difference in considering the competing interests of landowners and occupiers, and the rights of people to remain on land they had lived on their whole lives,” says Judge Mia. “It was a different way of adjudicating disputes. We took the court to the community and engaged the affected community through site visits and inspections when considering cases before the court. These visits allowed the communities to tell their stories and their history of land dispossession

in South Africa and helped us make informed decisions in court.

“It dawned on me [at this time] that my vision as a child to make a difference through the law had been realised,” she says.

She says her studies at UWC provided a lens through which she still views and understands the different contexts of communities, the challenges they face and how the law can assist by dispensing justice.

“I believe this has given me an advantage and has strengthened my convictions to apply the law in service of the community. This is something that is particular to the UWC student experience,” says Judge Mia. As a female judge, Judge Mia consistently advocates equality for women in the judiciary in South Africa. She is a founding member of the South African chapter of the International Association of Women Judges and has served as Secretary and as Vice-President of the Chapter dealing with programmes.

The judge, who is also a founding member of Shura Yabafazi, a Muslim women’s rights group which advocates for legal recognition of Muslim marriages, says: “The judiciary forms the top 1% of the population in South Africa, so you expect it to not only apply the law but emulate it with regards to gender equality. While we are making inroads towards closing that gap and my appointment does help level the playing field, we still have a long road to travel.

“I want to encourage women to stake their claim in these spaces of leadership, to be aware of stereotyping in the workplace and to call out individuals who perpetuate discrimination. We need to persevere, to be clear about our goals and unwavering in our abilities. But we also need to strive for excellence consistently so that we are not claiming these positions by virtue of being women, but through merit and the value we can contribute.”

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Collaboration driving digital literacy

» In 1987, the room-sized Cray-2 was the world’s fastest supercomputer. Today, an iPad has twice the capabilities of Cray-2 and a child can operate it. Such is the pace of the much-heralded fourth industrial revolution (4IR).

U

NFORTUNATELY, HUGE DISPARITIES IN WEALTH AND INFRASTRUCTURE ensure

that the 4IR benefits the global North far more than the South. For example, the 2019 Global Innovation Index (GII) ranks South Africa first in Africa for ‘innovation’ but 63rd globally, well behind most Asian, European and North American countries.

Since GII rankings largely correlate with development indices such as the WEF Global Competitiveness Report and the UNO Human Development Index, the South is also behind in terms of the interconnected aspects of technology adoption, investment in human capital and overall economic performance.

The key to catching up is to develop e-skills at an individual level.

The Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services (now part of the Department of Communications and Digital

Technologies) established the National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa (NEMISA) in 1998. NEMISA’s mission is to provide a national integrated e-skills development approach for sustainable socio-economic development and to radically advance human capacity development in digital e-skills in South Africa. NEMISA co-funds nine university-based provincial hubs called CoLabs, each with a specific focus area. The Western Cape CoLab for e-Inclusion and Social Innovation is based at UWC and led by Professor Leona Craffert.

The CoLab works closely with local communities, the Western Cape provincial government, universities, colleges, business and nongovernmental organisations to co-design and deliver digital literacy and skills development programmes and research. Its programmes aim to help people understand >>

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their evolution in a digital world and to nurture technology innovation and adoption.

One of the key concerns, says CoLab researcher Wouter Grové, is that people underestimate the scale of the digital revolution that has already taken place. For example, IBM estimates that 90% of the data in the world today was created in just the past two years. We are interacting with machines and machine thinking at a level and depth unprecedented in human history.

Part of the CoLab challenge is that digital change happens fast. In 2013, CoLab participated in an exciting programme in which 86 school learners were taught to design Blackberry apps in a programme initiated by the original smartphone company.

Seven years later, Blackberry has exited the mobile phone market and most learners have no idea what a BBM was.

» The COVID-19 pandemic brought the centrality of digital technologies in our lives to the fore, but has also exposed the many levels of the digital divide that still make it difficult for communities to unlock the value and promise of the digital economy. « According to Prof Craffert, the CoLab maintains an inclusive approach for maximum participation in the digital society and economy that involved collaboration with a variety of research and community stakeholders in 2019.

The CoLab and UWC academic departments participated in the International Joint Research Group (IJRG) for S-DIRECT with iMinds-SMIT (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and the Material and Sensory Cultures of Africa Study Centre - MASC (University of Ghent), to explore the possibilities of applying living lab research to foster and facilitate social innovation for digital inclusion to address challenges in South Africa.

Dr Craffert says, “The IJRG strives to understand how social innovation can stimulate social and digital inclusion of under-resourced communities and explores how living labs or co-design methodologies for digital skills interventions can assist this process.”

The CoLab provides e-skills to Western Cape beneficiaries by training community partner organisations to deliver programmes as “intermediaries”. The CoLab provided digital inclusion and social innovation skills training to more than 2 500 people in 2019–2020 in, among others, mobile literacy; digital transformation for leaders; applications of data, data analytics and AI for strategic decision-making within government; digital transformation and digital leadership; machine learning; privacy and data protection; and, digital identity management.

On 15 August 2019, 185 women received certificates for computer skills, digital identity management and mobile technology for SMMEs after completing CoLab courses presented through Community Women Action, a non-profit organisation active in Eerste River.

The CoLab hosted a roundtable discussion on the concept of ‘data’ on 22 August that included researchers from Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the University of Ghent, the City of Cape Town, the Western Cape Government, local academics and postgraduate students.

The CoLab also graduated its first two joint PhD in Media and Communication Studies students in 2019.

Prof Craffert says, “The COVID-19 pandemic brought the centrality of digital technologies in our lives to the fore. Unfortunately, it has also exposed the many levels of the digital divide that still make it difficult for communities to unlock the value and promise of the digital economy. The CoLab addresses this through applied research, innovation projects and contributing to an inclusive digital transformation and skills ecosystem.”

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No flash in the pan

S

OME NUMBERS AND DIMENSIONS ARE EASIER TO UNDERSTAND THAN OTHERS, like the

height of a person, the distance from Cape Town to Durban, even a country’s GDP. But those involved with fly ash and zeolites are a little mindboggling at both ends of the spectrum.

Consider this. Eskom generates 90% of its electricity through coal-fired power stations, with the balance produced by hydro-electric and nuclear facilities. Together, they consume about 90 million tons of coal and 320 Ml litres of water (1,5% of South Africa’s total water consumption) per annum and spew 42% of the country’s greenhouse gases into the air.

Because most of the coal used by Eskom is low quality with a high ash content of 40%, burning it produces 36 million tons of fly ash waste annually, the equivalent, as UWC’s

Professor Leslie Petrik likes to imagine it, of at least six dumps the size of the 146 metre-high Great Pyramid of Giza.

Fly ash is the main component of the coal ash produced by incineration in the power station boilers and it’s pretty horrible stuff, consisting of very fine particles of unburnt carbon, boron, selenium, cobalt, chromium, molybdenum and vanadium; oxides of silicon, aluminium, iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, titanium and sulphur; toxic elements such as mercury, arsenic and thallium; as well as soluble salts. Whether the dumps are irrigated or dry, rain and chemical >>

» Fly ash is the main component of the coal ash produced by incineration in the power station boilers. «

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weathering leach these pollutants into the groundwater and the water catchment areas, rivers, lakes and dams.

Until recently, fly ash only had limited use as an asphalt filler or additive to cement and concrete. It sounds like a contradiction, but Prof Petrik, a material scientist who runs the Environmental and Nano Sciences (ENS) research group in UWC’s Department of Chemistry, realised that fly ash could actually be applied to acid mine drainage (AMD) to remove the toxic impurities left behind in mine water after gold, copper and coal mining. Once the mine water was purified, the fly ash solids could be used to backfill and seal disused mine shafts, preventing AMD from recurring and simultaneously reducing our mountains of fly ash.

The logical next step was for the ENS to develop synthetic nano-filters called zeolites from the fly ash itself.

The name zeolite means ‘boiling stone’ which hints at zeolites’ very interesting properties. They release any adsorbed water when heated. They are highly stable at high temperatures and pressures, insoluble in water and organic solvents, and do not oxidize in air.

In their natural or synthetic form, zeolites are crystalline aluminosilicate minerals with a highly porous structure and tiny pore sizes measured in billionths of a metre that can

‘trap’ elements or molecules of a particular size, e.g. metals or cations, and allow others to pass through them. About 40 zeolites occur in nature, but many more have been synthetically manufactured with predictable uniform pores, creating molecular sieves.

Zeolite A, for example, is widely used as a component in laundry detergent to remove water hardness ions like calcium and magnesium and soften the water.

Much of the ENS group’s work to make zeolites from fly ash involved the development of completely new workable processes and purpose-built technology suited to South African conditions, for which the ENS team holds three patents.

The ENS’s work in other environmental problem areas also regularly excites public interest. In 2020, for example, the team measured alarmingly high levels of toxic contaminants in several species of fish commonly caught and consumed by Capetonians and proved that the contamination was a direct consequence of the City’s poor management of sewage effluent.

Along with a plethora of conference presentations (approaching 500), reports and more than 180 peer-reviewed journal articles, Prof Petrik’s contributions to her field includes supervising 29 PhD and 66 MSc/MEng students to completion (and currently supervising a further 17 postgrads through the ENS).

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A career of rising to the challenge

» When former Minister of Higher Education and Training Naledi Pandor asked Dr Randall Carolissen to assume the role of NSFAS administrator in August 2018, the institution was facing collapse.

OST OF THE MORE than 600 000

M

student beneficiaries had not received their allowances for 2018.

“Many people told me that it was absolute madness to take this on, but I felt compelled by my background that it was the right thing to do. I find it difficult to resist challenges,” says Dr Carolissen.

Dr Carolissen grew up in Ravensmead and matriculated at Florida Senior Secondary School where his English teacher, future University of the Western Cape (UWC) Rector

Professor Brian O’Connell, had a profound influence on him. One of five children raised by a single mother, Dr Carolissen received a bursary from the Department of Coloured Affairs to study at UWC. He says, “No other institution offered generations a gateway out of poverty. I am extremely thankful that UWC, under the visionary leadership of Prof Richard van der Ross at the time, took a chance on me with my poor matric marks.

“UWC provided us with opportunities that we could not get elsewhere. We were exposed to the most incisive minds debating black consciousness and social mobilisation to fight apartheid. I met some of the greatest thinkers from across South Africa.”

Dr Carolissen completed a BSc in Physics and Mathematics, a BSc Honours in Physics >>

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and an MSc (cum laude) supervised by Dr Rene Pretorius, a world leader in nanotechnology.

After graduating from UWC, Dr Carolissen worked as a production engineer at Firestone in Port Elizabeth, a laboratory technician at UWC and a researcher at the CSIR. Prompted

by Prof Jakes Gerwel, he returned to UWC in 1990 to lecture in solid state physics, quantum mechanisms and experimental nuclear physics.

» Throughout my life’s journey I kept on remembering my mother’s words – where there is a will, there is a way. « In 1991, he was awarded a six-month fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed groundbreaking experiments and published three internationally reviewed papers on Schottky barriers. The research prompted Pennsylvania to offer him a PhD scholarship, but he opted to complete his PhD in Solid State Physics at UWC. Dr Carolissen discovered an interest in development studies, and enrolled for a Business Administration (Hons) degree followed by an MBA at the University of Stellenbosch Business School. He passed both cum laude and won the Old Mutual Gold Medal Award.

In 2000, he joined the SABS as a business development manager and a year later was promoted to Managing Director.

“SABS was bankrupt, but in five years we accumulated cash reserves close to R100 million and doubled turnover. We worked hard

on changing bureaucratic mindsets to embrace transformation,” says Dr Carolissen.

In 2005, he joined the SARS Executive Team as Group Executive (Revenue Planning and Analysis) and completed an MCom (International Tax) at North-West University.

Dr Carolissen says that UWC shaped his social conscience. It was where he realised the need for activism to uplift communities. He has chaired the Kuilsrivier Residents Association, established Kalkfontein Village to house 500 formerly homeless families and built the Ikwezi Preschool in Gugulethu. He is currently a trustee of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls and served as Chair of the Wits Council for an unprecedented three terms, helping the university navigate the 2015–2016 #FeesMustFall crisis.

“The experience at Wits during #FeesMustFall prepared me for the work I did over the 28 months as administrator at NSFAS,” says Dr Carolissen, who stepped down from the position in December 2020.

Dr Carolissen ensured the infusion of new skills and governance processes at NSFAS, invested in relationship building with all stakeholders, established good governance and upgraded processes and systems to counter fraud. Data exchange protocols were developed with institutions to arrest irregular expenditure that amounted to an astonishing R7,5 billion in 2017 and 2018.

Staff morale improved and many worked throughout the festive season to process NSFAS first-time applications. More than 750 000 NSFAS students could register in 2020 without having to pay registration fees, a first for NSFAS. From 1 March 2021, Dr Carolissen took on a new challenge, having accepted the post of Dean of the University of Johannesburg Business School.

Dr Carolissen says, “Throughout my life’s journey I kept on remembering my mother’s words – where there is a will, there is a way.”

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Hope and promise fulfilled » Eldorado, Valhalla, Meadowlands, Gugulethu (our pride)– the apartheid bureaucrats who named South Africa’s desolate black townships clearly understood irony.

D

OCTOR NTOMBIZONKE YVONNE KHESWA

was born in the dusty squalor of Tembisa (meaning ‘hope’ or ‘promise’ in isiZulu), a poorly serviced dormitory township started when thousands of black people living on freehold land around Johannesburg were forcibly removed and dumped there.

While in high school, Dr Kheswa moved to Durban where she matriculated. A diploma in analytical chemistry at Mangosuthu Technikon (now Mangosuthu University of Technology) followed in 1999, after which she was employed as a laboratory technician by sugar giant Tongaat Hulett. She completed a BTech in Chemistry at the Durban University of Technology in 2004 and moved to the Sugar Milling Research Institute in the same year.

In 2005, her family relocated to the Western Cape where she was offered a job as a target maker by iThemba Laboratory for Accelerator Based Sciences (iThemba LABS), an NRFfunded multidisciplinary research facility focused on the use of particle accelerators to produce radioisotopes for medical use and the conduct of applied nuclear physics research. >> Dr Ntombizonke Yvonne Kheswa. > Image Credit: Nickay Photography

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“I had to establish the target laboratory to provide target materials to be used in experiments conducted by researchers in nuclear physics and other fields. This stimulated my passion to continue with my postgraduate studies,” says Dr Kheswa.

UWC, which was nearby and had a strong Physics department, was the natural choice. She completed her MSc in Physics in 2011 at UWC with a dissertation titled ‘Synthesis and Characterisation of 114Cd targets’ (cosupervised by the department’s Professor Dirk Knoesen and Dr Miroslava Topić of the Materials Research department at iThemba LABS).

Explaining the focus of her dissertation, she says: “To study nuclear reactions and nuclear structures, target materials in the form of metal film or gas are bombarded with high-energy particles. The target material is designed to yield as few competing reactions under ion bombardment as possible to enable the study of certain nuclear reactions or the structure of nuclei. This requires a chemically and isotopically pure target material.”

» Dr Kheswa modestly insists that “Good things in life don’t just come from talent or hard work,” and says her achievements were underpinned by the interactions, contributions and discussions with other scientists and specialists. « Around the time she completed the dissertation, according to UWC Department of Physics and Astronomy Prof Nico Orce, an experiment was proposed to explore the rise of surface vibrations in nuclei. “But it couldn’t be done in South Africa at the time. The [needed particle] beams were not here and we needed to develop the technology to produce new science. We needed a dedicated

PhD student capable of working on both the physics and the chemistry; someone with the patience and ability to do the job.”

That person was Dr Kheswa, who soon began the groundbreaking research that would result in her PhD in Physics in 2019 for her ‘Synthesis of the metallocenes for the production of exotic high energy ion beams’.

In short, Dr Kheswa developed the new particle beams of exotic nickel isotopes needed for a range of new experiments at iThemba LABS. “These charged particle beams are initially prepared in a dedicated ion source before they can be accelerated to the target material,” explains Dr Kheswa. “The beams (of 60Ni8+ and 62Ni8+) are directed at targets such as nuclei, which are just a few micrometres in size, for analysis.”

An excited Prof Orce says, “Her work is proof of principle that we can now study exotic stable nuclei such as 62Ni, which was accelerated for the first time ever at iThemba LABS. It opens new possibilities [in South Africa] for high-impact science and for investigating the frontiers of nuclear physics through novel nuclear reactions.”

Dr Kheswa modestly insists that “Good things in life don’t just come from talent or hard work,” and says her achievements were underpinned by the “interactions, contributions and discussions with the ion source specialists from iThemba LABS, Dr Rainer Thomae and his team, organometallic specialists from the Chemistry Department (Drs Salam Titinchi and Hanna Abbo) and nuclear physics scientists from both the Physics Department (UWC) and Subatomic Physics (iThemba LABS), including Prof Orce.”

The pathfinding researcher from Tembisa now hopes to help the next generation of African nuclear scientists fulfil their promise.

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Ebrahim Rhoda receives the inaugural UWC Gold Medal for Commitment to Community Service in 2018. Image Credit: Jeffery Abrahams.

Revealing the Cape’s hidden history » Ebrahim Rhoda has served his community for most of his life, not only through his research and writing but through active citizenship.

I

N 2018, THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE AWARDED RHODA ITS INAUGURAL GOLD MEDAL FOR

COMMITMENT TO COMMUNITY SERVICE, in recognition of his lifelong dedication to the Strand Muslim community. The medal acknowledges individuals who have made an extraordinary contribution to their community through exceptional leadership, community involvement and activities that reflect meritorious contributions to public life or a significant benefit to society.

Rhoda, who was then 80 years old, said: “Being the first person to receive the Gold Award from UWC meant much more than the value of gold.” In a later interview, he stated that “he accepted this honour on behalf of the Strand Muslim community.”

Rhoda was born in Strand and was a teacher and principal of Strand Moslem Primary School for 35 years. He recalls that in the early years, very few learners proceeded to matric. In fact, of the 174 learners who passed grade seven (standard five) between 1951 and 1962, only about 10% matriculated.

He has been credited with playing a major role along with the late Maulana Yusuf Karaan in encouraging their community to value and pursue education. By the 1970s and 1980s, their efforts had borne fruits and many former learners not only completed high school but qualified at tertiary institutions in diverse professions and trades.

Sheikh Muhammad Faadil Latief is one of Rhoda’s proud former pupils.

“He was my teacher and mentor during my primary school years at the Strand Moslem Primary School,” says Latief, who went on to become a lecturer at the Cape Town-based International Peace College South Africa. >>

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“He was an integral part of our school’s development over many years and he still remains a pillar of support, despite having retired from active service.”

Growing up, Rhoda became increasingly fascinated by the history of the Strand Muslim community and the significance of sites such as the nearby Sheikh Yusuf kramat (shrine). This history had been largely ignored by historians and the school curriculum. Yet, elderly members of the community could recount in detail the history, not only of Muslims in the Strand, but other communities and particular families. His interest in Muslim genealogy led him to co-found the Cape Family Research Forum (CFRF) in 2002 with other researchers.

The main objective of the CFRF was to encourage ordinary people to research their genealogy. Numerous families were able to trace some of their ancestors to slaves and exiles brought from presentday Indonesia and other Indian Ocean territories.

Rhoda was selected to participate in a joint UCT-UWC project on researching slave roots, which unleashed his enthusiasm for archival research. After retiring from teaching, Rhoda registered for a master’s degree in history, through UWC’s Recognition of Prior Learning programme. At the age of 68, he was awarded a distinction in 2006 for his dissertation, ‘The founding and development of the Strand Muslim Community, 1822–1928’.

Rhoda’s work has shown how histories can be rediscovered through the oral narratives of community sources coupled with archival research. As an apt example, he cites consulting his 90-year-old paternal aunt, Ragiema Crombie, in 1990 about their forebears.

“She could not read nor write, but was endowed with an encyclopaedic memory.

Almost all of the names she mentioned I would later corroborate with archival documentation,” says Rhoda, whose quest resulted in him “tracing the slave matriarch of our family”.

As his research skills grew, Rhoda became increasingly aware that “much has been written by ‘others’ about the Muslims and other non-Muslim communities at the Cape”.

After deciding that “It is high time that we narrate and record our own version,” Rhoda became something of a heritage activist, presenting workshops to learners and beginner researchers, giving informative talks on the Voice of the Cape radio station and inspiring others to become involved in archival studies.

Taking his own cue, Rhoda published a number of articles and three books on the history of Islam at the Cape: ‘From Slavery to Citizenship: a walk through the history of a Strand community’ (2011); ‘The Strand Muslim Community: 1822–1966 An Historical Overview’ (2014); and ‘The Wentzels: a pioneering family of the Muslim Community of the Strand’ (2018).

Rhoda received the Western Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Award in 2009 in the heritage category for his contribution to public awareness of heritage resources.

Ebrahim Rhoda has published various books over the years.

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Evangelists of recycling

» We are not your average recycling company.

We are evangelists of recycling.

T

HE ‘WE’ IN THIS UNUSUAL BRAND POSITION ARE NKAZIMLO MITI AND CHAD ROBERTSON,

the UWC alumni who founded Regenize, an award-winning waste management company. The two became friends in their third year when their BCom studies focused more on Information Systems (IS), their area of specialisation. The IS department was hugely influential, not only in terms of them benefitting from the expertise and industry knowledge of lecturers like Roscoe Adams and Dr Njenga, but their observation of the department taught them a lot about organising enterprises efficiently.

“I think the IS department helped us to see how a tight ship operates,” says Nkazi, who has lectured part-time at the department.

Chad says it was also a nurturing environment: “They had a nice balance of how a

team should operate. You would have someone who was very focused on the care of students, always checking up on how you were doing, making sure that you were okay. And then you would have tougher members more focused on how you were progressing work-wise. Different people brought different values but it all came together in a very special way. The values that I got from them were to be cognisant of all the different aspects of people, how you work with those people and how that impacts them. >>

» The IS department was hugely influential, not only in terms of them benefitting from the expertise and industry knowledge of the lecturers, but their observation of the department taught them a lot about organising enterprises efficiently. «

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Nkazimlo Miti and Chad Robertson.

“We felt like family there and we try and instil the same type of culture here as well.”

After graduating, they immediately undertook BCom honours at UWC in 2014. It was during that year that Chad conceived the idea of starting a business supplying 3D-printed objects custom-made from waste plastic. Nkazi seemed the natural choice for a partner.

Chad, who is married to UWC BCom Honours alumna Somaya Hendricks, says: “Nkazi and I became business partners because we both had the hardest work ethic that we know. When we did group work in our different groups, Nkazi and I would be the guys sitting at UWC all night finishing the group assignments.”

After investing their own money in machinery and materials and months of experimenting and tinkering, they realised that the idea of developing 3D applications from waste plastic wasn’t viable. But there were opportunities in the waste recycling industry, given that South Africa has a low

» Nkazi and I became business partners because we both had the hardest work ethic that we know. When we did group work in our different groups, Nkazi and I would be the guys sitting at UWC all night finishing the group assignments. « level of recycling non-commercial waste.

Although Nkazi found some of the research he was doing towards his MCom in Information Management Studies useful (his research focus was on building maturity models for micro enterprises), they knew nothing about the industry. So, in 2016, they decided to literally get their hands dirty, collecting recyclable domestic waste themselves using borrowed bakkies and selling the sorted waste to recycling depots to learn how things worked.

Although an estimated 90 000 informal collectors each annually collect as much as 24 tons of domestic waste for recycling in South

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Africa, they do so inefficiently, sorting through refuse at the kerbside and transporting small loads in purloined shopping trolleys. These collectors expend a high level of muscle energy and time for very little return, receive no cooperation or assistance from homeowners and are often met with hostility or suspicion by residents and road users.

Furthermore, the primary loci of activity were recycling depots and the landfill sites, where municipal waste was separated and sorted by ‘pickers’. In other words, because the recycling industry was unable to efficiently access the waste at source, it focused on accessing waste at the end of its journey.

Reasoning that people want to recycle and that it would be less costly to the society if waste entered the recycling process nearer to the source, they began applying systems thinking to domestic waste collection.

After participating in the MTN venture incubation programme, the entrepreneurs emerged with a business model that provides solutions to each problem identified in the recycling value chain.

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» Although an estimated 90 000 informal collectors each annually collect as much as 24 tons of domestic waste for recycling in South Africa, they do so inefficiently, sorting through refuse at the kerbside and transporting small loads in purloined shopping trolleys. « First, they provide each participating collector with a highly visible, cycle-powered cart. The vehicle is safe, stable, energy efficient and carries a bigger, more profitable load than the ubiquitous trolley.

Next, to incentivise homeowners to separate recyclables from the waste destined for the municipal bin and donate them directly to the collectors, the pair invented ‘Remali’, virtual currency that participating homeowners redeem for airtime and data as their reward for participation. Then they used their IT training to solve the communication problem by devising an app connecting the homeowner to collectors armed with Regenize mobile phones.

With Chad acting as CEO and Nkazi as the chief operations officer, Regenize has already won recognition and funding from the SAB Foundation among other accolades, enabling the piloting of the project in Cape Town. The entrepreneurs expect to grow Regenize into a national company following the expansion of operations in the Western Cape.

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Law Faculty uses CHE review to roll out improvements HE COUNCIL ON HIGHER EDUCATION (CHE) is mandated to carry out quality assurance audits of higher education institutions through its Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) and to ensure that quality assurance mechanisms are in place at universities, as prerequisites for accreditation of degree programmes.

In 2016 and 2017, the CHE subjected the LLB programmes of the 17 law faculties in the country to a national review. The Faculty of Law at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) is still reaping significant rewards from the process.

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“The review process forced us to stop and reflect on the faculty’s mission, vision, values and strategic objectives and how they fit into the university’s Institutional Operating Plan 2016–2020 (IOP 2016–2020), as well as the kinds of changes we needed to make to the LLB curriculum to prepare law students for the changing world of work,” explains Professor Jacques de Ville, Dean of the Faculty of Law. “To further prepare law students for the changing world of work, whether as legal practitioners, legal advisors or academics, the new curriculum seeks to impart not only knowledge but also skills or graduate

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attributes. These include critical thinking skills, research skills and professional skills, which include drafting, accountancy, numeracy and clinical skills, all imbued by professional ethics.

The Faculty also implemented a compulsory LLB research paper in 2019 to develop the research and writing skills of final-year students,” adds Prof De Ville.

The new curriculum speaks to the demands for the decolonisation and Africanisation of knowledge and knowledge production, transformative constitutionalism, as well as globalisation and digitalisation. The new programme includes a Clinical Law module through which at least 100 students will be able to receive clinical legal education and consult with clients.

To ensure student success and improve throughput rates, the Faculty actively tracks students at risk. Academic staff have been trained to use and capitalise on online learning technology that has become an essential tool during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Faculty has been investigating already existing opportunities for the co-curricular development of law students through student bodies such as the Law Students Council, Students for Law and Social Justice, the Black Lawyers Association, the Moot Society and the Chamber of Legal Students.

» Academic staff have been trained to use and capitalise on online learning technology that has become an essential tool during the COVID-19 pandemic. « “Students can volunteer in the Street Law Programme’s outreach initiatives where they use their legal knowledge to provide education and training to communities,” says Prof De Ville. Additionally, the Top Achievers Programme provides students with internships, vacation exposure programmes, law firm visits and mentoring.

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“We have furthermore employed an in-house psychologist since 2019 to assist students to cope with the pressure of their studies and the competing demands placed on them in today’s world,” the Dean says.

The Faculty’s strategic plan, which was also developed through the CHE review process, emphasises the importance of research in line with the UWC IOP 2016–2020.

“The plan refers to research niche areas or fields of research excellence within the Faculty.

These include multi-level governance, children and family in law and society, labour law in the 4th Industrial Revolution, global environmental law and economic crimes. We are developing an online platform for these niche areas and are developing some of these niches into centres of excellence with a national, regional and international footprint,” says Prof De Ville.

The Faculty has 13 National Research Foundation (NRF)-rated researchers, seven of whom are B-rated.

Prof De Ville says, “These academics enjoy considerable international recognition by their peers for the high quality and impact of their recent research outputs. We would like to be known as one of the best law faculties on the African continent. The NRF ratings say something about the quality of academics employed in this faculty and at UWC. “All these developments have led to an increase in the postgraduate-undergraduate student ratio in the Faculty from 13% in 2016 to 18% in 2019.”

In 2020, the Faculty accepted the first students into the newly accredited LLB programme. The Faculty already offers a five-year extended curriculum programme (ECP). As from 2021, a new BA (Law) degree programme will be offered by the Faculty in collaboration with the Arts Faculty. A BCom (Law) degree is also offered in collaboration with the Economic and Management Sciences Faculty.

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UWC is a home from home for the Romans ICHOLAS AND JOSHUA ROMAN first

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‘attended’ the University of the Western Cape as children accompanying their parents to campus. Their mother, Professor Nicolette Roman, was then a research assistant in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Community and Health Sciences and their

(From left) Joshua Roman, Allan Roman, Nicholas Roman and Prof Nicolette Roman (front centre).

father Allan worked in Finance Administration.

Almost two decades later, Nicholas has completed his BCom Financial Accounting degree while his older brother Joshua is in the final year of a BAdmin degree at UWC. Nicolette holds the SARChI Chair in the Development of Human Capabilities and Social Cohesion through the Family and is based at

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the Centre for Interdiscplinary Studies of Children, Families and Society in UWC’s Faculty of Community and Health Sciences.

Allan is the projects development manager at the School of Government in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences.

Both parents are not only alumni, but met as students and married in 1994. Joshua was born in 1996 and Nicholas followed in 1997.

As for their parents, there was never any question about where they would study.

Prof Roman says, “During the apartheid era, if you were not white you were made to feel lesser than or incapable. I was never going to go to a university other than UWC because UWC was home, a space where I could be myself and where I was not going to be compared to someone other than myself. I could grow and become.”

After completing a BA degree majoring in

» UWC was home, a space where I could be myself and where I was not going to be compared to someone other than myself. I could grow and become. « English and Psychology in 1991, she did her Higher Diploma in Education, BEd (Psychology), MA in Child and Family Studies and PhD in Psychology at UWC. Allan also achieved all his qualifications at UWC – BA, HDE, BComm (Hons) and MAdmin.

Nicolette’s father passed away when she was only seven and she was raised by a single mom in Silvertown, Athlone. Money was scarce, but there was always lots of love and support from the extended family.

“My mom is a loving disciplinarian who encouraged the love of reading, books, education and being a strong woman. The central driver for my mom was that as a girl child, I needed to get an education above all else. She also instilled values of structure, discipline, caring for others, taking care of

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the less fortunate and being able to give back,” says Prof Roman.

She says, “Family was everything and we laughed even during times of strife. We were not allowed in certain areas, in certain parts of a train or bus. I was very young but can clearly remember witnessing how people were asked for their documents and then thrown into a police van if they did not have it.”

One of her early influences was Mr Dharsey, her mathematics teacher and mentor in high school. “He always kept track of my academic growth and development as I progressed through high school and into university,” she says.

Prof Roman has worked at UWC in various roles, including Doctoral Student Support Coordinator, part-time lecturer in the Department of Psychology, Head of the Master’s in Child and Family Studies Programme, and Chair of the Department of Social Work. She was the Head of the Child and Family Studies Unit between 2008 and 2017 and has won the Chancellor’s Outstanding Alumni Award in Health Sciences and the Academic Achiever Award for an established researcher at UWC. Allan is a public finance and local economic development (LED) expert with a wide range of experience in management roles. He lectures at the School of Government on finance and human resource management, LED, Intergrated Development Plans, budgeting and reporting.

Reflecting on a satisfying career at UWC, Prof Roman says: “I love that I get to work in the same institution that developed and enhanced my growth in education and research and that I am now able to help others grow in research, teaching, knowledge and skills, and enhance their capabilities to carve their own paths and niches in family science to create better worlds for children, families and communities.”

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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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Appointment of an activist minister » In 1980, UWC alumna Yvonne Dausab was only five years old. She did not know what ‘human rights’ meant nor did she know that a system called apartheid attempted to regulate and limit every aspect of her life in the violent, impoverished black neighbourhood of Katutura outside Windhoek.

O WHEN SHE EXPERIENCED the brutal killing of her aunt in her parental home at that tender age, she didn’t understand all of what happened, but the outrage and anger of her relatives and neighbours made an immediate and lasting impression on her. As she grew up, she became determined to fight the injustices of poverty, crime and colonial occupation. >>

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“I wanted to be part of the system that put criminals behind bars,” she says simply.

Katutura wasn’t all bad, Yvonne says. “The area was rough, but taught me various lessons about solidarity, unity and sharing the little you had as a community.”

She adds, “Education was the only way I had out of the poverty, violence and substance abuse. I tried to balance the importance of being aware of our political struggle and ensuring that I still had a plan for completing school.”

As a Grade 8 learner at A Shipena Secondary School in Katutura, she was involved in student politics and the student uprising of 1988 but still excelled academically.

By the time full independence finally ended 75 years of occupation on 21 March 1990, she had decided on a career in law. Her excellent academic performance saw her awarded a full scholarship by a non-governmental organisation, the Legal Assistance Centre, to study law at UWC after matriculating in 1992.

“The University of the Left was one of the few institutions of higher learning we identified with in Namibia at the time. We had people like Bience Gawanas who we had great admiration for as our forebears. There was no other institution I was interested in. I knew UWC would be a good place to be and to grow intellectually, emotionally and politically,” says Yvonne.

An active member of SASCO throughout her university career (she was elected to the SRC in 1996), Yvonne says: “My political consciousness did not allow me to be shy and in the back. One of my early and most memorable experiences was when I marched to Cape Town in response to the killing of comrade Chris Hani on 10 April 1993.”

Although challenging, Yvonne graduated within the stipulated time in 1997 and returned to Namibia to work for the Legal Assistance Centre, where she put her

experiences at the UWC Law Clinic and street law projects to good use. In 2001, she pursued her LLM full-time at the University of Pretoria, and spent four months at the University of Ghana (Legon) as part of the LLM programme. She worked as a civil and human rights lawyer until 2007 when she began lecturing in the Law Faculty of the University of Namibia. In her first year as Deputy Dean (2012–2015), she received the Law Society of Namibia’s Human Rights Excellence award.

She was part of the team that set up the UNAM Legal Aid Clinic, which she says was largely modelled on the UWC Law Clinic. While lecturing (and acting as supervising attorney of the Law Clinic), she was also a regular presenter on an interactive current affairs programme called Dialogue, which was a UNAM-Namibian Broadcasting Corporation initiative.

Yvonne won the CEO Global 2015 Africa’s Most Influential Women in Business and Government Award in recognition of her work in the education and training sector. In the same year, she accepted her appointment as the Chair of the Namibian Law Reform and Development Commission, partly because she wanted a break from teaching and partly because “you don’t say no to a sitting President!”

Yvonne cites the publication of a peerreviewed book celebrating 25 years of the Commission’s existence, the development of a rapport with the public and nationwide consultations on economic empowerment as the highlights of her tenure.

Her return to academia was put on hold when President Hage Geingob appointed her as Namibia’s Minister of Justice in 2020. Her main priorities as Minister are to improve the efficiency of all aspects of the judicial system and to increase access to the courts for poorer citizens and people with disabilities.

The child born into poverty in Katutura finally has what she dreamt of, the means to ensure that the law is used to enhance social justice.

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Rugby star assumes top leadership role at Rugby Africa » University of the Western Cape (UWC) alumna and Springbok women’s rugby captain Babalwa Latsha’s impressive contribution to global women’s rugby, on and off the field, is growing in leaps and bounds.

ATSHA, AN LLB GRADUATE FROM UWC, was

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recently named as one of 11 members of Rugby Africa’s Sub-Committee for Player Welfare and Participation, which falls under the organisation’s newly created Women’s Rugby Advisory Committee (WRAC).

The WRAC’s purpose is to advise all Rugby Africa committees on positive gender inclusion practices with a focus on women’s rugby.

According to a statement by the South African Rugby Union, Latsha’s role on the subcommittee will involve offering guidance and suggestions in the areas of women’s rugby development and player welfare.

Latsha’s appointment follows a rewarding 2020 season off the field in which she was named one of 10 Springbok Women’s Unstoppables and 12 Rugby Africa Unstoppables aligned with World Rugby’s ‘Try and Stop Us’ women’s rugby campaign. The World Rugby campaign was launched in 2019 with the objectives of lifting the profile of women’s rugby and attracting new fans, players and sponsors to the game.

Latsha joined the Spanish side SD Eiber Femenino last year, the first woman’s rugby player in Africa to sign a

professional contract in the 15s. She was delighted with her appointment. “It means a great deal to me to be able to contribute to the growth and development of women’s rugby on our continent,” Latsha said in the SA Rugby statement.

She added: “I am massively honoured that I have that privilege, so that we as a collective may have an impact and effect some genuine positive changes within the women’s rugby landscape in Africa. This role is one that I embrace fully and I’m seriously grateful for it.

I’m very much proud of the fact that I’m part of the bigger picture – that we are not just players but people of real impact within the sport we hold dear to our hearts.”

Babalwa Latsha. >

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Boxer edges closer to

Olympic dream » When Asemahle Sentile was young, his father nicknamed him ‘Softie’ because he believed that he was not tough enough.

O PROVE HIM WRONG, Sentile joined a boxing club where his older brother was already a member. “Every boy would want to make his dad proud,” Sentile says. “Having seen how proud my

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father was, how he would react when my brother’s coach used to tell him how a boxing tournament had gone, I decided to follow suit.”

Sentile, who is pursuing a BA degree in psychology at UWC, says he joined the club in his neighbourhood of Site C in Khayelitsha, won his first bout and was named the boxer of the tournament after his second match.

He ditched other sporting codes he was involved with, such as football, rugby and

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cricket, to focus on boxing. Among his impressive achievements since 2009, Sentile has been a Western Cape champion in different weight categories and currently holds the Under-57 kg title.

The Western Cape Boxing Organisation selected Sentile and three other boxers to represent the province at the South African National Boxing Organisation (Sanabo) trials in December, despite the fact there were no boxing tournaments or training camps last year due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“Last year was a very difficult year for many of us as students because we are not used to e-learning. But we had to adapt. I was busy trying to adapt to that and the coach (Ginger Mapasa) was pushing me to prepare for the trials too,” says Sentile.

» Boxing is a chess game, it’s a mind game. Boxing taught me how to resolve conflicts, how to pace myself and how to be a better human being. « Sentile had to train hard at the UWC Gym and at Khayelitsha Boxing Academy, training with professional boxers in Cape Town to prepare for the trials. His efforts paid off as he won the first two bouts at the event in Dundee against opponents from Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal before losing the final match to a boxer from Gauteng by one point through a split decision.

“The organisers felt that both of us had a potential to be in the national team so we were both selected for the trials where our characters were tested further,” says Sentile.

Following the trials, Sentile and another Western Cape boxer were selected to the provisional Sanabo squad for the World Olympic Qualifiers. The squad will attend a training camp at which the final Sanabo team will be picked to represent South Africa at the qualifiers scheduled to take

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place in Paris, France. On the verge of realising his dream of representing the country, Sentile says: “This means a lot to me. If 2020 was a mess, this was a blessing.

For most people like me, last year was a disaster – until that moment when I had to go there and fight.

“It’s one of my dreams to compete in France. I think I have all the resources I need. I have everything I need from the university, from my coach and from my teammates. I have what it takes to go and come back with a gold medal in the qualifiers or even in the Olympics. I train Mondays to Sundays and the university has assigned a personal trainer to me to help with strength and conditioning.”

Sentile feels he made the right decision to attend UWC to further his development in both academics and sport. He says, “I remember when I was in high school our coach’s motto was ‘guys let’s use boxing to educate ourselves’. I almost signed a professional contract during my gap year in 2015 because I was training with pro boxers and getting offers that were difficult to refuse. But I knew from a young age that our coach was against turning professional because you would not get the opportunity to get funding at university.

“The coach would often cite Phumlani Nkqetho as an example. Phumlani is actually the one who encouraged me to apply to UWC. Campus was not even a dream for me until Phumlani told me that he was here and that meant it was possible for me too.”

Sentile has received a sports bursary to fund his studies and says he has learnt a lot of professional and personal lessons on campus.

He says, “I’m doing a BA majoring in Psychology and it is all about the mind.

Boxing is a chess game, it’s a mind game.

Boxing taught me how to resolve conflicts, how to pace myself and how to be a better human being.”

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Rugby legend comes full circle after three decades » The new UWC Rugby coach Paul Treu is a globally respected giant of sevens rugby but still a relative newcomer to coaching the 15-member form of the game.

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AVING STEPPED INTO THE SHOES OF CHESTER

WILLIAMS, the legendary Springbok and World Cup winner who tragically passed away in 2019, the UWC alumnus is not daunted at all by the challenge of following his famous mentor.

Whatever the format or status of the game, whether it’s a touch rugby training session or a championship final, Treu approaches every game with the same cool precision and meticulous attention to detail. To Treu, winning is all about “executing the game plan”.

Treu arrived from Swellendam in 1990 and found UWC’s rugby culture much to his liking, and played for the university while earning his undergraduate degree in education. He starred in the powerful Springbok Rugby Sevens team between 1999 and 2003 that

reached the semi-finals of the Commonwealth Games and was captain of the squad that won the Wellington Sevens title in the 2001/02 season, coached by none other than Chester Williams.

In 2004, Treu made the switch to coaching the Springbok Sevens and the team achieved massive success under his guidance, amassing 14 tournament wins in his nine-year tenure and the overall IRB Sevens World Series title in 2008/09. After years of traversing the world as a player and coach and coaching the Kenya Sevens team between 2013

< Paul Treu, the new UWC Rugby coach.

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and 2014, he returned to Cape Town and a five-year stint on the coaching squad of Western Province Rugby. Thirty years after walking onto the UWC rugby fields for the first time, Treu returned as UWC Rugby head coach in 2020, after the post had been vacant for a year following Williams’ untimely passing.

“I was looking for a different challenge. It’s not like I was looking for work. And I thought to myself, I played here [at UWC], the team didn’t do so well in the Varsity Cup competition, and I hadn’t been a head coach in 15s rugby yet. This was a wonderful opportunity to come in and make a difference in people’s lives, and for them to taste some success,” he says. After Williams led the team to promotion from the Varsity Shield to the premier student competition, the team had a disappointing campaign last year, finishing second from bottom.

“This year we want to finish as high as we can,” Treu says in a determined tone. “Our immediate goal is to stay within the Varsity Cup. This was supposed to be a relegation year, but now with COVID it is going to be over two years. So the points accumulated this year and next year will determine who will be relegated.”

With Treu’s experience of building teams into successful units and an exceptional eye for spotting talent, the coach is quietly confident, all the more so as he feels the team is well supported by the university.

“I must say, the university has really come to the party with all the things that I have requested. They have gone out of their way to make sure that we could put together a support team and the equipment, systems and processes to give the players the best opportunity to do well,” says Treu. “It’s the first time we’re training with GPS technology.

We’re recording our practice sessions and we bought analysis software. It’s about building sustainability. We’ve achieved a lot over the last couple of months.”

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Treu says he isn’t one for big motivational talks on match day or any pre-match rituals.

“The team talk is always the same. Whether you’re ahead or not, you always stick to your processes. And that’s all that you can say to the guys. Because you’ve been there before.

You’ve done the training. You know the drill.

Just keep doing what we do. If the opportunity to win is there for the taking, we take it. Just keep the faith and keep believing.

Because on game day the players need to take charge, they need to take control.”

In a sense, Treu’s approach to training on the field mirrors his approach to higher learning in general, making him an excellent sports and academic role model to the young men in his charge. With a Higher Diploma in Education (UWC), Honours in Education (Stellenbosch University), Master’s in Educational Psychology (Nelson Mandela University) and a Master’s in Sports Directorship (Manchester Metropolitan University), Treu says: “I’ve always put a big premium on learning. It was never about how many degrees you have. It is about continuously learning.”

» I was looking for a different challenge.

This was a wonderful opportunity to come in and make a difference in people’s lives, and for them to taste some success. « A true believer in paying it forward, the married father of two girls is assisting Japan’s Women’s Rugby team as a consultant, to prepare for the next Olympic Games.

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Achieving his academic goal » Youngsters growing up on the Cape Flats are no strangers to adversity as violence, gangsterism and drugs, among other social ills, are rife in the area.

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WENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD RENALDO LEANER,

who hails from Elsies River, has had to keep his wits about him to ensure that he did not become another statistic of youth succumbing to the pressures of his surroundings. “Growing up, I was naughty and would chill with my friends and smoke but I was never part of any gang. I distanced myself from anything that I felt was not good and my parents were also very strict.

“Most of the time, it’s difficult when people ask me whether I am really from Elsies River,” he says. “It’s not easy; there’s a lot of gangsterism. I remember times when I could not go to training because shootings were taking place in my area.”

Leaner resisted negative peer pressure by finding refuge in football, following in the footsteps of many of South Africa’s greatest footballers who grew up in similar Cape Flats neighbourhoods. He says that their achievements showed that diamonds can be found, polished and made to shine even in the toughest, most dangerous fields.

“The football bug bit me at a young age and the funny thing is that in my street, I was the

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only one with a ball. Football gave me hope and a chance to make things better for me and my family. It’s kept me busy and it still does.

“My parents have also played their part and I am grateful to them because they truly spoilt me rotten,” adds the soft-spoken goalkeeper.

Since he joined local clubs Central AFC and Matroosfontein, he says, many people from his area now look up to him.

Explaining why he chose to enrol at UWC, he says: “In my family, no one had a degree and I told myself I wanted to do that for them.

I also saw a lot of footballers who played at the highest level return to nothing after they retired, so studying was my plan B. I could have focused on my soccer career but I wanted to secure my future and having a degree did that for me.”

During his studies at UWC, his time was carefully managed between studying, playing for Ajax Cape Town, with whom he travelled a lot, and playing for the national team.

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» The football bug bit me at a young age and the funny thing is that in my street, I was the only one with a ball. Football gave me hope and a chance to make things better for me and my family. « “It truly was a collective effort between my coaches at Ajax, UWC Football and myself. I remember going to Holland with Ajax in my second year, getting home, then leaving again for Taiwan right away. It was hard, especially trying to keep up with my exams and assignments. At one point, I wanted to quit football to focus on my studies,” says Leaner.

Hard work and determination helped him get through and graduate with a Bachelor of Education (BEd) in Mathematics and Science.

For now, Leaner is focused on his sporting career, having recently signed a professional contract with the GladAfrica Championship title-chasers.

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Former student’s footballing career takes off » Off the field, Sinoxolo Cesane is friendly, talkative and always wears a welcoming smile. But, once she dons her football boots and walks onto the pitch, she transforms into a fierce competitor whose drive to be the best sets her apart from her peers.

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ORE THAN THE NATURAL SKILLS SHE POSSESSES and the hard work she

puts in on the field, her strong mentality has played a significant role in the rapid development of her game.

The charismatic Gugulethu-born star says nothing is going to stand between her and her quest for footballing greatness.

The 20-year-old seemed destined for great things ever since she and her twin sister, Noxolo, started playing for Cape Town Roses, along with Banyana Banyana player Ode Fulutudilu, barely 14 years old at the time.

After helping Cape Town Roses lift the Coke Cup back in 2018, she went on to join the UWC Ladies FC side.

“I started my career with my sister at Roses and although we were playing older ladies, we were never shaken because we always believed in our abilities. I went on to join UWC, which opened the opportunity that I have now and it was a step I had to take in order to move my career forward,” she says.

“Before [UWC] we used to play against sides like Sundowns Ladies once a year but now we got to play all the top sides throughout the season. The transition to the side was also easy because I knew most of the

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guys from the time spent on the national team so I just fit in perfectly,” Sinoxolo says.

With players like Thembi Kgatlana having plied their trade at UWC and Udubs being one of the 12 sides playing in the National Women’s League, Sinoxolo saw playing for the side as a leap towards playing professional football.

“The level of competition was higher and that helps with boosting one’s profile because I have always wanted to play professionally and that was one step towards that direction,” she says.

The opportunity to study in the USA arrived while she was at UWC when her videos were spotted online and she was offered a full athletics scholarship by East Tennessee State University.

“What made it even more exciting was that I had an opportunity to also study and not only focus on football. There were other offers but this was the best one, especially knowing there were other players who spoke highly of the coaches at this university.

“Ode and Janine [van Wyk] are among others who have worked with the same coach [Jay Yelton] that I am working with here so it made my choice easy,” Sinoxolo says.

Her move abroad was almost derailed as she had to fund her own travel expenses. However, UWC stepped in to cover her travel costs and donations from some good Samaritans helped ensure that she settled in well on her arrival.

She says starting a new chapter in her life without her family by her side was not a big deal as they understand that chasing her dream will come with challenges. What keeps her going is knowing that she can always count on their support no matter how far apart they are.

“My sister understands as well; we always spent a lot of time apart. During the national team call-ups, she would be away for weeks.

“Being homesick is not something that will affect me. I have been welcomed with warm hands on this side so I haven’t felt out of place,” says Sinoxolo.

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» There are no barriers that are going to stop me from reaching the goals I’ve set myself. And that is what I would also like to see for other footballers out there. « “Being a dreamer is what drives me to always strive for better. Talent alone is not enough; there’s always an extra effort needed to achieve these goals,” she says.

Sinoxolo adds: “I just want to say to those dreamers who are just like me, looking at people like Ode, Thembi Kgatlana, Janine and Noko Matlou – keep pushing and look at these guys as success stories we need to emulate.

“There is no turning back for me. There may be challenges along the way but I’m prepared.

There are no barriers that are going to stop me from reaching the goals I’ve set myself.

And that is what I would also like to see for other footballers out there.”

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Book reviews

Banking bioscience for the future EFORE THE 1990s, field research in

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human biosciences involved researchers gathering samples from volunteers for later study in the laboratory. Depending on the resources of the institution, the valuable samples were usually stored for no longer than the duration of the study, after which researchers disposed of them according to the ethical rules of their institution or applicable legislation. Usually, other scientists had no access to the samples and were entirely reliant on the rigour and accuracy of the researchers, as reflected in their published results.

This methodology is often costly, inefficient and slow, limits upscaling and can affect an experiment’s reproducibility (that is, another researcher getting the same results by repeating the experiment).

Thanks to the rapid development of bioinformatics (a specialist discipline involving biology, mathematics and computer science) and biobanking, institutions such as UWC’s South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI) have vastly expanded access to collected samples for research and to the data derived from such study.

A biobank is a secure storage facility that functions as an archive of organic samples collected for research. Given that many of the samples are human (blood, tissue, saliva, urine, DNA), there are ethical questions involved in biobanking, not least of which are who owns the sample once it is collected, how it is stored and used and, was the donor able to give informed consent.

After recognising the need for public engagement and education regarding these issues, SANBI recently published Biobanking and Me, a bilingual audio book (English-Xhosa and English-Afrikaans versions) and accompanying video. Using simple illustrated texts, the book aims to educate children and adults about the ethics, purpose and importance of biobanking. Before the project was finalised, the language content was critiqued by about 100 native speakers of the three regional languages, who were all non-academic UWC staff members.

“Members of communities who are donors of biological samples are essential stakeholders in health research, and meaningful engagement which increases knowledge allows these donors to make informed decisions,” says SANBI’s Director, Professor Alan Christoffels. “The value of creating and increasing public understanding of science through such engagement platforms cannot be overestimated.”

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Book reviews

Memoir journeys to a mother’s childhood

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UBLISHED IN 2019, THE BLACKRIDGE HOUSE: A

MEMOIR is described by publisher

Jonathan Ball as a “meditation on belonging, of the stories we tell of home and family, of the precarious footprint of life”. Its author, Professor Julia Martin of the UWC English Department, undertook a deeply personal journey from Cape Town to find her mother’s house in Blackridge, a suburb on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal.

Elizabeth Madeline Martin is 92, bedridden

in a nursing home and longs for the woodand-iron home of her childhood which she vividly remembers, although she no longer recalls exactly where it was.

For Martin, the journey becomes more than just about finding the physical home of her mother, or returning with the requested “photograph, and something growing from the garden”. It opens up questions about the many meanings of ‘home’.

As Martin writes: “Then one day she [her mother] told me, ‘This place is . . . I’m trying to find the right word for lonely. I just want to go Home now. I don’t mean ‘home’ with a small ‘h’. I mean the great Home. But God obviously doesn’t want me.’”

Martin journeys back through her grandparents’ lives, signposted in letters, forgotten documents, old photographs and maps, and is aided by many strangers who help her search for her mother’s home.

As she discovers her family history, finding the Blackridge house becomes an act of reconnection as much for the daughter as the mother. The book is eloquently written and has received praise from other South African writers. Describing the book as a “finely crafted text”, Antjie Krog says, “The narrative keeps sharpening its lenses until one experiences what is hardest to grasp: everything is irrevocably interwoven – but miraculously so.”

Martin previously authored a travel memoir, A Millimetre of Dust: Visiting Ancestral Sites (Kwela Books, 2008) that was long-listed for the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award, and Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places (Trinity University Press, 2014), a collection of 30 years of correspondence and interviews with co-author, US poet and essayist, Gary Snyder.

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Book reviews woman whose husband Rashid has been having an affair with another woman. Qabila feels she has been living a 17-year-long farce instead of enjoying a loving marriage and wants a divorce but Rashid resists.

Qabila’s determined resolve leads her to reconnect with family and her Muslim faith, while meeting musicians who might answer her puzzling dreams of strange songs.

» Called to Song is a novel that portrays a woman’s journey of self-discovery while navigating life with an unfaithful husband. «

Patriarchy confronted in a tale of losing and finding love and faith

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ET IN THE TRADITIONAL CAPE TOWN MUSLIM COMMUNITY, Called to Song is a novel

that portrays a woman’s journey of self-discovery while navigating life with an unfaithful husband.

Published by Kwela (2018), the novel by University of the Cape Town social anthropology lecturer, Kharnita Mohamed, feels authentic with its use of colloquial speech and insider knowledge.

The main character, Qabila, is a Muslim

Mohamed’s tale of family intricacies, betrayal and heartache is compelling and beautifully written. Her personal background, having been raised on the Cape Flats, is referenced in the setting of this novel, with Mitchell’s Plain a backdrop to some of the book’s scenes.

Patriarchy looms large in Called to Song, which interrogates race, gender and relationships from Mohamed’s feminist perspective without being politically strident, as when, for example, the author highlights the shame that women and not men carry for a pregnancy outside marriage.

Mohamed’s characters speak directly to a world where women are often spoken about, instead of speaking for themselves. The characters share the problems of real-world women, such as how women navigate sex and intimacy with men who use them and who never really love them the same way.

Mohamed has a master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago and is pursuing a PhD in Women and Gender Studies at UWC. Called to Song is her first novel.

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Book reviews

Hout Bay politics: a microcosm of global urban politics ROUND THE WORLD, relentless urbanisation is producing crowded cities governed under strain, with the poorest citizens excluded from full participation in democracy and even the wealthiest residents frustrated with the state.

These are the findings of Democracy Disconnected: Participation and Governance in a city of the South, a book co-authored by UWC Professors Fiona Anciano and Laurence Piper. Prof Anciano is a social science researcher with a broad interest in democratisation, civil society and urban governance, while Prof Piper is a political scientist at UWC and at University West in Sweden. The book discusses how citizens are disconnected from democracy, using Hout Bay, a Western Cape suburb, as its case study.

The authors argue that “Democracy is more in demand and supply than ever in human history”, and yet dissatisfaction with democratic rule is growing.

“Hout Bay, our case study site, captures this sentiment of democratic deficit almost exactly. Despite active engagement through democratic means, including new participatory spaces, most residents feel frustrated with the response of the state.”

There are three reasons for this disconnect.

First, the institutions of local democracy work

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at the level of the city, not the neighbourhood.

This means local residents cannot control what happens in their area.

Second, the power of the City Hall is limited, with provincial and national government responsible for many key aspects of daily life like education, health and security.

Third, the power of the state is limited through policy choices to privatise public functions to business or share power with local networks. It is also limited through lack of resources and poor governance. All of this removes decision-making further from local residents.

“This is important to do because it alerts us to possible reasons why local democracy is disappointing residents of cities of the South,” write the authors. The “paradox of more participation and less satisfaction with democracy” for most Hout Bay residents is made explicit through the division of the book’s chapters according to the key issues that have dominated protest politics in Hout Bay over the many years of their fieldwork.

These include environmental issues; property ownership and rights; transport (taxis and the Chapman’s Peak Drive toll); education and public development; fishing, employment and the ethics of poaching; safety and security; and unity, race and nationality.

Consequently, apartheid spatial planning lives on in Hout Bay as residents remain divided and largely confined within a wealthier white neighbourhood, a coloured area called Hangberg and Imizamo Yethu, a mostly African informal settlement.

The book was published by Routledge in 2019 and pre-print chapters can be downloaded for free on the website http://democracydisconnected.com/book/

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Book reviews

Exposé – A Blessing in Disguise XPOSÉ – A BLESSING IN DISGUISE is the

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debut novel of Mokone Mmola, a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences student at the University of the Western Cape.

Written in a simple and conversational style, Mmola’s novel tells the story of Kagiso, a first-year student at the University of Limpopo (UL), coming to terms with his sexuality through the friendships he builds with a group of gay male students.

Kagiso is introduced to Kay-Tee, Beekay and Kamo by Karabo, a male student who is

involved in a secret sexual relationship with Kagiso’s roommate Mike, while Mike is also dating Mary.

We see the different personalities, from friends to family to welcomed and unwelcomed lovers, through the eyes of Kagiso. A keen observer of others, Kagiso ironically denies his attraction to men initially and is unable to identify why he feels jealous, irritated or attracted by Mike. That is, until he meets and falls in love with Bradley, a final-year BComm Accounting student, who is not only comfortable with his sexuality but unconsciously helps Kagiso ease into his.

The reader follows Kagiso from UL’s Turfloop campus to his parents’ home in Lorraine Village, Ga-Sekororo, witnessing the discrimination, betrayal and rejection he suffers from fellow students, friends, his boyfriend, his mother and community members. Although fictitious, the novel creates awareness of the current struggles faced by the LGBTQI community in South Africa, particularly in rural towns and communities.

The novel not only highlights the interconnectedness between diverse people but reveals the hypocrisy among the self-proclaimed traditional gatekeepers of societal norms. At the same time, it celebrates Kagiso’s becoming the master of his own destiny as he starts tackling prejudices.

Mmola is currently working on his second novel, which continues the story of Kamo.

He says, “After people read Exposé, many asked me why Kamo, who is this amazingly caring character who seemed to have been through so much in his past, was not given the opportunity to tell his own life story. It clearly needs to be told.”

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Book reviews

Hostels were more than residences ROF HEIN WILLEMSE (DLITT, UWC), a former

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UWC lecturer and current Professor of Literature and Literary Theory in the Department of Afrikaans at the University of Pretoria, has co-edited a publication with alumnus Dr William Murray titled Hostel: Autobiographical narratives of the 1975–1980 University of the Western Cape Student Generation. The inspiration for the book emerged from the formation of a WhatsApp group by 1970s alumni and coincided with the hosting of a reunion of ‘hostelites’ on campus.

Although earlier students conducted occasional protests, most notably the walk-off and boycott in 1973 that followed the expulsion of the SRC, the 1975–1980

generation can rightfully be regarded as the first activist generation of UWC students.

In their creation of UWC, the architects of apartheid deliberately located the drab collection of buildings in the bushes of Bellville, neighbouring squatter camps, a railway yard and an ersatz ‘coloured’ representative council. Quite accidentally, their design made a significant contribution to nationalising the anti-apartheid struggle.

Since the hostels were meant to accommodate students from across the country who could not commute, the authorities drew together some of the brightest coloured youth, most of them from politically conservative, fairly sheltered Christian backgrounds. Without reliable transport or cash to spare, the 550 or so hostelites were the core around which much of the campus social calendar evolved in the mid-1970s.

But they were also targeted for recruitment and politicising by student activists and leaders and, as many of the personal accounts in the book indicate, the hostels became a hotbed of political ‘action’ and ‘conscientising’. The writings of Franz Fanon and Steve Biko were particularly influential in radicalising students.

The hostels were often the centre of police thuggery, as students retreated there during protest actions. Willemse, himself a hostelite, was severely assaulted by police at one of the hostels, despite not being a participant in that day’s protest.

After graduating, most of the hostelites became school teachers in their home communities, if not radicalised then more politically ‘conscientised’ to play a meaningful role in community and social development.

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2020 in a nutshell

Dental care programme aims to help more children with special needs

Vincent Morta bids farewell to UWC – with decades of fond memories More than four decades after joining the University of the Western Cape (UWC), campus legend Vincent Morta officially retired in January 2020 as the Director of Quality Assurance and MI in the Institutional Planning Office.

An old tennis ball or bicycle handles can help children with special needs take care of their teeth.

The ball assists a child with poor upper arm coordination and strength to develop an enlarged, yet flexible grip, while the bicycle handles encourage a strong grip on toothbrushes. These are some of the innovative ideas used in the Sparkle Brush programme – an internationally recognised collaborative community engagement programme between UWC and the University of KwaZulu-Natal which provides children with special needs with effective dental health care and maintenance.

Astronomy in isiXhosa: Translating and transforming science Although South Africa has 11 national languages only two have an advanced scientific vocabulary.

UWC’s Department of Xhosa and the interUniversity Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA) have joined forces in a project that translates astronomy resources written in English into other South African languages.

UWC Rugby star earns a Stormers call-up UWC Rugby star Lyle Hendricks continued his impressive rise in rugby when he was named in the DHL Stormers squad for the 2020 Vodacom Super Rugby campaign, the second UWC player to make the team.

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Coveted A-rating for UWC cosmology academic

Song of hope to aid China’s fight against COVID-19

Astrophysicist and UWC academic, Professor Mario Santos, achieved a coveted A-rating at the 2020 NRF Awards. Prof Santos holds the SARChI Chair in Cosmology for Multi-Wavelength Data and is the director of UWC’s Centre for Radio Cosmology.

China has put up a brave fight against the coronavirus and many countries have extended a helping hand. In February 2020, the UWC Student Choir showcased their support in song. They sang the Chinese national anthem to a group of Chinese lecturers as a gesture of encouragement and support in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Something to smile about: Prof Osman caps an illustrious career

UWC ranks in the Top 200 Emerging Economies Universities UWC has been declared one of the developing world’s top 200 higher education institutions in the Times Higher Education Emerging Economies Rankings 2020 – a testament to how far UWC has come in its 60 years.

Prof Yusuf Osman committed most of his life to the growth of the Dentistry Faculty at UWC and has been associated with UWC since he first started studying Dentistry over 40 years ago. He was one of the first cohort of dentistry graduates and guided the Faculty to new heights locally and globally as a lecturer, Head of Department, Deputy Dean and Dean. His well-deserved retirement commenced at the end of February 2020.

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Decoding COVID-19 As the country struggled through the lockdown, April 2020 saw the National Institute for Communicable Diseases and researchers at UWC’s South African National Bioinformatics Institute (UWC-SANBI) successfully sequence South Africa’s first SARS-CoV-2 genome – providing a genetic ‘fingerprint’ that might help us understand and contain the spread of COVID-19.

UWC alumna Thembi Kgatlana joins top European club UWC alumna and 2018 African Woman Footballer of the Year, Thembi Kgatlana, has been signed by European giant Benfica in Portugal, joining a growing number of South African women footballers who have recently moved to top clubs in Europe.

Data Must Fall: Zenzeleni Network zero rates sites for rural communities

Samsung and UWC spark digital transformation for an empowered society Samsung South Africa and UWC are on a mission to empower the youth through the Future-Innovation Lab, which provides opportunities for previously disadvantaged youth to gain skills in software development and digital social innovation.

In response to COVID-19, the Zenzeleni Community Network, South Africa’s first community-owned Internet Service Provider, has zero-rated access to dozens of essential health and education sites, including all university and TVET college sites.

Zenzeleni is a multi-stakeholder project of UWC, the Zenzeleni Networks not-for-profit company, the Association of Progressive Communications, Ellipsis Regulatory and rural community cooperatives in the remote Eastern Cape that enables connectivity through low-cost WiFi networks in rural areas.

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#NoStudentWillBeLeftBehind launch UWC devised a comprehensive plan to ensure that students complete the 2020 academic year in spite of challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, the university appealed to alumni, corporates and individuals to donate funds, laptops or similar devices, as well as data, to ensure that no student will be left behind with commencement of the flexible learning and teaching plan.

UWC among world’s best in Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2020 UWC alumnus develops swift COVID-19 testing kit UWC alumnus Daniel Ndima and his business partner Dineo Lioma of CapeBio Technologies, have developed an innovative testing kit for the coronavirus called qPCR that cuts the waiting time for results by about 64%. In April 2020, it took up to three hours to get results, but the qPCR kit reduces that time to just 65 minutes.

UWC has again been recognised as one of the world’s leading socially and environmentally aware higher education institutions according to the Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings 2020.

UWC excelled in several specific United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) areas, including SDG 1: No Poverty (where UWC ranked 10th); SDG 4: Quality Education; SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities and SDG 17: Partnership for the Goals.

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UWC and SU isolate South Africa’s first laboratory culture of SARS-CoV-2 UWC and Stellenbosch University have collaborated to isolate SARS-CoV-2 and maintain a viral stock for diagnostic testing, under the guidance of Dr Tasnim Suliman. Dr Suliman obtained clinical samples from COVID-19-positive patients at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town and inoculated these samples onto live cells that were cultured in the laboratory. If the virus is present in the clinical sample, the virus infects the cells and grows. This provides a pure culture of the virus – an essential resource for research laboratories, as well as clinical laboratories that can use it as a positive control in their diagnostic tests.

PHA4GE – A global scientific alliance uniting genomics and public health With USD840,000 in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE) is a global coalition working to combat pandemics like COVID-19 by uniting public health practices with cutting-edge genomics research and analysis.

UWC-SANBI serves as the secretariat for the global programme launched in May 2020, and is a part of the steering committee formed to provide oversight for the various PHA4GE activities. Additionally, UWC’s Prof Alan Christoffels was selected as a leading role-player in this research coalition due to his expertise and research in the field of genomics.

UWC students win Chinese Bridge Language Competition Two UWC students won the national annual Chinese Bridge Language Competition, hosted online on 7 May 2020. Shannah Rose Erasmus and Lauren Willenberg represented South Africa at the grand world final in November which was hosted online in Beijing, China, as participants could not travel due to COVID-19 restrictions. Belgian Lucas Deckers was the overall winner.

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Jellyfish genetics: UWC researcher discovers new jellyfish species UWC marine biologist and taxonomist, Verena Ras, and her team used a comprehensive collaborative approach analysing statistical and molecular data to discover Chrysaora agulhensis, a new species of jellyfish in South Africa’s waters. Only two species of Chrysaora jellyfish were hitherto known in the Benguela Current Ecosystem: C. fulgida and C. africana.

UWC teaching and research excellence recognised in CWUR World University Rankings UWC has been acknowledged as one of the premier teaching and research institutions in South Africa and the world, according to the recent Center for World University Rankings 2020/2021. UWC ranks 8th in South Africa and 1158th in the world, putting the institution in the top 5,8% worldwide. The university was also ranked 1097th for research performance.

UWC Education graduate assists parents and learners online In response to the challenge posed by the COVID-19 lockdown, UWC Education graduate Lizette Booys is providing free online help to learners and parents in primary school mathematics.

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Zone Learning launched at UWC UWC’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic, Prof Vivienne Lawack, has launched an innovative approach to learning and teaching known as Zone Learning. Zone Learning is a hub for transmedia – storytelling using multiple platforms – in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. It is also home to the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic, born out of the Law Clinic at the Faculty of Law, that will assist law students to imagine themselves as entrepreneurs. The Small Business Clinic of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences will share the space, helping to create an even more collaborative environment of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Groundbreaking partnership to empower future data scientists UWC has engaged in a multi-million-rand partnership with Imvelo Ventures to empower a new generation of leaders. Imvelo Ventures, a venture capital investment company founded by Capitec Bank and Empowerment Capital Investment Partners, will invest approximately R11 million over three years in the university’s data science programmes.

WHO chooses UWC-SANBI as reference lab to join the fight against COVID-19 UWC-SANBI has been chosen as one of three regional reference laboratories in the World Health Organisation (WHO) network. These laboratories will provide sequencing and data analysis, supported by an additional nine laboratories, for technical support services to the countries in which they are located as well as to neighbouring countries and countries in their sub-regions.

UWC researchers cited among the world’s most impactful With over six million scientists who have published at least five papers considered, a review by Stanford University lists 18 researchers from UWC among the world’s top 1% most-cited scientists in various fields.

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CELEBRATING 60 YEARS OF

FORWARD-THINKING HIGHER-LEARNING VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE: WWW.UWC.AC.ZA

www.uwc.ac.za