Further to the campus announcement, UCT has made the following decisions today in relation to the attacks in the Rhodes Memorial area.

The executive have decided that a reward of R100 000 will be paid for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of the perpetrator in the recent attacks in the Rhodes Memorial area.

The university is also deploying members of a private security firm to increase patrols in the affected areas in an attempt to increase safety for both students and staff. Furthermore, the executive will meet with SAPS again as soon as possible to ensure that UCT supports SAPS in their efforts to arrest the perpetrator and to ensure that we have done, and continue to do, everything we can to help.

Anyone with any information can contact Steven Ganger, Manager: Investigations, Campus Protection Services, on (021) 650 2222/3 or email Steven.Ganger@uct.ac.za.

In a pioneering step towards using plants to produce vaccines against cervical cancer and other viruses, UCT researchers have generated synthetic human papillomavirus-derived viral particles called pseudovirions in tobacco plants.

From left: Dr Ann Meyers, Prof Ed Rybicki (seated) and Dr Inga Hitzeroth with the tobacco plants that they hope might play a key role in producing cheaper HPV vaccines.

“We’ve succeeded in making a completely mammalian viral particle in a plant – proteins, DNA, everything. That’s enormously exciting,” says Dr Inga Hitzeroth of the Biopharming Research Unit (BRU) at UCT.

Biopharming uses plants as ‘biological factories’. They have been used to create flu vaccines, potential Ebola drugs and an enzyme used to treat Gaucher’s disease in people. Now, the BRU researchers report using tobacco plants to create synthetic viral particles known as pseudovirions. These pseudovirions look like viral infections, but contain no infectious viral DNA.

The shell of this newly created pseudovirion was of the human papillomavirus (HPV) type 16, which is responsible for more than 50% of cervical cancer cases worldwide. The core DNA, also produced in the plant, is derived from a plant DNA virus that multiplies only in plants, but can act as a DNA vaccine in animals.

This is the first time researchers have successfully created pseudovirions in plants – up to now, yeast and mammalian cell cultures have been the glass ceiling. The BRU team hope this new plant-based technology could one day be used to test future HPV vaccines.

First author of the study, Dr Renate Lamprecht, explains: “We need pseudovirions to test any new HPV vaccine candidates. At the moment it is very expensive to make pseudovirions – we need to make them in mammalian cell culture, it needs to be sterile, and the reagents are very expensive.”

As demonstrated by this study, plant-made pseudovirions could reduce the cost of manufacturing and testing vaccines, which will help to make HPV vaccines affordable, particularly in the developing world.

Story by staff reporter. Photo by Michael Hammond.

The Department of Physics at the University of Cape Town (UCT) recently acquired a dilution fridge, which is officially the coldest place in Africa with a temperature of 8.190mK (milli Kelvin), ie 122 times colder than the known naturally coldest place in the universe – the Boomerang Nebula.

The new dilution fridge acquired by UCT's Department of Physics.

The fridge had an arduous journey to the RW James building: originating in Holland, flying to Johannesburg and then being trucked from Johannesburg to Cape Town. Associate Professor Mark Blumenthal has been eagerly awaiting the fridge’s arrival for two years and was really frustrated when they opened it up and discovered that this R6.5 million piece of equipment had been damaged while in transit.

Spare parts were delivered to Associate Professor Blumenthal’s house, engineers came out from Holland to rebuild the fridge and the team worked throughout the night to assemble the fridge. Currently the local and international team are working to refine the working of the fridge, which is one of the largest and most powerful in the world.

So why the need for the fridge? Is it to keep the physicists chilled? This piece of equipment will be used to study material systems and electron transport. Associate Professor Blumenthal and his team are working with collaborators at Cambridge University and University College London in the field of nano-electronics and are building devices that can track individual electrons and examine the spin on electrons. In order to ‘catch’ something as small and elusive as an electron, there is a need to cool it to a very low temperature in order to slow it down.

Associate Professor Mark Blumenthal puzzling over various parts of the new dilution fridge.

The fridge has a powerful ten tesla superconducting magnet which is 25 000 times more than the earth’s magnetic field and allows the physicists to manipulate the spin of electrons. It also has a closed cycle dry system, which doesn’t need to replace the liquid helium 3 and 4 – this is a good thing when one considers that helium 3 costs €3,000 per litre and the fridge requires 50 litres. A top-loading probe allows samples to be loaded into the fridge.

Some of the research applications of the fridge are those of quantum computing and metrology, which is the science of standards and quantum cryptography. The fridge will also be used for the training of students in understanding vacuum systems, cryogenics and solid state physics.

Associate Professor Blumenthal’s area of expertise is low temperature nano-electronics. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of the Witwatersrand, his diploma at the University of Bonn in Germany and his PhD at Cambridge University. He worked at the National Physical Laboratory in London and then Siemens Magnet Technology in Oxford before joining the Department of Physics at UCT.

Story by Katherine Wilson. Photos by Gregor Leigh.

A UCT-led clinical study on a urine-test able to diagnose tuberculosis in severely ill HIV patients has led to a call for its immediate use in public health programmes because it has the potential to save lives. Leading medical journal The Lancet has hailed the results of the UCT-led clinical trial as a “breakthrough” for patients with HIV-associated tuberculosis. The results of the trial were published in The Lancet online on 9 March 2016.

The LAM test detects TB in urine. (Fair use of photo which is copyrighted by Alere Inc and copied via Discovery Medicine).

The lead investigator was UCT’s Professor Keertan Dheda from the Division of Pulmonology. Co-investigators, also based within the division, include Dr Jonny Peter, Dr Grant Theron, Dr Greg Calligaro and Dr Phindile Gina.

Hospitals in South Africa, and in Africa in general, are inundated with severely ill patients with HIV who also have suspected TB. The TB is often difficult to diagnose because these patients often cannot produce sputum samples, and the TB is often concealed in organs such as the liver, lymph glands or brain where it is difficult to access. Diagnosis is therefore challenging and investigation prolonged.

TB is the most common cause of death in South Africa, has substantial negative consequences on the economy and has a substantial mortality and morbidity. It is also the most common cause of death in HIV-infected persons in South Africa.

Significance of the trial

In a randomised controlled trial of the LAM urine test in 2 600 patients in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania, the study evaluated the usefulness of using the simple diagnostic test (similar to a urine pregnancy test) to guide treatment in severely ill HIV-infected patients with suspected TB.

The test, which can be conducted by a minimally trained healthcare worker at the bedside, enables a diagnosis in around 25 minutes by simply putting a few drops of urine on a low-cost strip test.

Dheda explains its significance: “Until now it was unclear whether LAM testing made any difference to treatment-related outcomes, such as death, because there are other TB diagnostic tests concurrently being used, and many patients received treatment based on a doctor’s ‘best guess’. But, using a randomised controlled trial design, this study found that, compared to existing tests and approaches used to guide treatment, the LAM test reduced the TB death rate in hospitals by almost 20%. Significantly, these were results obtained using a rapid and simple-to-use, low-cost, bedside test.”

Health policy

The results of the trial have now prompted health activists to call for the test to be fast-tracked into public health regimens.

The Lancet too has backed this call: “With the recent backing of WHO recommendations, we strongly advocate that the Determine TB-LAM point-of-care assay should be implemented by national tuberculosis programmes in sub-Saharan Africa to reduce Aids-related inpatient deaths.”

And Dheda concurs: “Policy makers should consider implementation of this low-cost bedside TB test in hospitalised patients in resource-limited settings with high TB/HIV burdens whilst further data accumulate.”

UCT has welcomed its second cohort of MasterCard scholars, who are keen to make their contribution on the African continent – and they all have big ambitions to share.

The MasterCard Foundation scholars share their Africa ambitions

The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program is funding more than 300* scholars from economically disadvantaged communities across sub-Saharan Africa to be developed as future leaders. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Danie Visser and Professor Evance Kalula, director of the International Academic Programmes Office (IAPO), recently welcomed the second cohort of 20 students (10 undergraduates and 10 postgraduates) onto campus for the 2016 academic year.

In his address, Visser, whose portfolio includes research and internationalisation, encouraged the scholars by comparing the opportunity presented to them to the ancient Greek city of Sparta: “This is your Sparta – adorn it.” Life is about opportunities and how we see those opportunities as stepping stones to making dreams a reality. He further pointed out that the loyalty of future leaders (such as these scholars) to their respective communities would be conducive to Africa’s development.

Professor Evance Kalula, the director of the International Academic Programmes Office, shared with the scholars the difference between this scholars’ programme and other scholarship opportunities, stressing how it focuses more on community engagement and giving back. This, among other traits, will form well-rounded scholars who will no doubt be extending themselves. “You are expected to give back, to make a difference,” he said.

Silicon Savannah

Crispus Macharia from Nairobi, Kenya, is studying towards a BSc in property studies at UCT. He is greatly inspired by development strategies in Africa. Among these is a plan to create an African version of Silicon Valley, known as Silicon Savannah. To this end, the Kenyan government is building Konza city – a “smart, techno city” slated for completion by 2030.

Macharia says: “This (idea) gave me the zeal to study the built environment and construction in order to advocate for smart and greener cities to help conserve the environment as well as take part in city management to ensure that Kenyans’ resources are utilised to the maximum.”

His word of encouragement to MasterCard Foundation scholar applicants is to “be real” and take time to reflect on their past and present life. “Point out all the activities that you have been involved in. Remember, everything counts. It’s not how big the project was. It is the impact you made and your passion towards the agenda.”

In terms of his ambitions, he says: “I think I am already living my future, since the start of the degree programme is the beginning of a new career”.

He wants to return to Kenya to influence policy and advocate for technology that will help eradicate social and economic challenges.

Ending poverty

South African Anniqah Ebrahim is studying social science and law. Her ambition is to end poverty – “as dreamy as that may sound”.

“I always wanted to bring a sense of justice to the world and by becoming a lawyer it will aid me in doing so. Social science will teach me the study of society, which complements a law degree very well. My degree will help me to understand people as well as give them a sense of hope.”

She says prospective MasterCard Foundation scholars should remain motivated to make a change no matter how small.

“A pebble in the sea might be minor but it creates a ripple effect, and that’s what the MasterCard Foundation scholarship has aided us in doing. We should continue to do justice to the platform we have been provided with.”

“Endangered species”

Nicola Jeranyama from Zimbabwe is studying actuarial science.

“I am doing this because there are very few actuaries in my country. They are often referred to as an ‘endangered species’. As an individual, I am taking steps towards the prevention of the extinction of actuaries in Zimbabwe. Actuaries play an important role in the economic stability of a country.”

Jeranyama says that she hopes to go back to Zimbabwe to help companies make big contractual decisions without harming their employees in the long run. She says she dreams of an African continent that is well developed as opposed to ‘developing’, a term she has heard since childhood.

Also, she would like to build a school that provides free education to children from children’s homes.

“Development starts with education. I hope to do the best I can to help my community, country and Africa at large.”

*It is estimated that 60 South Africans and 240 students from countries in sub-Saharan Africa will take part in the programme at UCT, with a focus on first-generation university students.

Candidates must sign a declaration that they will return to their home country upon successful completion of their studies.

Story by Andrea Weiss. Photos by Michael Hammond

The Students’ Representative Council’s #FundingFutures campaign, which is aimed at helping deserving students who are facing financial exclusion, has received a welcome boost in the form of a R2-million donation from Old Mutual. Old Mutual Emerging Markets (OMEM) CEO, Ralph Mupita, handed a R2-million cheque to UCT Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price and SRC Secretary General Noxolo Ntaka at a function at the investment company’s Pinelands head office on Tuesday, 15 March 2016.

From left: Anisha Archary, OMEM HR Director; Ryan Prithraj, UCT SRC Vice-President (External); Noxolo Ntaka, UCT SRC Secretary General; Busisiwe Nxumalo, UCT SRC Fundraising Officer; Dr Max Price, UCT Vice-Chancellor; Joel Baepi, OMEM Director of Governance, Regulatory and Corporate Affairs; and Ralph Mupita, OMEM CEO.

The campaign’s aim is to plug the gap for deserving students who do not qualify for financial aid under the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) but who face academic exclusion because they cannot afford their fees.

Mupita, who like many other Old Mutual staff is a UCT alumnus, said: “We strongly believe the private sector has a critical role to play in addressing the tertiary education funding crisis. We hope that this contribution will encourage other South African corporates and alumni, locally and internationally, to support university students who are excelling but do not qualify for funding.”

Price, who has also pledged R150 000 of his own money to the campaign, said the Old Mutual donation would help to address the “very current and urgent need of students who, for reasons beyond their control, are unable to register for their studies this year.”

Ntaka added: “The SRC is very grateful for the R2-million donation from Old Mutual that will go towards the campaign and investing in students’ futures. We believe that this is indeed a step in the right direction and stands as an example of what other corporates and companies should be doing in light of the current national crisis of financial exclusion.”

Last year, UCT provided financial assistance to 3 540 undergraduate students. The total student financial aid for 2015 to undergraduates totalled R550 million, which is up from R538 million in 2014 and R505 million in 2013. This year 3 819 students have been confirmed for financial assistance (2 867 on financial aid and 952 on GAP funding). The total cost is estimated to be well over R550 million.

The SRC’s #FundingFutures campaign has raised R2,2 million to date, just over double its initial target.

Story by Andrea Weiss. Photo supplied.

South Africa's political landscape is shifting almost by the hour. The gloves are off in a power struggle that pits President Jacob Zuma against a group of reformers, led by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. It is a high-stakes drama that has profound, long-term implications for the country's beleaguered economy at a time when the international rating agencies are circling, smelling blood.

Richard Calland, Associate Professor in Public Law. Photo by Michael Hammond.

In a potentially seminal moment in this unfolding soap opera, Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas has issued an extraordinary public statement. In it he attests to the fact that a business group close to Zuma offered him the job of finance minister late last year.

At the heart of the political economy that now surrounds Zuma, and which Gordhan has now set out his stall to confront, lies the Guptas – an expat Indian family with wide-ranging business interests spanning tech, mining, uranium and the media.

Job offer

Jonas' statement said he was contacted by the Guptas and offered Nhlanhla Nene's job before Zuma summarily dismissed the respected finance minister and replaced him with a rank non-entity African National Congress backbencher, David van Rooyen, on 9 December last year. The event was so shocking that local reporters and commentators now refer to it as "9/12".

Jonas says he declined the offer out of hand on the basis that only the president has the constitutional authority to appoint cabinet ministers.

In response to Jonas' statement, the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, a constitutional rights advocacy group, noted that the revelation showed the extent to which South Africa's constitutional project is under threat from a patronage network that has grown ever more insidious since Zuma came to power in 2009.

But, to understand the significance of the moment, it is necessary to take at least two steps back, to understand the background and context to the latest dramatic developments.

The context

Like Brazil and Russia, South Africa's ANC-led government has struggled to offer convincing evidence that it has not run out of ideas in the fight against structural economic constraints. These limit the prospects for the growth needed to reduce poverty and inequality.

This growing gap between haves and have-nots threatens stability and adds to the sense of socioeconomic precariousness and racial unease that permeate the public discourse in Africa's second-biggest economy.

So, in recent years, the international investment community and other market analysts have looked on as South Africa dug itself ever deeper into a rut. What, they asked, might be the stick of dynamite that could propel it ahead of other emerging market economies?

The answer came, ironically, from Zuma himself. Regarded as a very large part of the problem because he has allowed himself to be captured by vested commercial interests, such as the Guptas, it was Zuma who dropped the bombshell on 9/12. The ripple effects will be felt for a long time to come.

First, it woke up the "silent majority" within the ANC's moderate middle and social democratic left. Asked on the evening of Nene's dismissal what the ANC thought of the decision, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe sullenly replied:

The ANC has no comment because the ANC was not consulted.

This was the first of a number of seminal, game-changing moments that have followed. Mantashe, a key powerbroker within the ruling party, and key to the organisational structures and power that will determine who succeeds Zuma, was furious. It was immediately apparent that Zuma had made an enormous political error of judgement.

Never mind the reaction of the markets, which for the remaining two days of that tumultuous week battered the rand and South African bonds. Zuma had committed a cardinal sin. He had failed to consult with the fellow leaders of his own party. This error of judgement revealed just how desperate he was to please his benefactors and serve his own interests ahead of those of the country or his party.

Nene had stood up to Zuma on a number of highly controversial issues. These included restructuring and governance of state-owned airline South African Airways and the procurement of nuclear power where Zuma or his relatives or friends, such as the Guptas, have vested interests that need protection.

As a result Nene was fired and replaced by a political weakling who would be beholden to Zuma and, apparently, the Guptas. On his first and – so it would turn out – only day in the National Treasury, van Rooyen turned up with two advisors in the pay of the Gupta family.

Within four days Zuma had been forced to replace van Rooyen with Gordhan, who served as finance minister during Zuma's first administration between 2009 and 2014. Senior ANC leaders, such as Mantashe and the increasingly influential treasurer-general of the ANC, Zweli Mkhize, had made representations to Zuma and told him directly that what he had done was politically impossible.

Thus, Gordhan returned to National Treasury with far stronger political backing than previously. He is all but unsackable. Going into the new year, there was only one question in everyone's mind.

Who runs the government: the president or finance minister?

Within minutes of Zuma's State of the Nation address on 11 February, the answer was clear: Treasury was back at the helm.

Gordhan's budget speech that followed shortly afterwards was a political masterpiece. He managed to do enough to suggest that South Africa will avoid a rating agency downgrade to junk status – at least until December. He also offered glimpses of the sort of innovation now required to propel a stubbornly sluggish economy towards growth.

It was also an act of political leadership. Gordhan drew a line in the sand. He made it clear that the governance of state-owned enterprises would be reformed and new rules brought in to prevent "predatory" attempts to capture state institutions for the purposes of self-enrichment.

In response, Zuma resorted to type. He reignited an old investigation into a so-called "rogue" unit that was established by the South African Revenue Service while Gordhan was commissioner more than a decade ago. Using his loyal placemen at the revenue services and The Hawks – a specialist investigative unit within the police – Zuma has waged a proxy war against Gordhan for nearly a month now.

Gordhan is up for the fight: that much is clear. He has refused to answer the 27 questions that the Hawks sent to him until he was ready to do so, refusing to be distracted from either his preparations for the budget nor his whirlwind roadshow in which he met investors, fund managers and market analysts in London, New York and Boston. This was clearly a blatant attempt to undermine his authority and reputation and weaken him.

It is easy to understand why. Gordhan has emerged as the head of a reformist, progressive consortium within the government and the ANC that is determined to resurrect traditional ANC values and save the government from Zuma's basest tendencies.

In another seminal moment, when the Hawks leaked information about their investigation of Gordhan two days after the budget speech, Mantashe responded with unusual speed. He provided a public statement of unequivocal support for Gordhan, which further suggested that the balance of power was shifting away from Zuma.

ANC is walking a tightrope

But in this high-stakes game of chicken, both sides have to step carefully along the tightrope that lies ahead of them towards the ANC's national conference at the end of 2017.

Any misstep could lead to disaster. If Zuma refuses to give ground, Gordhan may have to resign or push harder, forcing Zuma into a corner where he may be forced to lash out – causing even more collateral damage.

If Zuma pushes back too hard against Gordhan, or fires him, then Mantashe and Mhkize may have to lead a full revolt against Zuma that would lead to his "recall". This is the fate that befell former president Thabo Mbeki in September 2008, when the ANC's national executive committee ruthlessly decided that Mbeki should resign the presidency after a High Court judgment suggested that he had interfered in the prosecution of Zuma himself.

The charges against Zuma were suddenly dropped in March 2009, a month before he was elected president. This decision is currently before the courts. A decision against Zuma would be another wound in his side.

With municipal elections to be held in the middle of the year, and ANC electoral hegemony likely to be challenged for the first time in important cities such as Johannesburg, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth, it may be that the ANC's leadership will have to face the unpleasant prospect of removing Zuma ahead of the end of his term – as ANC president in 2017, and of the country in 2019.

Zuma will fight to the very end. That much is clear. Jonas' own act of principled leadership is a further milestone in a gripping political narrative and adds significantly to the case against Zuma.

If Gordhan can prevail over Zuma, then the handbrake will be released. At last there are grounds for optimism that the drift and degradation that have been the hallmarks of Zuma's years in office can be arrested, and that South African politics can enter a new phase – with far better prospects for governance and the economy.

By Richard Calland, Associate Professor in Public Law, University of Cape Town.

If you’d walked along UCT’s Jammie Plaza last week, the T-shirts strung across the plaza would have caught your eye. The T-shirts, each painted with an anti-sexual assault message, were hung by a group called UCT Survivors, whose stated aim is to undo the silencing around sexual assault, sexual harassment and discrimination at UCT.

It’s not your fault: Ridding UCT of a culture of “victim-blaming” was a core concern for UCT Survivors’ anti-sexual assault campaign, which included an art installation on Upper Campus and a march to Bremner building.

By displaying the painted T-shirts in this public space, UCT Survivors called on the university to “be open about the perpetrators that are part of the UCT community”, according to a statement they released.

“They need to be open about how their structures have failed survivors in the past,” said the statement. UCT survivors also called for the results of last year’s review of the Discrimination and Harassment Office to be made public.

One T-shirt was emblazoned with, “It’s not your fault”, in response to what UCT Survivors sees as a culture of blaming the victims of sexual assault. Women should not have to bear the responsibility of not being raped, they said. Instead, sexism and rape culture on campus need to be tackled head-on.

“UCT management and its structures need to make a commitment to dismantling the everyday sexism and misogyny that not only fuels sexual violence but creates an environment of tolerance and silence about it,” they said.

The T-shirt installation was followed by a march to Bremner building on Thursday, 17 March 2016, which UCT Survivors led to impress the urgency of these issues upon the management team. About 100 people gathered outside Bremner where they shared their personal stories about how they had been affected by sexual violence on campus.

Story Yusuf Omar. Photo Michael Hammond.

An audience of 200, comprising students, staff and two politicians, attended a forum established by the new director of the School of Economics, Professor Lawrence Edwards, and the former ambassador of South Africa to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), adjunct Professor Faizel Ismail.

Prof Ingrid Woolard, Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo (head of the WTO), Prof Lawrence Edwards and student Darkowa Awinador.

Summing up, Prof Edwards observed: “I was interested in the nuances of how to resolve issues. It was fascinating to see the politics students asking about economics, and the economics students asking about politics … and the lawyers, well, they asked about law.”

The public lecture was occasioned by the first visit to Cape Town of the director general of the World Trade Organisation, Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo, who is a long-term friend of Prof Ismail.

Prof Ismail’s PhD explored the role of South Africa in the WTO before apartheid. This was a fitting starting point for the afternoon’s discussions.

Prof Edwards said he was proud that South Africa was not a passive participant in the global arena, but has helped, through the WTO, to define the rules governing international trade. He added that he welcomed a forum in this space, as academics should be debating trade policy critically and constructively.

Also on the panel was the minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Rob Davies, who has led South Africa’s new trade and industrial policy. He noted that the apartheid regime declared South Africa to be a developed country during the earlier WTO negotiations. This set South Africa on an uneven playing field as it was required to reduce import-tariff protection by more than other emerging economies. The solution, he suggested, was to promote regional integration across Africa.

Azevêdo, who is the sixth director general of the WTO, is a former ambassador of Brazil and also led that country’s battle for fairness in the cotton industry against the United States – a battle which still wages.

He recalled Nelson Mandela’s visit to Geneva where he gave a speech that is still talked about. Mandela told the WTO that it provided the foundation on which deliberations could be built. However, to realise those aspirations, “wise work” needed to be done.

“The need for wisdom is more evident than ever,” said Azevêdo.

He added that South Africa had a leading voice in the WTO as the current chair of the Dispute Settlement committee is a South African, Xavier Carim.

Azevêdo’s claim that the WTO was no longer a “rich man’s club” was challenged by a politics student who argued that the fact that it had taken 30 years to achieve a measure of agricultural reform was evidence to refute this.

Azevêdo responded: “It is no longer true. Forty-three members are African. It’s not a small club, it’s a big club. Everybody has a seat at the table, everybody has a say.”

He said there was great potential for growth in the African market, as trade with neighbours on the continent accounted for just one tenth of African trade. For example, South Africa’s biggest partner is the European Union.

The recent Nairobi conference, the first in Africa, was where South Africa played an important role in attempting to level the playing fields for farmers in developing countries and helping them to compete on fairer terms. However, this process was “moving too slowly, not delivering enough.”

At this point Azevêdo gave a classic negotiating tip. He said that whatever idea you propose, you need to think not only with your own shoes. If you are a representative of a developing country, think what a guy from the developed country would need. Putting the other guy’s shoes on your feet is the hardest part. But it is important to find some degree of commonality. Developed countries need to think what is happening on the other side.

He said: “I hate to break it to you, but fairness is not always there. What drives negotiations is the interests of both sides. It’s always a trade-off.

“Putting on the other guy’s shoes does not mean that you are surrendering. It gives you leverage. If you are only looking at your cards, you’re missing the game. You have to know your cards and extract as much as you can by giving as little as you can.”

He added: “Everybody should be unhappy at the end of the negotiation.”

He said the WTO was undergoing a period of reflection, a period of catharsis.

“In Bali we achieved what was deemed to be impossible. Nigeria was more than impossible, but we pulled the rabbit out of the hat. But we are running out of rabbits.”

He added: “The potential ahead is huge. Everybody is at the drawing board to reflect on what can be done. This brings me back to Nelson Mandela. We need wise work. You have the brains here to do the wise work that is needed.”

Story and photos by Carolyn McGibbon.

When Ingrid Woolard threw her hat into the ring for the position as dean of commerce towards the end of 2015, it was with some hesitancy. The selection process had already gone two rounds and there was her research to think about – a body of work that has earned her a formidable reputation in government policy circles, but also has a good measure of personal significance.

Society at heart: Prof Ingrid Woolard, new dean of commerce and the 2015 winner of the Alan Pifer Award, which will be presented on 23 March.

As pro vice-chancellor for poverty and inequality, Professor Murray Leibbrandt, says, she is “without a peer as a producer of survey data and a top-cited economic researcher.”

Woolard cut her teeth as a data manager on the country’s first national living standards measurement survey in 1994, which the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) produced with the World Bank at the request of the ANC.

“These data have been used by Ingrid and hundreds of other researchers to analyse South African well-being,” said Leibbrandt.

The information also underpinned Fighting Poverty, a book she co-wrote with colleagues Leibbrandt, Haroon Bhorat and others that analyses labour markets, poverty and inequality in South Africa. The book won a meritorious award and a Pifer award for Leibbrandt and Bhorat in 2003. Woolard was not working at UCT back then, says Leibbrandt, but had she been she would have shared the award since much of the book rested on her PhD work.

NIDS and KIDS

Woolard was also a key team member in the second and third waves of the KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study (KIDS). This used the KZN component of the 1993 Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development and then re-interviewed this sample in 1998 and again in 2003.

KIDS was South Africa’s first socio-economic panel survey and it pioneered the analysis of poverty and inequality dynamics in South Africa. Based on this data, Woolard’s work showed how destitution has driven many urban-based unemployed people back into rural areas to survive off the pensions of parents and grandparents.

“As these unemployed people are moving away from labour markets, this is clearly a sub- optimal outcome. Only panel data in expert hands could have revealed this unfolding poverty trap. This paper, and others too, have been influential in unpacking how South Africa’s unemployed actually survive,” says Leibbrandt.

Cape Town: The effects of poverty and unemployment are often all too visible on South African streets.

Given this experience, Woolard was the first choice as a principal investigator for SALDRU’s bid for the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), the country’s flagship national household panel survey, which was launched in 2008. Later, by making the survey data widely available, Woolard positioned it as South Africa’s highest-profile national survey with the unique potential to reflect the country’s evolving socio-economic dynamics.

Woolard’s contributions have been internationally recognised. She was the only South African labour economist invited to membership of the labour market team within the Harvard Group that National Treasury tasked with preparing a South African growth strategy.

In 2011 the minister of labour appointed her to chair the Employment Conditions Commission (she replaced UCT’s Professor Evance Kalula). The commission, which makes sectoral wage determinations for vulnerable workers who are not covered by formal wage bargaining procedures, was informed by her own work on labour markets and inequality. She gave up the position in 2014 after being appointed to the Davis Tax Committee.

New career

But after more than a decade in SALDRU and the School of Economics, Woolard was ripe for change.

“There’s a lot of really excellent socially driven research going on in the faculty and as dean I’m looking forward to shaping the direction that takes.”

She is also acutely aware of curriculum reform and how and what the faculty teaches students.

Her own life was deeply influenced at student level. But for one lecturer, Woolard might have missed her calling (she initially signed up at UCT to become an actuary). That lecturer was Francis Wilson, now emeritus professor of economics.

“Francis was this incredibly inspirational second-year lecturer,” she recalls. “He really influenced a lot of lives. One went from Ecos I, with all these boring models that didn’t seem particularly useful in explaining the real world and then, suddenly, you were in a class with Francis who was so engaged and immersed in the country’s pressing social issues and Ecos became exciting! Francis taught us for about two weeks only but completely changed how I felt about the subject.”

Working with Wilson at SALDRU later proved pivotal.

“I had a very different view of where my career was going to go. In 1994 I had just embarked on a career at the National Treasury running macro forecasts and then – more by accident than design – I found myself at SALDRU working on the living standards survey with Francis; collecting and processing incredibly exciting socio-economic data.”

This epiphany helped Woolard realise that working with microdata – the dots that could be connected to understand the grand narrative of complex data – lit her fire.

Managing a faculty

Woolard has been well served by the minutiae of managing the multiple arms and legs of big-bucks projects with clout (the last round of NIDS was a R70 million project). Her new role as dean of commerce will have her managing the university’s second-largest faculty using many of the same skills.

Fortunately, she’s a listener and gatherer. When Woolard was asked to produce a vision for the faculty, she was astounded by the idea that anyone could do so singlehandedly. The vision had to be produced with the input of the faculty community and a process built on listening, gathering, sifting and reflecting.

Though she recognises the significance of being the faculty’s first woman dean, Woolard is quick to point out that the idea of a “female leadership style” doesn’t resonate with her. The job needs hard and soft skills and everything in between to steer transformation in a faculty that is still too white.

“Transformation is going to be the biggest part of what I want to do in the next five years.” She came up against the hard edge of transformation in her first week as dean when UCT’s black alumni association issued a statement calling her appointment a “smokescreen for transformation”. It was uncomfortable but not unexpected, she says.

“We can’t pretend that it isn’t a problem that there are so many white deans. The faculty went into this appointment process with a very deliberate strategy of wanting to recruit a black dean. The fact that we didn’t succeed is an indictment of the slow pace of meaningful transformation of the higher education sector. We have to try harder. We can’t continue to say we can’t attract black academics because there are all these outside pressures [that make other options more attractive]. We have to have an aggressive recruitment and retention strategy.”

World at work

As dean, Woolard is also acutely aware of the faculty’s brand; she understands the need to attract the brightest and best and most diverse student corps − and to prepare them for the world of work.

“The whole way of working is changing; more and more people are working in atypical employment. We need to think of the softer skills like flexibility and resilience and teach our graduates how to be adaptable.

“It isn’t enough to say: this is what you’re going to study and this is what you’re going to do in your job for the next 40 years. I think we’re going to see increasing levels of ‘uberisation’ in the workplace. Businesses will buy services as and when they need them. Our students have to be able to market themselves and have to be able to self-manage.”

How do we teach those skills?

“Something we do very well at UCT is that we train up students to be critical and analytical. And if we’ve taught students how to engage critically, how to think and how to learn, then they’re much more adaptable in the workplace.”

Press pause

Though the deanship will absorb most of her time, Woolard will maintain a presence in the School of Economics and will continue to supervise PhD students. And she’ll keep her hand in research. “SALDRU will always be my research home,” she says.

Fortunately, there’s support on the home front – UCT is very much in the family. Her husband is Dr Chris Woolard, who teaches in the Centre for Materials Engineering. They met as res students at UCT in 1991. Their children, Andrew and Sarah, are in high school.

What else fills her life?

(Look of alarm) “Work! I don’t even cook,” she apologises. “And I read terribly low-brow stuff.”

Drill down a little and you learn that this “stuff” is mostly old-fashioned whodunits by PD James, Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy Sayers, which are filled with clues, red herrings and good detective work.

Some might say it’s simply data analysis in a different guise.

Story Helen Swingler. Photos Michael Hammond.

A family’s agony when a child goes missing can be almost unbearable. When time stretches into months and even years without a trace, the loss cuts even deeper. While it is tragic to lose a child, research by UCT PhD graduate Kavita Lakha could help to bring some closure.

UCT PhD graduate Kavita Lakha at work with Claudia Bisso, her colleague from the National Prosecuting Authority’s Missing Persons Task Team.

Lakha’s six-year-long research focused on the age of union of the epiphyses (the rounded ends of long bones) of the major joints of the human body in South African children. The research has revealed information that could ultimately help in identifying the remains of missing children.

“We are able to estimate the age of the child through the bones we find,” says Lakha. Through her PhD research, Lakha has developed a standard which can determine the age of a child or teenager through low-dose X-rays. The study can also be applied to forensic cases involving dry bones.

Lakha was motivated to pursue the research through her work at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), where she is a special investigator in the Missing Persons Task Team dealing with Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) cases.

Her research may seem bleak, but Lakha has witnessed the relief when family members have been told that the remains of a missing relative have been found, often years after they had disappeared.

After trawling through thousands upon thousands of police dockets followed by mortuary records and unmarked graves, Lakha recently discovered and identified the remains of a teenager who had been missing for 26 years. Finally being able to knock on the door of the home of the mother whose son had gone missing is a moment she will never forget.

“We thought the case would never be solved. I still see it as miraculous. When I met the mother and showed her a photograph, which she identified as being her son, she was beside herself. It was very emotional. It was incredibly sad, but she was also relieved that we’d found his remains. She could finally put her son to rest,” said Lakha.

She added, “Closure is very important. When there’s no body, there’s always uncertainty. While tragic to lose a child, it’s devastating not to find their remains. Finding and identifying remains or a body brings closure and family members are able to mourn their loss.”

Lakha used the Lodox statscan system as a tool of analysis. It emits low-dose radiation and provides a complete body scan in 13 seconds. The results of Lakha’s study show that there are no significant differences between the state of bone maturation in children of different South African biological and socio-economic groups, but that there can be marked differences between children from different countries. Lakha said it was important to develop standards that determine age in South Africa, as children from different countries mature at different ages.

“There is a general awareness that South African children mature more slowly. If you use standards developed on American children, they tend to over-estimate the age of South African children. This is why it’s important to develop standards for our country.”

Lakha said she was trying to foster relations with various mortuaries to see how well her proposed new standards could be implemented. Her research provides an alternative to the Greulich and Pyle method, which was developed in 1959 and is still the most commonly used method in South Africa.

Meticulously sorting through the detail of the TRC cases is a pivotal slice of work for the NPA, says Madeleine Fullard, the director of the Missing Persons Task Team in the NPA.

Fullard says that 500 people were officially reported missing to the TRC, although the number is believed to be closer to 1 000 within South Africa, and even more when taking into account the number of people who went missing while in exile under apartheid. The unit has managed to trace the remains of 100 people identified by the TRC and has exhumed their bodies during special ceremonies attended by bereaved family members.

“Part of the TRC’s work is throwing a light on the past and understanding the nature of political violence. Our work helps to contribute to this. We hope our project will spark a wider process on the African continent, where many people have gone missing,” says Fullard, who is keen to share the knowledge that the unit has gleaned over the years.

“If you think of the 9/11 victims in New York, every fragment of their bones was DNA tested, but in Africa we have mass graves, such as in Rwanda. There are only a handful of forensic anthropologists on the African continent. This shouldn’t be the case and it’s very important that it changes.”

For individual families, as painful as it can be to hear the news, at least it helps to unravel the mystery of why they died.

“It can be a lifelong agony for a parent when a child disappears. The torment of the imagination is never-ending. Even though we may not always find a child or young person alive, we can at least try to find out what happened,” says Fullard.

For Lakha, who was awarded her PhD by UCT in December 2015, her dedication and persistence in tracking down cases will continue.

“It’s a gruelling job but it’s immensely rewarding when we have a breakthrough and we’re able to help people to finally find some answers.”

Lakha, a recipient of the Nelson Mandela Scholarship, was awarded her PhD by UCT in December 2015 and was supervised in her research by Professor Alan Morris in the Department of Human Biology at UCT.

Story Kim Cloete. Photos Missing Persons Task Team.

What has UCT done in the last 12 months to create meaningful structural, economic and social change in the institution? In a recent letter to the university (dated 11 March 2016), Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price reflects on UCT’s transformation journey: how far the institution has come and what it is committing to for the rest of 2016.

Below is a summary with links to key highlights.

Prioritising transformation

• UCT’s draft strategic plan for 2016–2019 is in the process of being finalised – and transformation is at its core. This plan will guide ongoing and new transformation programmes at the university. Before going to Council in June 2016, the plan will be released for discussion and debate.

• Associate Professor Elelwani Ramugondo was appointed as special advisor to the vice-chancellor on transformation. Read her take on the value of discomfort when talking about transformation.

Appointing new senior leaders

There have been significant changes in UCT’s senior leadership in recent months.

• Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng joins UCT on 1 July 2016 as the incoming deputy vice-chancellor for research and internationalisation. She has a passion for young minds and maths education.
• Since the departure of Professor Crain Soudien, who left UCT in 2015 to head up the Human Sciences Research Council, Professor Anwar Mall has been acting as the deputy vice-chancellor for transformation. One of UCT’s commitments for 2016 is to find a strong candidate for this permanent post.

• Professor Alison Lewis took over as dean of the Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment on 1 June 2015.
• Professor Penny Andrews was appointed dean of the Faculty of Law with effect from 1 January 2016.
• Professor Ingrid Woolard started as dean of the Faculty of Commerce on 1 March 2016.
• Professor Bongani Mayosi begins his term as the dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences on 1 September 2016.

• In January 2016 Royston Pillay took up the mantle as UCT’s registrar, while Ashley Francis took over as UCT’s executive director of finance.

Diversifying the academy

In his letter, Price outlines what he regards at the university’s toughest challenge: changing the profile of the professoriate.

What’s been done to meet the challenge?

• In 2015 several faculty boards reviewed the people who sat on their academic promotions committees. One faculty changed the profile of their committee before the 2015 round of promotions.
• UCT is researching HR information to see if there’s evidence of different criteria being used for the appointment or promotion of academics based on race, and whether there’s any bias in decisions around which appointments are extended for staff over the age of 65.
• Thirty-five mid-level and senior academics (all from designated groups) were selected for the Next Generation Professoriate, a programme designed to ensure that candidates are promoted to associate or full professors within five years. This initiative is one aspect of Professor Francis Petersen’s Recruitment, Development and Retention (RDR) programme. RDR also includes the New Generation of Academics Programme, which is aimed at recruiting students entering their PhD studies into an academic career.

Some of the Next Generation Professoriate and their deans at the September 2015 launch.

Diversifying the staff body

• All new appointments are guided by UCT’s employment equity plan for 2015–2020. This overall plan was based on the individual plans drawn up by faculties and PASS (professional, administrative and support staff) departments, and was then debated and approved by Senate, the Institutional Forum, the University Transformation Advisory Committee and Council during the course of 2015.
• More money has been set aside to allow the university to attract and appoint equity candidates.
• Certain faculties and departments have decided to advertise all positions with the explicit preference that the post should be filled by a black South African.
• All reports submitted by employment equity (EE) representatives on selection committees are being reviewed to see whether reports were submitted and reviewed and whether EE reps raised any concerns about the selection process.

Opening up student access

The new admissions policy was implemented for the first time in 2015 for 2016 student applications. The policy is designed to increase the number of black and disadvantaged students at the university. The registrar’s office monitored the 2016 offers made and was satisfied that more offers were going out to black students than in previous years. Analysis of the take-up of offers and the change in social class distribution will be done in the next few months.

Creating safe spaces for critical conversations

In his letter, Price writes about how the most important interventions to improve UCT’s institutional climate are conversations. Open spaces where staff and students can talk about how they experience the institution are an opportunity to gain insight “into how we see and treat one another”.

A few examples from the year include:

• The university assembly on 25 March 2015, which was prompted by calls to have the statue of Cecil John Rhodes removed from campus
• Conversations in the Faculty of Humanities, where students made a claim for belonging and staff and students spoke about decolonising UCT
• Ongoing discussions and workshops in the Faculty of Health Sciences
• A Safety and Violence Initiative seminar on struggling with the past, making sense of the present and imagining the future

“For me, this is what the university is about. It’s about playing with the way you think about things and the way you relate to the world, and through this playfulness, really coming to new ways of being … I think we can all agree that the status quo is not working. If we expect students to just come to class and regurgitate what they are being taught, it’s bound to perpetuate the status quo.” Thuto Thipe

• An alumni roadshow on transformation
• The HIV/AIDS Inclusivity & Change Unit (HAICU) has facilitated 60 inclusivity workshops for roughly 4 000 first-year students in all faculties and residences, as well as for mentors and facilitators in student support programmes. These workshops focus on educating and sensitising new and returning students to issues of gender-based violence, patriarchy, sexual orientation, HIV, human rights and social justice.

(UCT’s website also includes an overview of some of these discussions, from Rhodes Must Fall to Fees Must Fall and beyond.)

Reforming the curriculum

• A group has been established to coordinate a broader review of
  • the relevance of UCT curricula for the South African and African contexts
  • opportunities for greater breadth in undergraduate curricula
  • research and service-learning opportunities for students to engage more with key challenges facing the continent.

An example of curriculum reform in action is an undergraduate African studies major, which is set to launch in the Faculty of Humanities in 2017.

• Following a recent Senate decision, UCT will also start recognising students’ contributions beyond the classroom – their volunteer service, leadership and other non-curricular learning activities – on academic transcripts.

Relooking UCT’s heritage, culture, signs and symbols

• 2015 will be remembered as the year the statue of Rhodes was removed from campus. But there were other important markers during the year, particularly the renaming of the Arts Block and the Graduate School of Humanities – now the AC Jordan and Neville Alexander buildings respectively.

“I am going to UCT to open that door and keep it ajar, so that our people too can come in. UCT on African soil belongs to us too. UCT can and never will be a true university until it admits us too, the children of the soil. I am going there to open that door and keep it ajar.” AC Jordan

• Looking forward, a task team of six (including three SRC-nominated student members) has completed an audit of building names and will tackle the question of Jameson Hall and four other buildings whose names have been questioned.
• Another task team has produced an inventory of commemorative plaques, sculptures, statues and art on campus and has identified a number of works in public spaces that are particularly controversial. This team will be developing a policy on the future acquisition, display and curation of art (keeping in mind the collective impact of works on display).
• The university has also started to infuse more of an African identity into its graduation ceremonies. In December 2015’s graduation season, Gaudeamus igitur was replaced by Abdullah Ibrahim’s Mannenberg and an imbongi praised new graduates. Read more.

Reviewing UCT governance and support structures

• A sexuality and gender policy has been drafted and is being discussed.
• UCT acknowledges the need to move away from the assumption of binary gender classification and recognises the right of individuals to self-classify. A working group is examining the implications of all administrative systems moving away from binary gender classification.
• Professor Rashida Manjoo has reviewed all sexual assault cases that came before the student disciplinary tribunal in the last five years. She found the sentencing was generally appropriate. However, one recent sentence was considered too lenient and the university has initiated an appeal to increase this sentence.
• A review of the Discrimination and Harassment Office (DISCHO) has been completed and recommendations are being considered. In the meantime, a Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) is being established and will be headed by Associate Professor Sinegugu Duma.
• In addition to the DISCHO review, reviews of the Institutional Forum and Transformation Services Office have just been submitted for consideration.
• A transformation dialogue forum was created in June 2015. Represented on this forum are student movements and representative structures, academics, deans, heads of department, PASS staff, the Black Academic Caucus, the Institutional Forum, trade unions and management. While the forum has struggled to get going, it is expected to gather in the next month to review UCT’s draft strategic plan.

Insourcing UCT workers

Perhaps one of the most significant transformation interventions in 2015 was the decision to insource the workers and services currently provided by six contracting companies (security, catering, two cleaning services, gardening and the UCT transport service – the Jammie Shuttle).

“Next year we’ll be colleagues!”
Read more about the historic insourcing decision.

Transformation plans for 2016

UCT’s draft strategic plan for 2016–2019 will soon be released for discussion and debate. In the meantime, below is a list of the university’s plans for the year ahead:

• Implement recommendations regarding the transformation office
• Appoint a deputy vice-chancellor for transformation
• Accelerate the work of the task teams on names of buildings and works of art
• Reimagine graduation ceremonies
• Continue to focus on employment equity (with emphasis on recruitment, analysing obstacles to promotion, and finding more concrete mechanisms of accountability for deans and heads of department)
• Assess the climate within departments (in part through 360° surveys of managers)
• Implement a new training programme for employment equity representatives and selection committee chairs
• Ensure that faculties and departments hold regular transformation forums
• Strengthen the Next Generation Professoriate and Recruitment, Development and Retention programmes
• Review the academic promotions criteria
• Review the admissions policy (based on analysis of the 2016 first-year student body, to whom this policy applied)
• Strengthen mental health services in Student Wellness Services, particularly with the addition of black therapists, and consider alternative healing methods
• Move Disability Services to a more accessible venue (if possible) and investigate challenges presented by the disability lobby
• Increase the number of gender-neutral toilets
• Relook administration systems, public statements and positions around LGBTQIA+ issues
• Consider the possibility of targeted awareness campaigns around LGBTQIA+ issues in residences
• Review UCT’s residence allocation policy
• Seek private and public funding to build at least one more residence.

Read the original letter

According to the latest QS World University Rankings by Subject 2016, UCT has ranked among the top 10 universities in the world in development studies for the second year in a row. Other South African and African universities also performed well in the rankings, particularly in this field.

The QS subject rankings use a combination of research citations and reputational surveys of academics and graduate employers worldwide. They are the largest of their kind, and this year they featured 42 disciplines. UCT scored in 31 of these – the most of any African university. South African universities achieved places in the top 100 in 21 subjects (12 of which were at UCT). This is six more than last year.

Development studies is the most competitive subject offered by South African universities. UCT was tied 9th in the world with Stanford University; the University of the Witwatersrand followed close behind in 14th position. Other African universities also performed strongly in this field – Makerere University in Uganda was 30th in the field, and the University of Nairobi ranked in the top 100.

UCT also performed strongly in geography, where it ranked in the top 50 in the world.

Other UCT subjects in the top 100 were education, medicine, archaeology, English language and literature, law, engineering (mineral and mining), architecture and the built environment, agriculture and forestry, anthropology, and politics and international studies.

Subject rankings give a more nuanced picture of university strengths than the overall university rankings. For instance, it is worth noting that while US universities occupy five of the top 10 places in the world rankings, only three reach the top 10 in development studies (of which Harvard University takes top place).

While UCT does not have a stand-alone department of development studies, its strong showing in the field is not surprising, given that it is reflected in many of the university’s strongest interdisciplinary research areas, such as the African Centre for Cities, the African Climate and Development Initiative and the Poverty and Inequality Initiative. All of these contain academics that are internationally recognised as leaders in their field.

Development studies is integrated into a large number of undergraduate and postgraduate courses at UCT, including gender studies, sociology, information systems, social development, computer science, energy, urban planning, political studies, economics, sustainable minerals development, film and media.

UCT regards international ranking systems with a measure of caution. The QS subject rankings, as with all the international rankings, are designed as a comparative measure, so they rank universities in relation to one another rather than against an objective measurement.

However, having universities that rank globally in any subject, and rank globally overall, benefits the country as a whole. It sends the message out to the world, including academics and business people who are contemplating studying or investing in South Africa, that the country’s higher-education system is globally competitive. The university benefits directly because prospective students and staff use the rankings to decide where they wish to study and advance their academic careers.

Story Carolyn Newton. Photo Michael Hammond.

In 2003 Joan Byamugisha had just finished high school and was waiting to start her studies in medicine at the Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, when life threw her the ultimate curveball.

Computer science PhD student Joan Byamugisha is focusing on natural language generation in her mother tongue of Runyankore.

At first she thought she was coming down with a bout of malaria, but a lab technician picked up that she had an extremely high white blood cell count. The diagnosis was leukemia and within weeks the disease had irreparably damaged her optic nerves, which robbed her not only of her sight but also her dream of becoming a doctor.

What followed was a period of rapid adjustment. Joan was still determined to pursue a university education, but although Makerere allowed her to enroll for some science courses, she was at sea.

“Obviously I couldn’t do it. I had never used a computer with screen-reading software. I didn’t know braille. There was no way of reading back what I needed to.”

So Joan spent four months learning braille and the necessary computer skills. When her brother, who had a background in IT, suggested she consider studying computer science, her academic career was born.

“You just come”

From the outset, Joan loved programming – “it’s completely text-based and I didn’t have to worry about images.”

With Makerere University unable to assist, she enrolled at the Uganda Martyrs University (UMU) in 2005, which welcomed her as their first visually impaired student.

“UMU were very, very good,” she says. “I remember the registrar saying, ‘You just come and we’ll see what we can do.’ ”

Three years later she emerged with a first-class bachelor’s degree in computer science and economics, but she soon found that nobody wanted to employ a blind person. Undeterred, she studied further, enrolling for a distance-learning master’s in software engineering at De Montfort University in Leicester.

After completing her master’s in 2011, Joan landed a job at UMU lecturing in the IT department and heading their new special needs department. The academic bug had bitten, however, and by 2013 Joan realised that she needed to start working towards a PhD before she got “too comfortable”.

Programming for indigenous languages

At first, she considered focusing on speech recognition software in her local language of Runyankore, but soon realised that she would need to take a step back.

“If you want to teach a computer how to talk, it has to learn how to process the words. But if the language itself does not have computational resources, that has to be the starting point.”

Instead, she is now focusing on natural language generation (NLG) and is working on a grammar engine that will be able to recognise the grammar rules in Runyankore to output sentences for computer-generated prescriptions in the health-care sector.

While her research is specific to Runyankore and a particular application, the underlying principles can be generalised to languages such as isiZulu and isiXhosa. What they have in common is that the grammar is based on the noun-class system, which determines the rules for verb conjugation and noun categorisation.

Initially, she applied for and was accepted to do her PhD at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia but funding was not forthcoming.

“In a way, that helped”, says the ever-positive Joan, “because there is so much I did not know regarding natural language processing and computational linguistics.”

Instead, she took a year out to brush up her skills in both these areas, and to write papers which would help her applications for PhD studies elsewhere.

Settling in at UCT

Then the UCT opportunity came up in 2014 via the Hasso Plattner Institute. She found herself having to complete a flurry of forms and to pack up over a weekend to make it in time for registration.

To help Joan settle in, her mother travelled with her. She now lives at Obz Square, which she says is an easier environment to get around – “you can count doors”. Also, Pick n Pay is close by and UCT’s Disability Service provides transport to upper campus.

She is full of praise for the Disability Service, which has helped to settle her in and to jump a few additional hurdles.

One such hurdle was the fact that she arrived with only a paperback copy of the Runyankore dictionary that she needed for her studies. Denise Oldham arranged for student volunteers to transcribe the entire dictionary – a process that took around three months.

And then there was her recent trip to Pretoria to the Turkish embassy for a visa interview so that she could go to the conference she’d been invited to. It was her first solo trip since losing her sight and the Disability Service made all the transport arrangements.

She is hoping to travel to Turkey with Dr Langa Khumalo, who is one of the co-authors of the paper she is to present. But if that’s not possible, she says she’ll have to “bite the bullet again” and tackle the trip on her own.

With her funding set to carry through to 2018, she hopes to graduate in June of that year.

Is she proud of what she’s achieved thus far? She laughs: “Not yet, but I will be when I wear the cap and get the doctor title.”

And what happens after that?

“I want to work where I’ll be most productive. I don’t care where.”

Story Andrea Weiss. Photo Michael Hammond.

Linked studies identify gene regulatory switches that turn bat genes on and off at crucial times during limb development, with implications for understanding how differences in the size, shape and structure of limbs are generated in mammals in general, including humans.

The fingers in the wing of the adult Natal long-fingered bat are dramatically elongated compared to the toes of the foot (grey photo). The insets show photographs of bones (stained in red) and cartilage elements (stained in blue) of the wing and hindlimb of a bat embryo. Note how long fingers 2 to 5 of the wing are compared to the symmetrical five digits of the foot. Image supplied by Nicola Illing and Nadav Ahituv.

An international team of scientists from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has for the first time identified both genes and gene regulatory elements that are essential in wing development in the Natal long-fingered bat (Miniopterus natalensis), a species widely distributed in east and southern Africa.

Bats are the only mammals capable of powered flight – an ability that evolved about 50 million years ago.

The structure of the bat wing, as noted by Charles Darwin in 1859 in On the Origin of Species, is widely used among biologists as an example of both evolutionary novelty (the appearance of a new trait) and vertebrate homology (shared ancestry between two seemingly different structures) – in this case, the wing of the bat and the forelimb of other mammals.

Mining the origin of flight in mammals

The path of bat evolution is unclear, noted Nicola Illing, co-senior investigator based in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UCT: “The fossil record does not show the transition from tree-climbing mammals with short, free digits to ones that have elongated fingers supporting a wing. We have had the privilege of being able to use the tools of modern genetics to decipher how genes are turned on and off during bat embryonic development to transform a mammalian forelimb into a wing.”

“While some attempts have been made to identify the molecular events that led to the evolution of the bat wing, these have been primarily done on a ‘gene by gene’ basis,” said co-senior investigator Nadav Ahituv, a UCSF professor of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences and faculty member of the UCSF Institute for Human Genetics.

“This work lays out a genome-wide blueprint for the causes that led to the development of the bat wing, a key evolutionary innovation that contributed to bats becoming the second most diverse order of mammals.”

The new research was presented in two papers published on March 28, 2016, one in Nature Genetics and one in PLoS Genetics.

For the Nature Genetics paper, the scientists, including co-lead authors UCT PhD student Stephen Schlebusch and Walter L Eckalbar, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Ahituv’s laboratory at UCSF, first sequenced the entire genome of the Natal long-fingered bat. They then used the latest sequencing technologies to take a snapshot of which genes were active to complete a genomic analysis on the developing wings and feet of bat embryos. Zoe Gill, an MSc student in the Illing lab, characterised where a number of key regulatory genes and novel long non-coding RNA transcripts were precisely expressed in bat embryos collected from the De Hoop Nature Reserve, validating the high throughput molecular genomic analysis.

Over 7 000 genes identified

The researchers identified over 7 000 genes that are expressed differently in forelimbs compared to hindlimbs at three key stages of bat wing development. They found that many signalling pathways are activated differentially as well, including pathways important in limb formation, digit growth, long bone development and cell death. Also expressed differently are many proteins associated with ribosomes – molecular machines found in all cells that are responsible for protein production during limb development.

“It took bats millions of years to evolve wings,” said Eckalbar. “Our work shows that they did this through thousands of genetic alterations, involving both genes used by all animals during limb development and genes whose usage in limb development may be unique to bats.”

“This gives us our first detailed picture of the genomics behind bat wing development,” said Ahituv. “Importantly, this work identified not just which genes are expressed at what stage of growth, but the genetic switches in the genome that are responsible for turning those genes on and off.”

“The events that initiate the dramatic elongation of digits in the bat wing happen much earlier than previously reported,” said Illing. “This is predicted from the differential activation of key signalling pathways which pattern the hands and feet of all mammals.”

Ash Parker, an honours student in molecular and cell biology, together with Mandy Mason, a PhD student, and Illing, confirmed this prediction by showing that the size of cartilage condensations that subsequently form the scaffolds for formation of bones are much larger in the developing bat wing compared to bat feet.

Bat accelerated regions (BARs)

For the study published in PLoS Genetics, the research team, including co-lead authors Betty M Booker, a post-doctoral fellow in Ahituv’s laboratory, and Tara Friedrich, a UCSF PhD student, identified bat accelerated regions (BARs).

These BARs are “genomic sequences that are conserved in evolution and have not changed in most vertebrates, but experienced rapid changes in the common ancestor of today’s bats,” explained Friedrich, a member of the laboratory of co-senior investigator Katherine S Pollard, PhD, a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes and a faculty member at the UCSF Institute for Human Genetics.

They mapped these BARs onto areas that were predicted to be important switches that turn genes on during limb development and found 166 BARs with the potential to influence bat wing development.

The researchers selected five of these BARs and tested their bat sequences in transgenic mouse embryos. They found that all five bat sequences were capable of switching on a reporter gene in the developing mouse forelimb and that three bat sequences showed different activities than their mouse sequence counterparts. One region, BAR116, is located near the Hoxd genes, which are known to be involved in limb patterning and skeletal growth.

Hoxd genes mirror activity of BAR116

“The pivotal role of Hoxd genes in regulating the formation of the autopod (our hands and feet) has been known since the early ’90s, with current work showing that removing these genes in developing transgenic mice results in slight reductions of digit lengths,” said Mandy Mason, a PhD student at UCT.

She has shown that Hoxd10 and Hoxd11 are far more active in bat wings compared to hindlimbs during bat embryonic development. She explained, “In the bat, dramatic alterations in Hoxd gene expression correspond to the large differences in the length of the bones that make up the hand of the bat wing. This finding demonstrates how examining extreme, but natural developmental events, such as the formation of the bat wing, can give us potential roles of genes in a system.”

Illing noted that, aside from the insights it provided into bat wing development, the project was the first to identify genetic switches on a genomic scale using embryos from wild-caught animals, rather than laboratory animals.

The field-based preparation methods for doing this work were pioneered by two UCT graduate students, Mandy Mason and Dorit Hockman, during their honours year in the Department of Zoology in 2005 under the supervision of Professor David Jacobs (Department of Biological Sciences, UCT) and Nicola Illing.

“It is gratifying seeing this work come to fruition after a decade of research. The collaboration with the Ahituv lab, was sparked by our chance encounter over lunch at the 12th International Conference on Limb Development in Quebec in 2012, where we discussed our respective research interests in human hand congenital disorders and my interest in the evolution of the bat wing,” said Illing.

Vertebrate forelimb skeletal elements are highly diverse. The functional requirements of the limb (how it is used to interact with the environment) correspond to its basic structure with species that manipulate objects (grasping) typically having five free digits; those that run (running) having elongate fused elements; those that swim (swimming) showing shortened robust elements that support a webbed structure; and those that fly (flying) exhibiting several means of supporting an enlarged surface to form a wing. The basic skeletal elements are shared among all vertebrates with the humerus (red), radius (green), ulna (blue), metacarpals (orange) and phalanges (white) indicated. Image by Mandy Mason (PhD student, UCT).

Understanding limb malformations in humans

Ahituv agrees: “This work will increase our understanding of how alterations in limb development could lead to limb malformations in humans. Potentially, it could eventually help contribute to the development of tools and techniques to prevent such malformations.”

Other authors of the Nature Genetics paper are Sierra Nishizaki (PhD student), Nadja Makki, PhD, and Julia E VanderMeer, PhD, of UCSF; Christina Muswamba-Nday, PhD, of UCT; Kimberly Nevonen of the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC); Elizabeth Terhune of ONPRC and the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO; and Lucia Carbone, PhD, of ONPRC and Oregon Health and Science University. Jeff D Wall, PhD, MS, UCSF associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics and a faculty member at the UCSF Institute for Human Genetics, was a co-senior investigator.

Other authors of the PLoS Genetics paper are Julia E VanderMeer, PhD, and Jingjing Zhao, PhD, of UCSF; and Malcolm Logan, PhD, of the National Institute for Medical Research and King’s College London, UK.

Both studies were supported by funds from the National Institutes of Health and the National Research Foundation (South Africa).

Read a related article:

• Scientists investigate the weird genetics of bat wings in the Washington Post.

In June 1966 US Senator Robert F Kennedy visited South Africa to deliver his Day of Affirmation address to the National Union of South African Students’ (NUSAS). South Africa was in the tightening grip of apartheid, which was accompanied by rising incidents of banning and detention without trial.

Now and then: Dr Ken Hughes (right), struggle stalwart formerly with UCT’s Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, recalls events around Robert F Kennedy’s visit to South Africa in 1966 and his “Ripples of Hope” speech. Beside him is former student activist and alumnus Keith Gottschalk, who later joined the Department of Political Science at UWC.

It was NUSAS president Ian Robertson’s invitation that brought Kennedy to South Africa and it was intended to rally opposition to apartheid. The government was particularly twitchy about the visit. Robertson himself had been banned a month before Kennedy arrived.

Kennedy visited four universities, including UCT where liberalism and anti-government sentiment were on the rise among its students.

Addressing a packed Jameson Hall on 6 June 1966, Kennedy said: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

The speech is regarded as Kennedy’s finest and became the subject of a documentary, RFK in the Land of Apartheid, by local filmmaker Larry Shore and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Kennedy’s eldest daughter.

The Kennedy visit footage was shown at the colloquium alongside In God’s Country, a documentary made by a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) TV team, which visited campus a few months later. This film highlighted the September 1966 student protest against the visit to UCT of Jan Haak, the minister of mines and planning. Haak had been invited to UCT to open the Snape Building.

The dangers of protest and of running up against the apartheid state were not taken lightly, said struggle stalwart Dr Ken Hughes, who appeared in the CBC video as a young student.

Now a retired member of the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at UCT, Hughes shared his recollections alongside those of anti-apartheid veteran and fellow UCT alumnus Keith Gottschalk. It was a case of learning which battles to pick, said Hughes, and how to fight them, subtly. That subtlety is seen in the clip where Hughes is interviewed about the anti-Haak demonstration.

“I’m asked what I see as the future [in South Africa] and I’m saying that the white regime will last a long time. But I’m clearly avoiding saying it will be overthrown in a bloody revolution … in those days one had to be very careful … there was a certain kind of code that was adopted. People would talk about bringing about social change in South Africa rather than revolutionising the society ...”

Hughes served on the UCT Students’ Representative Council for two years and was part of a group associated with the university’s benignly named Modern World Society, chaired by Andrew Colman (now a professor at the University of Leicester).

“I was recruited by Andrew, who at that stage was a Marxist – I was a radical liberal so I could join their organisation.”

Learning politics became a question of what they could and couldn’t do.

“There were certain things you avoided doing and some of them were also because you didn’t want to score an own goal. Some things were counterproductive and I’m very conscious [seeing this video clip again] of this.”

Hughes and his fellow student activists also avoided running up against pro-government staff at UCT. Dr JP Duminy, UCT’s principal and vice-chancellor at the time, was criticised for his supposed complicity with apartheid.

“One of the things which there isn’t a record of was an anonymous pamphlet we put out at the time called ‘Yellow Duminy’, which depicted Duminy in yellow, which showed that he was a coward,” says Hughes.

“It went out anonymously and it was a complete disaster. And so, one of the things I learnt early on was that if one were serious about politics, one needed to learn to anticipate what the responses would be and if one was very serious, you learnt to avoid the situation [that would lead to an own goal].”

When the state president visited campus in 1966, Hughes and his fellow activists knew “that having that kind of demonstration we’d just had with Haak wouldn’t work”.

“We would have run into serious problems demonstrating against the state president … so I was tasked with the unenviable task of trying to persuade the students to not confront him. So I wrote a pamphlet, which we handed out instead. It was a splendid piece of subtlety called ‘The Visit’, and it referred to a movie and stage production that had been circulating by Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

The plot concerned a difficult trade-off between an embittered woman seeking revenge and the townspeople who would benefit from her largesse after committing murder on her behalf. The parallels were clear to those who understood, said Hughes.

“It was an appropriately subtle pamphlet that would evade censorship and it raised amusement and engagement among the radical students. And, most importantly, it prevented us from having a confrontation with the law. So it … was what we could do and what we couldn’t do and how close we could sail to the wind.”

In their recollections, Hughes and Gottschalk provided an interesting glimpse of the early textures and nuances of student protest.

Story Helen Swingler. Photo Michael Hammond.

An audience of 200, comprising students, staff and two politicians, attended a forum established by the new director of the School of Economics, Professor Lawrence Edwards, and the former ambassador of South Africa to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), adjunct Professor Faizel Ismail.

Prof Ingrid Woolard, Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo (head of the WTO), Prof Lawrence Edwards and student Darkowa Awinador.

Summing up, Prof Edwards observed: “I was interested in the nuances of how to resolve issues. It was fascinating to see the politics students asking about economics, and the economics students asking about politics … and the lawyers, well, they asked about law.”

The public lecture was occasioned by the first visit to Cape Town of the director general of the World Trade Organisation, Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo, who is a long-term friend of Prof Ismail.

Prof Ismail’s PhD explored the role of South Africa in the WTO before apartheid. This was a fitting starting point for the afternoon’s discussions.

Prof Edwards said he was proud that South Africa was not a passive participant in the global arena, but has helped, through the WTO, to define the rules governing international trade. He added that he welcomed a forum in this space, as academics should be debating trade policy critically and constructively.

Also on the panel was the minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Rob Davies, who has led South Africa’s new trade and industrial policy. He noted that the apartheid regime declared South Africa to be a developed country during the earlier WTO negotiations. This set South Africa on an uneven playing field as it was required to reduce import-tariff protection by more than other emerging economies. The solution, he suggested, was to promote regional integration across Africa.

Azevêdo, who is the sixth director general of the WTO, is a former ambassador of Brazil and also led that country’s battle for fairness in the cotton industry against the United States – a battle which still wages.

He recalled Nelson Mandela’s visit to Geneva where he gave a speech that is still talked about. Mandela told the WTO that it provided the foundation on which deliberations could be built. However, to realise those aspirations, “wise work” needed to be done.

“The need for wisdom is more evident than ever,” said Azevêdo.

He added that South Africa had a leading voice in the WTO as the current chair of the Dispute Settlement committee is a South African, Xavier Carim.

Azevêdo’s claim that the WTO was no longer a “rich man’s club” was challenged by a politics student who argued that the fact that it had taken 30 years to achieve a measure of agricultural reform was evidence to refute this.

Azevêdo responded: “It is no longer true. Forty-three members are African. It’s not a small club, it’s a big club. Everybody has a seat at the table, everybody has a say.”

He said there was great potential for growth in the African market, as trade with neighbours on the continent accounted for just one tenth of African trade. For example, South Africa’s biggest partner is the European Union.

The recent Nairobi conference, the first in Africa, was where South Africa played an important role in attempting to level the playing fields for farmers in developing countries and helping them to compete on fairer terms. However, this process was “moving too slowly, not delivering enough.”

At this point Azevêdo gave a classic negotiating tip. He said that whatever idea you propose, you need to think not only with your own shoes. If you are a representative of a developing country, think what a guy from the developed country would need. Putting the other guy’s shoes on your feet is the hardest part. But it is important to find some degree of commonality. Developed countries need to think what is happening on the other side.

He said: “I hate to break it to you, but fairness is not always there. What drives negotiations is the interests of both sides. It’s always a trade-off.

“Putting on the other guy’s shoes does not mean that you are surrendering. It gives you leverage. If you are only looking at your cards, you’re missing the game. You have to know your cards and extract as much as you can by giving as little as you can.”

He added: “Everybody should be unhappy at the end of the negotiation.”

He said the WTO was undergoing a period of reflection, a period of catharsis.

“In Bali we achieved what was deemed to be impossible. Nigeria was more than impossible, but we pulled the rabbit out of the hat. But we are running out of rabbits.”

He added: “The potential ahead is huge. Everybody is at the drawing board to reflect on what can be done. This brings me back to Nelson Mandela. We need wise work. You have the brains here to do the wise work that is needed.”

Story and photos by Carolyn McGibbon.