The 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of the Western Cape recently hosted a memorial service for Professor Jakes Gerwel, most eminent alumni.
The memorial brought together friends, business associates, academics, government and members of communities that Gerwel inspired. The 1 503 people who came to celebrate his life included Graca Machel and former President FW de Klerk.
Gerwel was associated with UWC for most of his adult life, and was instrumental in its transformation from an apartheid institution to a leading intellectual resource for the new nation. He was an inspiring teacher, pioneering new approaches to his discipline of literary studies.
When democracy triumphed, he was appointed Director General in the Office of President Mandela, a task he performed with distinction.
Since then, he has been a prominent public intellectual, contributing thoughtful articles to the press, speaking in a wide variety of forums, and continuing to lead as Distinguished Professor of Humanities at UWC and as Chancellor of Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网.
0nce upon a time an illegitimate regime created a 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 College for Coloureds, destined for mediocrity, and with the view to entrench the notion of racial and ethnic separation, while demonstrating the power of that regime to control.
Once upon a time, in the early years of this university college, a fairly short, rather thin young man from Kornmadagga in the Eastern Cape enrolled as a student, and this ordinary act, would rewrite that apartheid script forever.
I first met Jakes in 1966 when I enrolled at the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of the Western Cape (UWC), and was deeply impressed by the mastery he had of the Afrikaans language.
He spoke quite softly, in measured tones, crisply and without gestures. He did not speak often, but when he did, one was drawn to listening both for the articulation and the substance, always challenging, always thoughtful.
He was already a leader then and the expectation was that he would "become someone".
The burning issue at UWC at that time was whether we should have a Students Representative Council. Jakes and I were on opposite sides on this matter.
He was adamant that we should not legitimise the apartheid state by doing anything other than our academic work, while I argued for a base of some kind that was recognised by the students for engaging with the management of the college.
It was Jakes who led me always to speak English in my four years there. My problem was that Jakes spoke an Afrikaans that was alien to me and left me hugely self-conscious. My Afrikaans came out of District Six and I could understand clearly what "Ja, dit kos 2 en six cos why, dis geimport, meant, but Jakes lost me after 10 seconds.
I next engaged with Jakes in 1985 when I joined the staff of UWC as a senior lecturer in education. Jakes was by this time the vice Rector, after a stellar history of work in UWC's Afrikaans Nederlands department where he led the reconceptualisation of literary studies.
This example had spread to other departments like sociology, political studies and history, as UWC tried to make sense of itself in the early 1970s, of Soweto post 1976 and its role in the growing struggle for freedom.
These 70s engagements presaged what UWC would become in the 80s under Jakes's tenure as rector: an open, South African 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 and the Intellectual home of the left, which was guaranteed to be under siege from the regime almost daily.
Jakes, together with Professor Van Der Ross, was also instrumental in creating the UWC — 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Missouri relationship which reminded UWC constantly that liberation and education must go together.
Also created was the Mayibuye Centre, our treasure trove of the struggle past. By this time also, Jakes's razor sharp brain, as experienced in the 60s and 70s, had developed additional blades filled with experience, wisdom and intellectual power and with a strong sense of mission:
On a lighter note it was in 1987 that Jakes, Lefie Engelbrecht and I were walking to the "hek" to engage with the leader of the police who, with the aid of a megaphone, was demanding that the students and staff disperse.
We were about 10 metres away from him when a stone was thrown and they opened fire with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Two new understandings emerged for the three of us on that day: one was that Jakes was the fastest of the three of us, and his acceleration out of the blocks astonishing as he even left one shoe behind. The second, was that three people can indeed hide behind a small bush.
It came as no surprise that Nelson Mandela turned to Jakes to become his Director General: all the right ingredients were in place. Jakes was not an ideologue, he was a true academic with a space in his mind for other possibilities.
Jakes was not a politician, but was an extremely political thinker. Jakes was a leader, but did not seek to be one. Jakes loved our nation and worked tirelessly in its service, but he was not a nationalist.
Jakes was brave but would have felt deeply embarrassed if ever called that. He was, and is celebrated but eschewed the limelight.
Under Jakes Gerwel, the UWC flourished and made its mark in the intellectual and the political worlds. For a time it may be argued that its work in the humanities and the social sciences held its own against the very best universities in the world.
Those of us now at the UWC cherish the legacy that Jakes has left us. We will protect it and continue to feed it with scholarship of the kind now being experienced at the UWC in the work of our Centre for the Study of the Humanities and many many other sites of' critical and hopeful intellectual endeavour'.
In our fairly recent publication, Becoming UWC, Lallu writes, "This book has pieced together fragments in a genealogy that offer glimpses into the contests and efforts to unravel the legacies of apartheid's project of separate education.
"In seeking to retexture the university, to offer a different weave, we have equally invested in the idea of UWC in the post-apartheid present. In this respect we hope this book offers a few significant points of departure as we think ahead".
Jakes, we are now striving in this new time to think ahead and make sense of UWC's local and global contexts, both social and natural, and our role within it.
We do so with confidence because we have done it before, under your guidance, we did it before.
It was said of Thomas More that he was a man for all seasons. It is tempting to say that in Jakes Gerwel humankind has found, at the very least, More's equal. Goodbye my Vice-Chancellor, my friend.
By Brian O'Connell Rector and Vice-Chancellor, 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of the Western.
Source: Diamond Fields