The death of Rhodes University chancellor Jakes Gerwel will
leave a big void in many people’s lives
One of the first messages of condolences following the death
of Rhodes University chancellor Prof Jakes Gerwel came from a retired academic
who said he was “a good and great man. He will be hard to replace”.
The chairperson of Rhodes’ UK Trust, Geoffrey de Jager,
wrote: “What sad and devastating news. A great man who often gave me wise
counsel, his death will leave a big void in many people’s lives.”
I first met Jakes Gerwel in 1987 at the London apartment of
former deputy minister of foreign affairs, Aziz Pahad.
This was soon after Gerwel became vice-chancellor of the
University of the Western Cape (UWC).
I was excited by his commitment to make UWC the
“intellectual home of the democratic left,” and was thrilled when he invited me
to consider joining UWC when I returned to South Africa.
Joining UWC in 1989 was the smartest thing I have done in my
life.
Many black intellectuals and scholars like myself owe our
achievements and positions to Gerwel’s bold and inspired leadership and the
exciting intellectual environment that he cultivated at UWC.
And so it was exciting to be formally linked with him again
when I became vice-chancellor at Rhodes in 2006.
He will be fondly remembered and greatly missed as
chancellor of Rhodes University.
A humble, gentle man of great integrity with a lively mind
and intellect, he was always a source of good judgement and wise counsel.
He will be warmly remembered for the grace and dignity with
which he officiated at the university’s graduation ceremonies and capped
thousands of graduating students.
Born on January 18 1946 in Somerset East in the rural
Eastern Cape, Professor Gert Johannes Gerwel was a product of historically
disadvantaged schools in the Eastern Cape.
Like most black South Africans of rural backgrounds, he had
to triumph over the apartheid and Verwoerdian dictum that there was no place
for blacks beyond being hewers of wood and drawers of water.
In a country deeply challenged to improve schooling and
realise the potential and talents of all our youth, his example of a rural boy
who achieved remarkable success under adverse conditions must serve as a source
of inspiration for young people who today struggle with the burden of dismal
educational opportunities.
Gerwel was an exceptional, courageous, gifted and pioneering
South African intellectual, scholar, leader and citizen. He had a profound
commitment to creating a just and humane society.
Through a long and distinguished association with the higher
education sector, as an academic, dean, vice-chancellor, chairperson of the
Committee of University Principals in the early 1990s, chancellor, and
chairperson of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, Gerwel was an outstanding
champion of higher education.
As chancellor, he challenged Rhodes to become socially
conscious and think critically and imaginatively about access, equity and
transformation, and about its role in socioeconomic development issues in South
Africa, especially in the Eastern Cape.
On accepting an honorary doctorate from Rhodes, Gerwel said:
“Universities are both central agents for change and steady beacons of
continuity and tradition”.
He was a strong advocate of Rhodes University pursuing, in a
principled manner, equity with quality and quality with equity. He took pride
in the university’s academic achievements and performance in research and
teaching and its increasing involvement in community engagement.
The Jakes Gerwel Rhodes University Scholarship Fund is
testimony to his own life of achievement and supports Eastern Cape students
from socially disadvantaged backgrounds to attend Rhodes University and
graduate from one of South Africa’s leading tertiary institutions.
Gerwel was not only a significant figure in higher
education, but also an important beacon in the economic, social and political
life of South Africa more generally.
There were many pioneering firsts.
On June 5 1987 he became the first radical vice-chancellor,
not only of UWC but of any South African university.
He led the rejection of the apartheid principles on which
UWC had been established. Noting that the “Afrikaans universities stand firmly
within the operative context of Afrikaner nationalism”, and that “the
English-language universities operate within the contexts of anglophile
liberalism”, he observed that there was no university linked to “those people
and institutions working for a fundamental transformation of the old
settler-colonial order”.
In this context, he declared that UWC faced “the historical
imperative to respond to the democratic left, to be an intellectual home for
the left”. This meant that UWC had to “develop a critical alignment with the
democratic movement” and had to “educate towards and for a changed society”.
Gerwel stated that he could not “in conscience, in truth,
educate or lead education towards the reproduction and maintenance of a social
order which is undemocratic, discriminatory, exploitative and repressive”.
Gerwel was too good and thoughtful an intellectual to reduce
a university to a political institution.
President Mandela has noted: “The nation drew inspiration
from (UWC’s) defiant transformation of itself from an apartheid ethnic
institution into a proud national asset: from its concrete and manifest concern
for the poor, for women and rural communities, and from its readiness to
grapple with the kinds of problems that a free and democratic South Africa was
to deal with later”.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu recalled Gerwel saying, especially
at a time when it was unpopular: “We are on the side of the downtrodden, we are
going to work for the upliftment of our people.”
Under Gerwel, UWC rejected apartheid, and committed itself
to non-racialism, non-sexism and social justice and “the development of the
Third World communities in South Africa”.
Access was opened to all South Africans and UWC began to
ditch its previous baggage as a “coloured” and “bush” university.
Intellectual debate flourished and UWC became an exciting
space for socially committed and engaged scholarship.
Gerwel took knowledge and intellectual work seriously.
As he was wont to point out to the more action-oriented:
“Good intellectual work entails hard work of a special type. It is as
difficult, if not more difficult, than organising door-to-door work, street
committees and mass rallies.”
He did not, however, eschew action.
He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with protesters in Cape Town
during the defiance campaign marches of the late 1980s.
And during protests at UWC that often spilled onto the
streets, he shielded students and academics confronted by riot police armed
with rubber bullets and tear gas.
Gerwel’s Literatuur en Apartheid, published in 1983, remains
a key text in the Afrikaans and southern African literature discourse. He also
published various monographs, articles, essays and papers on literary,
educational and sociopolitical issues.
There was educational innovation that was years ahead of any
other university.
One area of profound work was in academic development
programmes, which sought to provide
“epistemological access” and real equality of opportunity for the poor.
Gerwel helped to significantly advance gender equality at
UWC. Compared with men, women at UWC suffered many disabilities related to
salaries, benefits, pensions, leave and the like.
While the efforts of women at UWC were decisive, Gerwel’s
support as the vice-chancellor was critical in creating a more gender-equal
institution.
The early 1990s saw UWC become a key site for policy
research in support of an equitable and democratic South Africa.
Gerwel brought those of us working in the arena of higher
education policy development into conversation with others working on
constitutional, economic, trade, health and other policy issues.
Many of those involved in such policy work have become
Cabinet ministers and leaders of institutions post-1994.
Another first was when Madiba recruited Gerwel to become
democratic South Africa’s first director-general and Cabinet secretary in the
office of the president.
Later, he chaired the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the
Mandela Rhodes Foundation, which awards postgraduate scholarships to talented
students.
The numerous honorary doctorates awarded to Gerwel and his
extensive leadership roles in civil society, business and sports organisations
are all testimony to the respect he enjoyed in all spheres.
He can rest content in the knowledge that he lived his life
as advocated by an outstanding revolutionary, Nikolai Ostrovsky: man’s dearest
possession is life.
It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to
feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a
mean and petty past; so live that, dying he might say: all my life, all my
strength were given to the finest cause in all the world – the fight for the
liberation of humankind.
Xolani Nyali, a former Rhodes SRC president who came into
contact with Gerwel, wrote to me: “He ran his race, it is now complete. Others
must take over from where he left off.” Indeed!
Hamba Kahle, bold, humble and gentle man, leader and mentor of
great integrity, intellect and dry and understated humour. You will be dearly
missed.
