Wisdom teeth
UWC’s first dentists
Making family and academic history
It is 40 years since the University of the Western Cape saw its first intake of dentistry students capped. Smiling back from the historic photograph is Dr Soraya Yasin Harnekar, the only woman student in the first class of UWC dental graduates.
“It made me a little lonely, being the only woman in the class, but the guys looked after me quite well,” says Harnekar. “One professor used to address the class as ‘Ms Yasin and gentlemen’ and then the guys would say: ‘But she is an honorary gentleman.’ ”
It was 1978 and South Africa was knee-deep in apartheid. “There was unrest, our classes were suspended, but we continued,” says Harnekar.
And there was tragedy. During her fourth year of study, her 23-year-old brother went missing.
“For two days we couldn’t find him. We looked at all our friends’ houses, at all the hospitals. No sign of him,” says Harnekar.
Eventually, they made the trip that no family ever wants to make: to the morgue. “We found him there and identified him.”
They discovered that he had gone to the unemployment office in Cape Town and then for a walk on the Parade.
“He loved walking there, but on that day he happened to be there when violence erupted,” says Harnekar. “He was shot dead by the authorities. We were not informed, they just took his body away.”
On the day they identified his body, Harnekar, then 21, had to write a test. She did so despite her grief and shock, knowing her brother would want her to carry on. She was the first person in the history of her family to attend university.
Harnekar was enrolled for a BSc when she heard that UWC had opened a dental faculty. “I can’t say I always wanted to do dentistry, but I said let me just go and see what it’s about. I applied, and I have never looked back.”
She vividly remembers graduation day and wishes her brother could have been there to show his pride in her. UWC didn’t have a hall, so the ceremony was held at the Baxter Theatre.
“When we got our results and I saw I had passed, I smiled so much my cheek muscles were sore. I think that is the only time in my life I have smiled that much.”
But the job still makes her happy.
“It is such a wonderful place to work,” she says. She focuses on children’s dentistry, a field which she says is not an official area of specialisation but one which they are “working on getting recognised”.
For her, children’s teeth are evidence of how things have changed in South Africa. Four decades ago, she says, no effort was made to save children’s teeth — they would be extracted for the slightest problem. The year before he died, her brother had come home in agony after a dentist pulled 24 teeth in one sitting.
“When I started looking after children’s teeth, I told them we could save the teeth,” says Harnekar. “They don’t have to be extracted.”
She is one of nine children and her six younger siblings still have all their own teeth.
The university itself has also changed dramatically. In Harnekar’s day all but one of her professors were white and facilities were dismal. Today, there is a state-of-the-art conference facility and a privatepractice simulation clinic. There is great diversity among faculty members and students, more than half of whom are now women.
“When I started at UWC, it looked like a military camp,” she says. “Today it looks like the most beautiful university. It will be wonderful for people at our reunion in July to see how it has developed.”
When I started at UWC, it looked like a military camp Dr Soraya Yasin Harnekar
The march was stopped in its tracks at the Modderdam Road gate by a dozen Casspirs and guns pointed at the marchers Jairam Reddy