Tobias too important to be forgotten: Mbeki
LEADING palaeoanthropologist Professor Phillip Tobias received a high-profile send-off at his funeral, with former president Thabo Mbeki saying his legacy was “too important and too durable to be forgotten”.
The hominid evolution expert, who died at the age of 86 at the Donald Gordon Medical Centre in Johannesburg on Thursday after a long illness, was buried at the Jewish burial section of West Park Cemetery yesterday.
President Jacob Zuma, the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, the DA, Gauteng Tourism Authority and Johannesburg Mayor Parks Tau were among those who paid tribute.
Tobias was nominated for a Nobel prize three times and was the only person to hold three professorships simultaneously at the University of the Witwatersrand.
He successfully campaigned for the Sterkfontein Caves to be proclaimed a World Heritage Site and was instrumental in having the remains of Saartjie Bartmann returned to South Africa.
Tobias was the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Pennsylvania, Cambridge, California, Natal, Cape Town, Durban-Westville, Western Ontario, Guelph, and the Witwatersrand.
Yesterday, those who paid tribute to him called Tobias an outstanding mind, a visionary to his students and a stalwart of the struggle. Human Settle- ments Minister Tokyo Sexwale, Science and Technology Minister, Naledi Pandor, Mbeki, and Rivonia trialist Ahmed Kathrada attended the funeral.
Mbeki said Tobias was an outstanding mind and was central in making the statement that humanity originated in Africa.
He said Tobias taught “all of us about what it is to be a human being and how to use the human mind properly”.
Kathrada said Tobias would be remembered “as a stalwart in the struggle for a non-racial and non-sexist South Africa”.
He said the professor did not hold back on his views even “in the worst of times”.
Veteran human rights lawyer George Bizos said that when the two were students at Wits University, Tobias “cried from the roof top” against injustices towards students.
“He led by example as a student leader and we followed him.” – Daily News Correspondent