Professor of multiple births exits obstetrics
Marivate was born to excel
Born: November 8 1934 Died: August 4 Funeral: Tomorrow at Evangelical Presbyterian Church of SA’s Akasia Parish, Pretoria North, from 6am Burial: Zandfontein Cemetery, Pretoria
Emeritus Professor Martin Marivate was no ordinary man. Being born of the legendary Reverend Daniel Marivate, who is credited for writing the first novel in Tsonga language, Prof was destined for greatness.
Sasavona, as Marivate was affectionately known, died on Tuesday in Pretoria.
His family says his upbringing was imbued with the timeold customs of the VaTsonga people who loved truth, selfreliance, thrift, industry and respect for fellow humankind.
The Marivates are regarded among the brainiest families in SA by a reputable magazine because of the many graduates the family has produced.
Martin Marivate was born in 1934 at the Valdezia Mission, then the site of formal education development and learning founded by Swiss missionaries east of Louis Trichardt.
Despite his quasi modern start to life as son of esteemed reverend and academic, Marivate herded his father’s cattle as a boy
He progressed on to reach the famed Lemana High School in Elim, near Louis Trichardt, where he also matriculated.
When growing up, apart from his iconic father, his elder brother Charles was also his role model. This is because by the time he matriculated, Charles was a medical student in Durban.
Charles, who was 10 years older, inspired Martin to study medicine at the University of Natal, which had somehow contrived, in spite of apartheid, to establish a medical faculty reserved for Africans.
To his children, Martin would joyfully recount how he and his brother would wow university crowds with their virtuosity in concerts, with Martin on bass guitar, and another brother Russell on the piano.
After graduating, Martin stayed on at the university, specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology, and he went on to become a world authority in the field, in particular in twin and multiple pregnancies.
He co-authored several dozen research papers on the subject, sharing honours with fellow obstetricians from as far afield as Australia and the US.
He was cited extensively in text books and other research articles the world over. To this day, his legions of students still call him “the father of multiple pregnancies”.
In 1991 his teaching work took him to the Medical University of South Africa (Medunsa) where he worked until retirement in 2000.
In these later years, he was instrumental in integrating Cuban doctors into the SA health system.
He was an incandescently intelligent man, yet gentle and patient with all. His tastes were decidedly ascetic, and he disdained excess.
Martin and his wife Maud had five children. Besides his brother Cornel, Maud survives him, as do his five children, 14 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Marivate will be buried in Pretoria tomorrow.
He was gentle, intelligent and patient