Apartheid shaped my academic career
I matriculated in Durban in the late 1950s and chose dentistry as my career for reasons that are still not entirely clear in my mind. This was when apartheid was being implemented with increasing intensity. Having been denied entry to the school of dentistry at the University of the Witwatersrand — a denial for persons of colour that preceded the pernicious Separate Universities Act of 1959 — I had to seek admission elsewhere.
I decided to try the UK. After a 21-day sea journey on the Athlone Castle from Durban, I arrived in Southampton in August 1958. The Wits letter denying me admission in part facilitated my acceptance to the University of Birmingham in 1959.
Five and a half years later I graduated with the degree of bachelor of dental surgery. Following an internship at the Royal Dental Hospital, I returned to Durban to establish a practice in an area designated for persons of Indian origin, as compelled by the Group Areas Act.
Three years later, I developed a yearning for postgraduate study but was again denied admission to Wits. A scholarship took me to the University of Manitoba, in Canada, where I obtained an MSc. In
1974 I obtained the fellowship in dentistry of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
Homesick, I applied for an academic position at the University of the Western Cape, where a faculty of dentistry had recently been established for persons designated coloured. In January 1977, I became senior lecturer in the UWC’s department of oral medicine and periodontology. The first class of UWC dentists graduated in 1978.
There was one dentistry faculty for Stellenbosch University and one for UWC. Two faculties, differentiated along racial lines but housed in the same building, resulted in unpleasant problems.
UWC staff and students were requested not to use the white entrance of Stellenbosch University. Our faculty was largely English-speaking; theirs was staunchly Afrikaans. Courses in general medicine and general surgery were provided by Stellenbosch in Afrikaans and this was a matter of continued tension.
Despite this, many staff from both faculties interacted productively, offering joint courses and collaborating on research projects.
The period 1977 to 1987 was volatile and a time of great instability in South Africa. Opposition to apartheid intensified on all fronts: economic, sports and university boycotts; the formation of the United Democratic Front; the armed struggle waged by the ANC and other groups.
UWC and other historically disadvantaged universities were at the vanguard of the struggle. Students demonstrated on campuses while police invasions, detentions and arrests were common. On one occasion, vice-chancellor Professor Richard van der Ross, accompanied by senior staff and 4 000 students, began marching to the Bellville police station to demand the release of detained UWC students. The march was stopped in its tracks at the Modderdam Road gate by a dozen Casspirs, with guns pointed at the marchers.
Political events often disrupted classes. The completion of clinical work and patient appointments were a particular problem.
With the departure of Neville Owen in 1984, I was appointed dean of my faculty.
We made many progressive changes in the faculty, including the introduction of specialist postgraduate programmes, which until then had been largely the preserve of white students.
A research culture was progressively established and staff members were encouraged to present papers at the South African division of the International Association of Dental Research.
In 1985, Professor Jakes Gerwel replaced Professor Van der Ross as rector and vice-chancellor of UWC. Under his leadership, UWC became known as the “University of the Working Class” and the “intellectual home of the left”.
In the same year we hosted eminent US professor Richard Simonsen. He dined at my home and we briefed him about the struggle to end apartheid. He visited Crossroads and other segregated areas and later spoke of his visit to UWC as life-changing.
In 1987 he wrote an article titled “Beauty and the Beast” in which he noted the beauty of South Africa while observing the beast in the racially segregated doctrine. For example, the University of Pretoria’s school of dentistry provided comprehensive treatment for its white patients but only extractions and emergency treatment for black patients. Simonsen did a great deal for the liberation struggle and in 1996, when he met Nelson Mandela, UWC conferred an honorary doctorate on him.
A seminal event in 1986 was the visit of a delegation of largely UWC personnel to meet the ANC in exile in Lusaka, Zambia. This was risky as the ANC was still banned and any meeting with its members was regarded as a criminal offence. As a member of this delegation it was a great privilege for me to meet Thabo Mbeki, Alfred Nzo, Chris Hani and many senior ANC members.
Shortly after, I accepted the position of dean at the new faculty of dentistry at the University of Durban-Westville, and with much regret resigned from UWC.
Since then there have been significant developments. The UWC faculty of dentistry incorporated the Stellenbosch faculty and moved as one unit to Mitchells Plain. UWC’s dentistry faculty has grown in stature, becoming a World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Oral Health and introducing many postgraduate programmes.
Today, UWC has the largest dental faculty in South Africa, training more than 80 dentists a year, offering postgraduate programmes to students from around Africa and doing research in many fields.
My decade there stands out as the most transformative and memorable of my experience. In addition to shaping the political discourse, it was deeply enriching in the relationships I established with students, staff and friends.