The new man on campus
Zeblon Vilakazi, vice-chancellor-designate of Wits University, wants to build it into a centre for technological research and innovation.
Zeblon Vilakazi was playing soccer with his friends on the street outside a grocery store in Katlehong on April 12 1981 when space shuttle Columbia lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the US, ushering in a new era for space flight. The standard 6 pupil plucked up the courage to ask the shop owner to switch the TV from a sports channel in the hope of watching the launch.
His parents did not own a TV. His father had retired after running a small shop and his mother was a housewife.
“The shopkeeper was very kind and turned the TV towards me. There was no TV remote and he began flicking the channels until I saw the launch of the space shuttle,” Vilakazi recalls in a phone interview with the Sunday Times.
With his eyes fixed on the TV screen, Vilakazi watched in awe as the spacecraft took off, leaving thick clouds of smoke in its wake.
“Suddenly it was a tiny dot into nothingness.”
The young Vilakazi did not know the meaning of the word astronaut but the launch left an indelible mark on his memory.
On the next school day, he asked his teacher what he could do to become like Neil Armstrong, who about a decade before had made history as the first person to walk on the Moon.
“My teacher scrambled for information and said, ‘Maybe you could become a scientist’.”
Witnessing the launch of the shuttle as well as his experiences during school visits to the Wits
University planetarium “inspired me to study science”.
Geneva
Globally recognised for his wealth of knowledge in physics and nuclear research, the 51-year-old nuclear physicist and father of four will take over the helm at Wits at the beginning of next year.
Described by the chair of the university council, Isaac Shongwe, as “the epitome of a world-class researcher”, Vilakazi was recently appointed vicechancellor and principal of the research-intensive institution.
He will take over the helm from professor Adam Habib, who will be heading the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Vilakazi joined Wits in 2014 as deputy vicechancellor for research and postgraduate affairs and was promoted to the post of vice-principal of the university in April.
After matriculating in 1985 from Fumana High in Katlehong, he completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Manchester in the UK.
He obtained a PhD from Wits in 1998 and was one of the first students from Africa to conduct PhD research at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland.
His experiences at CERN while completing his post-doctoral studies provided some memorable moments.
One of them was his novel approach in trying to learn French while he was in Geneva, where French is mostly spoken.
He was fluent in Zulu, Sotho and Swati and could speak some Afrikaans, but he could barely speak a word of French and had to rely heavily on hand gestures to communicate.
“We were trying to set up some sophisticated equipment for an experiment and I was left with a young student and a Frenchman who could barely speak English.
“As a researcher, and for the experiment to be successful, I had to learn French.”
An Italian friend, Sergio Ballestrero, who is now a research scientist at the University of Johannesburg, came to his rescue and advised him to listen to French radio stations to learn the basics of the language.
Vilakazi did crash courses in French and “listened to as much radio as possible”.
By the time he had completed his post-doctoral studies, he was almost fluent in the language.
Defining moment
A chance encounter with a biker at a liquor store across the road from CERN triggered Vilakazi’s determination to put Africa on the map.
After several sleepless nights while working very hard to complete an experiment, Vilakazi and three of his friends from CERN — Ballestrero, Dick Madden, a US theoretical physicist, and Vassilly Marousov, a Russian — decided to visit the store on a Friday “to relax”.
“There was this curious local in a biker outfit who couldn’t speak a word of English but who recognised us as scientists. He first asked Dick, Sergio, and Vassilly for their names and the countries they came from.”
The biker then wanted to know Vilakazi’s name and country of origin.
“I said Zeblon from Afrique du Sud [SA]. He said, ‘Oh, African, you’re African?’ implying how can I be from Africa. There was an awkward moment and a temporary clearing of throats.
“He didn’t believe an African could be working in a hi-tech science lab. It was one of my defining moments and made me determined to make sure that Africa is represented at CERN.”
Vilakazi and his US-based friend Ketevi Assamangan, who was originally from Togo, were the only two Africans working at CERN at the time.
Large Hadron Collider
On his return from CERN, during his stint as a lecturer at the University of Cape Town, Vilakazi was instrumental in establishing the country’s first experimental high-energy physics research group focusing on the development of the high-level trigger for the CERN experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.
Built by CERN between 1998 and 2008, the Large Hadron Collider lies in a tunnel 27km in circumference and 17m beneath the border between France and Switzerland.
“I was given the assignment of developing this very, very sophisticated algorithm for the analysis of data for the Large Hadron Collider, which was inaugurated in 2008,” says Vilakazi.
“For me, 2008 was my own Apollo moment, so I put everything into the Large Hadron Collider effort while I was at UCT.”
Speaking about his new appointment, he says: “In the first place, I never saw myself as an administrator. I wanted to retire as a scientist because I enjoyed my science as I got older.
“However, having been a deputy vice-chancellor for seven years, my scope of the university widened beyond my domain of research and I decided to throw my hat into the ring.”
His urgent priority is “to understand the university better” as he goes through the crucial transitional period “between Habib and myself”.
If the transition is “managed correctly, it can set the right tone”.
“The key priority is to continue with our efforts to raise funds for students who are too poor to pay for themselves as well as for students from the missing middle.”
Vilakazi, who wants to create a local version of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Wits, will also be trying to find extra resources for researchers.
“The job of any administrator is to talk to everyone as much as you can, from the worker to the professor, and get to understand some of the challenges, whether real or perceived, around how the university is managing its transformation and other processes.”
He also wants to increase the number of African and coloured women in academia.
“There must be a reasonable representation of black African and women in the STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] fields. That has always been a work in progress.”
Is he intimidated by the big boots he has to fill? “Obviously we come from different fields. He [Habib] is a political scientist and, of course, adept at public intellectual engagements because the nature of his profession lends itself to that.
“I am a little bit more reserved. My reference point is science and, as scientists, you spend more time in labs.”
He will be building on the progress Habib has made, but he will be taking a totally different approach.
“I clearly will be less visible on Twitter unless someone convinces me otherwise,” says Vilakazi. Social commentary, he says, is not his area of expertise.
“However, as a vice-chancellor of a university, I am cognisant that social commentary is important, but I will be focusing more on leading the university towards the technological innovation era. I make no qualms about that.”
Barring the #FeesMustFall protests in 2016, Wits has not lost an academic year because of disruptions. “Obviously one assumes the good in people and that people don’t disrupt because they want to cause riots. However, there are extreme elements that one has to manage accordingly, given the circumstances as they prevail.”
Vilakazi says he believes in being proactive by managing disruptions before they happen.
“This should happen through engagement because by the time there’s a disruption, there’s already a breakdown in communication.”
In a rare glimpse into his life, Vilakazi, by his own admission “a very private person”, says he has been a die-hard Orlando Pirates fan since he was four years old.
He’s also an amateur war historian and loves reading books and watching documentaries on World War 2.
No prizes for guessing that his favourite sci-fi movie is Star Wars.
He idolises US jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. The sound of music fills the air every Sunday morning at Vilakazi’s home as he “listens to jazz religiously”.
He spends most Sunday afternoons preparing roast lamb or roast chicken while jazz or classical music is playing in the background. “I wouldn’t call myself a culinary expert but I do enjoy good food and wine,” he says.
His wife Mary Vilakazi, the chief operating officer at First Rand, hovers in the background while he prepares the roast.
“For me, a nice glass of shiraz with a roast is my downtime.”