Brain power in a pressure cooker
● I must declare upfront that professor Zeblon Vilakazi and I go way back. I am an old Witsie and we hung out when he was a promising physics PhD student.
We frequented the same fountain in Senate House drinking endless cups of the tar water that came out of the giant urns in the canteen promisingly labelled coffee.
That is when we weren’t drinking more amber-coloured substances at the Boz. He would like to give the Bozzoli a bit of that old spirit back, but has to work around very serious cricket games that are played there.
We meet for a late and rather sentimental lunch at Modena in Parkhurst. His schedule in this centenary year of Wits University would put a less energetic person into a tailspin, but the vice-chancellor is made of sterner stuff.
For the past year since we emerged from the Covid slump he has been at the helm of an efflorescence of activity around the university, celebrating and consolidating its role both in the heart of Braamfontein and as a leading academic institution in Africa.
Just this week’s programmes — from manifesting at various talks, celebrations, Rag floats and an insanely visionary light extravaganza in the Great Hall — make me want to take a restorative nap on his behalf.
But he looks fresh as a daisy — and dapper to boot. He tells Theo Holiasmenos, the owner of Modena, that he was recently here with his mate, the outgoing vice-chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, Prof Tshilidzi Marwala, and he loved the urbane spirit and the delicious renditions of Italian cuisine reimagined by Theo’s clever son.
It’s Instagram heaven here; apparently this precise shade of pink that prevails is the colour that most ignites the appetite and, it goes without saying, the desire to photograph all your food in the photogenic surroundings.
I could spend the entire lunch picking his brain about CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) — where he went after Wits — the nature of the universe, particle physics and philosophy.
He is a stoic by the way, useful in his line of work, I imagine.
“I finished my PhD on a joint project in Geneva at CERN — a new universe opened up for me, quite literally. You’re in this space where all nationalities, Italians, Germans, Russians, Americans, Greeks, are just working on science from all over the world.
“Such an amazing project and I was the only African student. The environment really motivated me to stay on. It is a strange thing, you finish your degree and you then do your postdoc, I stayed on basically being an apprentice. You are officially a slave and that is when most young scholars have their most productive period because you don’t teach, you just do research.
“Then I came back to South Africa and taught at UCT and back to Wits in 2014. And the rest is history.”
A history that in his case began as a young boy growing up in Katlehong watching the space race unfold on TV.
“What is science but imagination, really, and it starts with aeroplanes and rockets. I loved that stuff. Then I went to the planetarium, which by the way we are busy transforming into an amazing space. It is a magic place that shaped so many kids, it just fires the imagination.”
What is his vision for our alma mater? What does the institution need to survive other than a gigantic endowment, which he is working very hard at raising?
“My idea of the university is that it is a community of scholars and has been since medieval times and before that with the Lyceum of Greece and other centres of learning across North Africa. The university as a modern concept is an agglomeration of people who are given the space to think abstractly, but at the same time are able to respond to the burning issues of the day.
“Using their intellectual firepower to impact on problems like social incoherence, racism, climate change, inequality and above all respond to urgent needs like Covid. I mean look at how we could model the coronavirus faster than other countries in the world, and then get punished for it. Thank you boys! Remember that?
“As an institution we showed that we have world class scientists. So what I am trying to say is that it’s not money. Money is important but growing your brain power and getting the best candidates — that is what drives universities.
“Transmitting the knowledge to the next generation and continuing the cycle. And because a student can access so much information at the touch of a button these days they don’t really have to go to the library, so education is beyond content.
“What it has always been about is bringing people from diverse backgrounds and religions, young people aged 18 to 24, into a big sandpit where they can play and question what their parents taught them.
“That is the beauty of the pressure cooker of university, and preparing them to face a world that is so different to the one their parents grew up in. That is the essence of teaching. It is debating, being challenged and confronted with new ideas.
“And they are all here because they have one thing in common — they are the brightest and full of animation and ideas and they can hopefully change the world for the better. And I think that hasn’t ever changed.”