Professor makes splash with article
Researcher Anis Karodia clinches world honour for piece on SA water crisis
DURBAN-BORN Professor Anis Karodia recently won an international award which, given South Africa’s ongoing water crisis, is particularly meaningful.
Karodia scooped top prize in the World Championship 2018 (in Agricultural Extension, Management), with his article, “South Africa Enters a Water Crisis: Management, agriculture, public health considerations and government ineptitude are some of the causes for this grave dilemma”, which he submitted to the Asian Journal of Agricultural Extension, Economics and Sociology, in India.
It was chosen from 5 395 nominations submitted from 98 countries. Fathima Ussuph, a director at Regent Business School, said: “Karodia, a senior faculty member and researcher at the school in Durban, is a prolific researcher who is widely published. He certainly deserves such recognition.”
Karodia has published some 350 research papers in peer-reviewed journals, and many newspaper and magazine articles aimed at the lay person, locally and internationally.
Denied an opportunity to study veterinary science in this country due to apartheid laws, with the help of the ANC he studied and qualified in India, then garnered many further qualifications in the UK, US and South Africa.
Returning home to South Africa, he became the first vet of colour to qualify and register with the SA Veterinary Council (SAVC) in 1979. Then he took up the cudgels for others.
“For 16 years, at my own expense, I fought to get foreign veterinary qualifications which had been obtained by non-white South Africans abroad recognised in this country,” said Karodia.
In due course he was nominated to serve on the SAVC (he served for 10 years) and became an examiner in veterinary public health for three years.
During 40 years as a civil servant he rose from state vet to director of veterinary services and directorgeneral of education in North West province. He was asked to come out of retirement to serve on Limpopo’s intervention team as chief administrator of education.
He acted as interim chief executive of the isimangaliso Wetland Park for one year, sorting out its management problems.
“It was a singular honour to lead South Africa’s first World Heritage Site,” said Karodia.
His passion for agriculture, and the failures in this regard, led him to publish his winning article.
“In my opinion, government and its agricultural departments have lost the plot. There is no accountability within the public service – with devastating effects upon agriculture and the development of the country.
“Government has to intervene decisively or agriculture will hit a precipice in terms of the emerging black farmers, and small farmers will be left behind to the detriment of food security and the consolidation of muchneeded nutrition in an essentially poor country,” said Karodia.