{"id":359,"date":"2018-03-18T12:04:04","date_gmt":"2018-03-18T10:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jgf.org.za\/?p=359"},"modified":"2018-03-18T12:04:04","modified_gmt":"2018-03-18T10:04:04","slug":"","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jgf.org.za\/af\/jakes-gerwel-1946-2012-humble-intellectual-scholar-and-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"","raw":""},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false,"raw":""},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false,"raw":""},"author":2,"featured_media":360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_en_post_content":"Media commentaries and tributes on the passing of Jakes Gerwel were unanimous that South Africa had lost an exceptional humble intellectual, scholar and leader, \u2018a good and great man\u2019 who provided wise counsel to people in leadership positions in the higher education, political, business, sporting and philanthropic worlds, and that his death leaves a \u2018big void\u2019 in South Africa. Antjie Krog wrote: \u2018South Africa has lost its most broad-minded thinker and its most loyal critic who matters.\u2019\r\n\r\nGert Johannes Gerwel was born in 1946 on a sheep farm in Kommadagga, midway between Grahamstown and Somerset East in the Eastern Cape. Primary education at a church farm school was followed by secondary schooling at Dower College in Uitenhage and Paterson High School in Port Elizabeth. Thereafter, in 1965 Gerwel proceeded to the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and graduated cum laude in Afrikaans-Nederlands and obtained an honours degree in the same discipline.\r\n\r\nAfter lecturing Afrikaans at Hewat Training College in Athlone he attended the Vrije Universiteit of Brussels and completed a licentiate in Germanic Philology on a Belgian government scholarship. He graduated from the Vrije Universiteit with a doctorate in Literature and Philosophy for a thesis titled \u2018Literatuur and Apartheid.\u2019 Joining UWC as an academic he became a professor in 1980 and Dean of the Arts Faculty in 1982. In 1987 he was appointed Vice-Chancellor.\r\n\r\nGerwel was an exceptional, courageous, and pioneering South African intellectual, scholar, leader, activist and citizen with a deep commitment to equity, social justice and democracy. A product of historically disadvantaged schools in the Eastern Cape, he had to triumph over the Verwoerdian dictum that there was no place for blacks beyond being hewers of wood and drawers of water. In a country deeply challenged to improve schooling and realise the potential of all youth, his example of a rural boy who achieved remarkable success under adverse conditions must serve as a source of inspiration for young people who struggle under the burden of dismal educational opportunities.\r\n\r\nThrough a long and distinguished association with the higher education sector, as an academic, dean, vice chancellor, chairperson of the Committee of University Principals in the early 1990s, chancellor of Rhodes University, and chairperson of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, Gerwel was an outstanding champion of higher education.\r\n\r\nOn 5 June 1987, at the age of 41, he became the first radical Vice-Chancellor of UWC; indeed, of any South African university. He boldly rejected the apartheid principles on which UWC had been established. Noting that the \u2018Afrikaans universities stand firmly within the operative context of Afrikaner nationalism\u2019, and that the English-language universities operate within the contexts of anglophile liberalism\u2019, he observed that there was no university linked to \u2018those people and institutions working for a fundamental transformation of the old settler-colonial order.\u2019\r\n\r\nHe declared that UWC faced \u2018the historical imperative to respond to the democratic left, to be an intellectual home for the left\u2019; it had to \u2018develop a critical alignment with the democratic movement\u2019 and had to \u2018educate towards and for a change society.\u2019 Gerwel stated that he could not \u2018in conscience, in Truth, educate or lead education, towards the reproduction and maintenance of a social order which is undemocratic, discriminatory, exploitative and repressive\u2019. Universities, instead, had to promote \u2018through example a democratic culture\u2019. Gerwel was too good and thoughtful an intellectual to reduce a university to a political institution. He observed that a university can never \u2018have a corporate opinion\u2019 nor compromise its \u2018essential identity as \u201cdisinterested\u201d searchers after Truth\u2019.\r\n\r\nPresident Mandela has noted that \u2018the nation drew inspiration from (UWC\u2019s) defiant transformation of itself from an apartheid ethnic institution into a proud national asset: from its concrete and manifest concern for the poor, for women and rural communities, and from its readiness to grapple with the kinds of problems that a free and democratic South Africa was to deal with later\u2019. Archbishop Desmond Tutu recalled Gerwel \u2018saying, especially at a time when it was unpopular, \u201cWe are on the side of the downtrodden, we are going to work for the upliftment of our people\u201d\u2019.\r\n\r\nUWC committed itself to non-racialism, non-sexism and social justice and \u2018the development of the Third World communities in South Africa\u2019. Access was opened to all South Africans and UWC began to ditch its previous baggage as a \u2018coloured\u2019 and \u2018bush\u2019 university. Intellectual debate flourished and UWC became an exciting space for socially committed and engaged scholarship. There was educational innovation that was years ahead of any other university. One area of profound work was in academic development programmes, which sought to provide \u2018epistemological access\u2019 and equity of opportunity for the poor. Many black intellectuals and scholars owe their achievements and positions to Gerwel\u2019s bold and inspired leadership and the exciting intellectual environment that he cultivated at UWC.\r\n\r\nGerwel helped to significantly advance gender equity at UWC. Compared to men, women at UWC suffered many disabilities related to salaries, benefits, pensions, leave and the like. While the efforts of women at UWC were decisive, Gerwel, as Desiree Lewis writes\r\n<blockquote>played a central role in fostering the spaces, frameworks and contexts for integrating discourses on gender into progressive thinking about democratic transformation in the early 1990s. I would like to think of individuals such as...Jakes Gerwel as models of leadership for young women today. (His) leadership demonstrated an organic and spontaneous receptiveness to the new, a visionary confidence in the knowledge of socially subordinate subjects.<\/blockquote>\r\nThe early 1990s saw UWC become a key site for policy research in support of a just and democratic South Africa. Gerwel brought scholars working in isolation on higher education, constitutional, economic, trade, health and other policy issues together in a common conversation on meta-issues such as the meaning of policy, the context of policy formation and implementation and the like. Many of those involved in this policy work became cabinet ministers and leaders of institutions post-1994.\r\n\r\nOn accepting an honorary doctorate from Rhodes, Gerwel stated:\r\n<blockquote>Universities are both central agents for change and steady beacons of continuity and tradition. As we feel buffeted by the storms of change, their presence and functioning in society should provide a sense of succor and solace that our changes are underpinned by centuries-old traditions of reasoning and enquiry. When we get despondent about things not changing, they should provide assurance and encouragement that a there are fresh and courageous minds of our intellectual elite grappling with and giving lead in changing our lives and our patterns of thought.<\/blockquote>\r\nThis is wise counsel for South African universities. So too is his advocacy of the need to pursue in principled and creative ways equity with excellence and excellence with equity.\r\n\r\nGerwel was an important beacon in the economic, social and political life of South Africa more generally. The numerous honorary doctorates awarded to him and his extensive leadership roles in civil society, business and sport organisations are testimony to the great respect that he enjoyed in all quarters of society.\r\n\r\nRecognising Gerwel\u2019s intellect, integrity, circumspect nature and pragmatic approach, Nelson Mandela invited him to become democratic South Africa\u2019s first Director General in the Office of the President and Cabinet Secretary. His \u2018approach to the establishment of the Office of the President\u2019 writes Joel Netshitenze\r\n<blockquote>is a study in the calm management of a transition. The honest and deliberate way in which he sought to ease the remaining staff of the \u201cold order\u201d into the new dispensation was as critical to a smooth transition as the celebrated efforts of President Nelson Mandela and other political leaders. He handled the apprehensions of the \u201cold staff\u201d and the impatience of the new with a deftness that came to characterise the stability of our transition within the state and in broader society.<\/blockquote>\r\nEver the scholar, Netshitenze adds that \u2018Gerwel sought to generalise his experiences, as if he was on a mission to develop study material for a cause in state politics and public administration.\u2019\r\n\r\nDeparting office with Mandela in 1999, he was to become a close confidant of Mandela, chair of the Nelson Mandela Foundation and his emissary on important political missions. The CEO of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, Shaun Johnson, writes that\r\n<blockquote>without Jakes Gerwel\u2019s contribution there would be no Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, no Mandela Rhodes Foundation, and no Mandela Rhodes Scholars. Talk about leaving a legacy \u2013 these things would be lifetime achievements for most people, but in the case of Jakes they are a couple of sparkling pieces in a much larger kaleidoscope.<\/blockquote>\r\nToday, too many politicians, businesspersons and state officials have as their god accumulation through bribery, corruption and looting of the state. Jakes Gerwel, in contrast, is a magnificent symbol of intellectual, academic, social and personal integrity, and ethical professional conduct in the service of human good. He leaves a powerful legacy of bold leadership, critical scholarship, commitment to social justice and a humane society, and social action towards these ends. Koos Bekker, CEO of Naspers says that he examined some dictionaries for the antonym of \u2018racist\u2019 but could not find one. He concluded that the word should be \u2018Jakes\u2019!\r\n\r\nKnowledge and intellectual labour seem to be disdained in contemporary South Africa. Gerwel valued knowledge and took intellectual work very seriously. He was wont to point out to the more action-oriented: \u2018good intellectual work entails hard work of a special type. It is as difficult, if not more difficult, than organising door-to-door work, street committees and mass rallies\u2019.\r\n\r\nWhat Colin Bundy has noted with respect to the late scholar Harold Wolpe applies equally to Gerwel: he \u2018was one of those rare academics who give intellectuals a good name\u2019. What Gerwel has written about Wolpe can also be said of him: he was\r\n<blockquote>one of those citizens and intellectuals who, to borrow an evocative phrase from Habermas, never neglected to make public use of his reason at every point: whether as teacher and mentor, as scholar, as member of the liberation movement, as public intellectual, as interlocutor in private conversation.<\/blockquote>\r\nA former Rhodes SRC president wrote: \u2018He ran his race, it is now complete. Others must take over from where he left off.\u2019 Indeed!\r\n\r\nHambe Kahle, bold, humble and gentle man, leader and mentor of great integrity and intellect and dry and understated wit. You will be dearly missed.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<strong>Author: <\/strong>\r\n\r\nSaleem Badat\r\n\r\n<strong>Affiliation: <\/strong>\r\n\r\nVice-Chancellor\u2019s Office, Rhodes University, South Africa","_en_post_name":"jakes-gerwel-1946-2012-humble-intellectual-scholar-and-leader","_en_post_excerpt":"By Saleem Badat, Rhodes University, South Africa","_en_post_title":"Jakes Gerwel (1946\u20132012): Humble intellectual, scholar and leader","_af_post_content":"","_af_post_name":"","_af_post_excerpt":"","_af_post_title":"","edit_language":"af","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-inmemoriam","8":"czr-hentry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgf.org.za\/af\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgf.org.za\/af\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgf.org.za\/af\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgf.org.za\/af\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgf.org.za\/af\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jgf.org.za\/af\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":361,"href":"https:\/\/jgf.org.za\/af\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions\/361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgf.org.za\/af\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgf.org.za\/af\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgf.org.za\/af\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgf.org.za\/af\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}