Who we are

Founding member

Phoebe Gerwel

Phoebe Gerwel, the widow of Professor Jakes Gerwel, is the founder member of the Jakes Gerwel Foundation. She obtained her degree in Social Work at the University of the Western Cape. Due to the executive role Professor Gerwel played in the establishment of the Suidoosterfees, Phoebe has been honoured as the Patron of the Suidoosterfees.

Phoebe has donated Paulet House, the beloved retreat in Somerset East of her husband Professor Jakes Gerwel, to the Jakes Gerwel Foundation.

Phoebe has an active role in the Suidoosterfees, the Jakes Gerwel Family Trust and the Jakes Gerwel Foundation.

Board of Trustees

Brian Figaji (Chairperson)

Brian Figaji obtained his B.Sc. degree and postgraduate tertiary education diploma at the University of the Western Cape. Besides other degrees, including a master’s degree from Harvard University, he obtained, Brian also received several honorary doctorates. He worked as a consulting civil engineer and served as chancellor and vice chancellor of the Peninsula Technikon.

Brian is a fellow of the South African Institution of Civil Engineers, the South African Society for Professional Engineers and the South African Academy of Engineering. He is also a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.

Brian further served on the Council of Higher Education (CHE), was director of the Nedbank Group, non-executive chair of Irvin & Johnson and was a board member of the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

Brian is still active in local and international communities by serving as, for example, director of the Youth Development Trust South Africa, the president of the Boy Scouts in the Western Cape and as South Africa’s representative on the UNESCO Executive Board.

Mustaq Enus-Brey

Mustaq Brey is CEO of Brimstone Investment Corporation, a company he co-founded in 1995. A chartered accountant by profession, Mustaq serves as chairperson of the Oceana Group, Life Healthcare and Interfront. He also serves on the boards of Equites Property Fund, Aon Re South Africa, Lion of Africa Insurance Company and House of Monatic.

Mustaq further serves on and chairs various board committees of The Mandela Rhodes Foundation and he is an independent director of the Western Province Cricket Association as well as the chairperson of its finance committee.

Founder of the Saabri & Ashrafi Relief Fund, Mustaq’s passion for uplifting communities underpins and connects his business and personal life.

Annari van der Merwe

Annari van der Merwe started her publishing career as head of the department of children’s and youth literature at Tafelberg Publishers in 1978 and stepped down as director of Random House South Africa in 2008. She would break ground by establishing Kwela Books for Naspers and by founding the imprint Umuzi for Random House.

Her literature studies at the University of Port Elizabeth and Rhodes University led Annari on to further studies at the Utrecht Rijksuniversiteit in the Netherlands. While Annari lectured in the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch of Rhodes University, she completed her Ph.D. on Breyten Breytenbach’s poetry under the tutelage of André Brink. She also lectured from 1978 to the mid-1980s in the Afrikaans Department of the University of the Western Cape.

Annari is now a full-time painter.

Mfundo Nkuhlu

Mfundo Nkuhlu has a Bachelor of Arts honours degree from the University of the Western Cape and has completed the prestigious INSEAD Strategic Management in Banking programme as well as the Harvard Advanced Management programme.

Mfundo served as managing director at Nedbank Africa, before becoming the chief operating officer and executive director at the Nedbank Group Limited and at Nedbank Corporate Bank in 2015.

Prior to his involvement at Nedbank, Mfundo was the general manager of strategy and planning at the South African Revenue Services (SARS) and was responsible for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) during his service in the Department of Trade and Industry.

Mfundo is the author of many articles on economic relations as well as on economic integration in Southern Africa.

Wilmot James

Wilmot James is respected worldwide as an intellectual leader on the forefront of planetary threat and pandemic response, biosecurity and biotechnology governance, public and global health as well as the non-proliferation of nuclear arms. He holds the position of Professor of Practice in Health Policy, Services and Practice at Brown University and is a senior advisor for pandemics and global health security at their School of Public Health. At the same time, he holds an honorary professorship in public health at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). Prior to his appointment at Brown University, he was a senior researcher at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) at Columbia University. While he is a sought-after consultant for organisations such as the nuclear threat initiative NTI | Bio and the Africa Society for Laboratory Medicine, he has also convened or chaired high-level meetings and working groups such as the Columbia-Wits-Schmidt Futures working group for vaccine safety (VacSafe WG) and served as deputy chair to Sir Jeremy Farrar on the Vaccine Task Team (VacTask). Between 2009 and 2017, he was a member of parliament and an opposition spokesperson in South Africa. He served on the board of trustees of the Ford Foundation between 1996 and 2008 and is currently on the advisory board of Resolve to Save Lives. He is the author and editor of an impressive list of articles and books, including Vital signs: Health security in South Africa (2020) and Nelson Mandela in his own words (2003). The nicest job he ever had, he says, was that of Chairman of the Board of the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra!

Goolam Aboobaker

Goolam Aboobaker holds a B.Sc. honours degree from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and an M.Sc. in economics from the University of London. He worked as a medical physicist before becoming special assistant to Jakes Gerwel at the University of the Western Cape in 1988.

In 1995 Goolam was appointed Director of Cabinet Research in the late President Nelson Mandela’s office and in 1997 Chief Director of Economic Development in the policy unit of the office of the deputy president. After his tenure as the senior advisor at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Goolam was appointed Deputy Director-General in the Ministry of Finance.

Goolam was a founding member of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) in Durban and was also involved in the launch of the United Democratic Front (UDF). Goolam’s involvement with the development agency Kagiso Trust stretches back to 1987.

Executive Director

Theo Kemp

Theo obtained his master’s degree in creative writing at Stellenbosch University. He has been involved with various projects in the arts before in his role as, among others, project manager of the Woordfees, advertising coordinator at NB Publishers, programme manager at the KKNK as well as at the Vrystaat Literature Festival and as executive director of the Breytenbach Centre in Wellington.

Theo is the author of two novels, Skool and Strafjaart.

Mentors

Kommadagga workshop

Fourie Botha

Fourie Botha worked in publishing houses for the past twenty years – the last nine as publisher of fiction for Penguin Random House. Under imprints such as Umuzi, he and his editing team published the work of many prominent South African writers and also launched dozens of debut writers. His publications at Penguin and Umuzi won the most important English book prize, the Sunday Times prize, for eight consecutive years. He works in both Afrikaans and English and was also part of an international think tank of editors. He further attended the world’s most important book trade fairs in London and Frankfurt selling rights. Fourie has served on the board of the children’s book organisation IBBY before and he is the current deputy chair of Khula Cape, a foundation for the advancement of literature, arts and the environment. Fourie himself is a poet and has published two collections of poems, Donkerkamer and Krap uit die see, of his own. His debut collection was nominated for the Ingrid Jonker prize. At the moment, he works as an agent for a literary agency. He lives in Cape Town.

Zoë Wicomb

Bosberg book writing

Angela Briggs

Angela Briggs has worked in the publishing industry for 25 years. Besides freelancing as writer and editor, she also has experience of the full-time side of publishing. Her most recent work experience was a five-year stint at a small local book publisher here she managed the editing, marketing and production aspects of local fiction aimed at encouraging young South Africans to read. This experience strengthened her belief that books play an irreplaceable role in creating empathy and forging connections between people. She has just started her own writing project in the form of a blog to bring her love of South African books together with another passion of hers: art.

Suzette Kotzé-Myburgh

Suzette Kotzé-Myburgh has been working in publishing since 1990 and for the last twenty-one years this has been on a freelance basis. She obtained her BA degree cum laude at Stellenbosch University, followed by an honours degree in journalism. Besides text editing, Suzette has also made her mark in manuscript assessment and development, translation, proofreading, project management, self-publications, book and film reviews (LitNet, Die Burger, kykNET’s Dagbreek) as well as interviewing writers (RSG’s Skrywers en Boeke). She also acts as mentor for text editors and as presenter at editing workshops. She is the co-compiler of Nuwe Kinderverseboek, Rympies vir Pikkies en Peuters, Rympies vir Kleintjies en Kleuters, Nuwe Stories 1, 2 & 3 and the US Woordfeesbundels from 2016 to 2019.

Longhope TV Writing

Tina Kruger

Tina Kruger has experience in all aspects of television, from acting, directing and production through to screenwriting. Tina is passionate about screenwriting and has a variety of soapies, drama series, youth programmes and also feature and short films as feathers in her cap. She has supervised the development, production, broadcasting and distribution of over thirty local television series, twenty feature films, sixty short films and four international co-productions. These include the films Vir die Voëls and Leading Lady as well as the TV series Getroud met Rugby and Sterlopers.

Tina takes pleasure in mentoring young filmmakers, has a thorough understanding of the local market and lives for telling heartfelt, powerful and authentic South African stories that cross boundaries.

Muneera Sallies

Muneera Sallies is an award-winning filmmaker with two decades of experience in the film and television industry, to which she has richly contributed. She has written, produced and directed a variety of content, while also participating in filmmaking panels and hosting creative masterclasses worldwide. Most recent projects include directing the acclaimed drama series Melody, co-writing and directing the feature film Twisted Christmas and working on the true crime series Into Darkness with David Klatzow. Her upcoming feature film Old Righteous Blues is set for theatrical release in 2024. Sallies’s character-driven stories and unique storytelling style reflect the essence of South African culture. She is committed to mentorship through her work and lives out her strong belief in supporting emerging talent in the industry while serving as commissioning editor of television scripts for MultiChoice South Africa.

NATi Rising Stars

Lee-Ann van Rooi

Lee-Ann van Rooi is well known and loved, not only by audiences for her sterling acting, but by all in the performing arts landscape for her integrity, versatility and contribution to the industry over a career already spanning more than 25 years. She is a multi-award-winning, highly accomplished actor, director and producer with credits – local and international – in film, television, stage work, puppetry, the academic world and radio work. To Lee-Ann everything happens through storytelling and this approach has made her one of South Africa’s most iconic storytellers. And perhaps this explains her success in growing sustainable, all-embracing, emotionally and culturally conscious performers as well as audiences. In her directorial contributions, she strives to offer a different perspective to the existing one, to include the marginalised, to challenge the dominant representation, to unpack stories from the feminine heart, with respect, rooted deep in the African continent, unapologetically.

Rafiek Mammon

Rafiek Mammon is the former Cape Times Arts Editor and previous Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards judge and judge on many a festival’s panels throughout the country. Mammon is also a celebrated, award-winning playwright and director. His first play, ‘Seashells’ received a Standard Bank Ovation Award at the National Arts Festival (NAF) in Grahamstown in 2012. His second play, ‘The Garage Sale’ ran to critical acclaim as the opening production of Artscape’s 10^th annual Festival of New Writing in 2014. He directed the play ‘Syria?’ which also won a Standard Bank Ovation Award in 2017 at the NAF in Grahamstown. Before becoming a theatre maker he lectured in journalism at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). He also taught an Arts Journalism elective to third year students at UCT in the Film and Media Studies Department. He holds a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) degree in Modern Teaching Philosophies from The University of Stellenbosch, and a BA (Social Science) degree obtained at UCT. He is presently a freelance lecturer, playwright, theatre maker, Arts Festival judge, editor, Arts journalist and columnist.

Blue Crane Book Project

Nompumelelo Sokoyi

Nompumelelo Sandra Sokoyi was born in Pearston and matriculated at the Imizamoyethu Secondary School in George. Nompumelelo is a motivational speaker, a leader in her community and church and she is involved in many community development projects. She has a passion for traditional and ballroom dancing and loves the world of drama and storytelling.

KwaNojoli Research Project

Mphuthumi Ntabeni

Mphuthumi Ntabeni is a writer and political commentator who lives in Cape Town. His debut novel, The Broken River Tent, was published in 2019 and won the University of Johannesburg Debut Prize. His second novel, The Wanderers, was published in 2021.

He is the main researcher of the KwaNojoli Research Project, presented in partnership with the KwaNojoli Museum.

Archivist

André Landman

André Landman became an archivist quite by accident about two decades ago. He cut his teeth in the secretive world of archive processing and management at the South African History Archives (SAHA) and at Historical Papers of Wits University before joining the Manuscripts and Archives Department (now Special Collections) of UCT Libraries in January 2007 up until his early retirement in October 2018. He obtained an honours degree in archival science at Unisa and recently completed his master’s degree in history at UWC.

Paulet House Chef

Gilbert van Zyl

Gilbert van Zyl is the chef who treats our writers with his love for food, in abundance. Gilbert hails from Velddrif on the West Coast, but worked for years at Queen’s College in Queenstown, before he moved to Somerset East. Except for his involvement with the Foundation, he owns his own catering business.