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The Herald
4 days ago
- Business
- The Herald
NMU honours 12 alumni for their exceptional contributions to society
From rural classrooms and township rooftops to global boardrooms and international stages, the 2025 Nelson Mandela University Alumni Awards honoured 12 outstanding alumni whose stories speak not only to success — but to the enduring legacy of transformation, excellence and service. Now in its 15th year, the awards recognise remarkable personal and professional achievements of past graduates who are living the values of NMU and its predecessor institutions. 'This year's recipients reflect what it truly means to use education not only to rise, but to uplift others,' alumni relations director Paul Geswindt said. 'Their lives are stories of perseverance, purpose and profound care — for their communities, professions, and for the futures they are helping to build.' The university also paid tribute to the rich legacy of its founding institutions — then University of Port Elizabeth, Port Elizabeth Technikon and Vista University (PE Campus) — each of which contributed to the tapestry of transformation that is now NMU. Vice-chancellor Prof Sibongile Muthwa acknowledged the alumni for journeying with the university and for strengthening its networks nationally and globally. 'We acknowledge the foundations upon which our university was established, and we celebrate all our alumni and friends, including those from our founding institutions, because without knowing your history, you cannot find your future,' she said. 'So, we honour these alumni, the professors and vice-chancellors who have built this institution, and the strong foundations on which we currently work. 'We share in their vision and are proud of the values entrenched in building our new-generation university.' That legacy is reflected in Dr Paul Dalmeyer, recipient of a Special Award for his lifetime contributions to reproductive medicine and medical education. It is also championed by Khaya Matiso, whose decades of leadership in higher and technical education have opened doors for thousands of students. It also shines through Hayley Ward, SA's top squash player; through Atherton Mutombwera, whose biotech start-up made international headlines; and Babalwa Nkwentsha, who is shaping policy and programmes impacting more than 25,000 young people. The 12 awards presented included six Rising Star, four Achiever, and two Special Awards, spanning fields such as biotechnology, construction, public health, education, sport, finance and youth development. Hospital pharmacist and digital health advocate Brent Sin Hidge, who accepted a Rising Star Award at the Boardwalk International Convention Centre on Friday night, said he was speechless when he received the email informing him of the recognition. 'This award isn't just for me. It's a testament to the incredible people who believed in me. 'To my former lecturers at NMU ... you didn't just impart knowledge; you ignited a passion and saw potential in a young student. 'Your dedication to teaching and your unwavering support laid the foundation for everything that followed.' He recounted his mother's sacrifices, the influence of his lecturers, and his hope that his work would help build 'a sturdy tree, one whose shade the next generation — including my daughter — can rest under'. For fellow Rising Star recipient, quantity surveyor and technical director: mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire protection services lead at AECOM Africa, Khanyisa Mabala, the evening was a full-circle moment. 'I would have never imagined accepting an award like this, in this very hall,' she said. She also gave a powerful tribute to her late father, who took her on construction site visits at the age of 11: 'My role model had already told me I belonged. 'So, when I entered a male-dominated industry, I wasn't seeking validation, I already had it.' She paid homage to the lecturers at NMU who 'saw something in me long before I saw it in myself', including her mentor, Prof Gerrit Crafford. Ultimate Education Group MD and creator of the SABC2 show Ultimate Maths , Shaun Jacobs, recalled the defining moment that changed the course of his career. 'I think it was during my third year; we were sent on an excursion to a rural school just outside Gqeberha. 'The aim was to understand the diversity of SA's education system. 'What I experienced that day shook me. It lit a fire in me. It opened my eyes to the inequalities so many learners face daily,' he said. 'That one day became the foundation of my mission: to make high-quality education accessible to every learner in SA. 'That rural school visit still comes up in stories around the braai, because it wasn't just a field trip, it was the beginning of my calling.' Accepting his award, Ryan Le Roux acknowledged family and friends who had been his greatest support, including Pastor George Georgiou and Prof Jean Greyling for their role in starting the Leva Foundation. After graduating, Le Roux spent five years playing rugby in Europe, all while quietly carrying a growing conviction that he needed to come home and make a difference. And so, he did. He began teaching and coaching until he realised that those he was helping were already privileged and would thrive regardless. 'It was during my time at NMU that these words of Mandela took root: 'Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity, it is an act of justice'.' Chapu Chartered Accountants Inc founder Rhangani Mbhalati, who grew up in a village in Tzaneen, uses his firm to create jobs, mentor youth and build economic inclusion from rural Limpopo to Rwanda. 'This recognition is both an honour and a deeply personal milestone,' he said. The Herald
The Herald
19-06-2025
- Automotive
- The Herald
Busy weekend at Algoa club ahead of karting nationals
Algoa Kart and Motorcycle Club, along Victoria Drive, will be a hive of activity this weekend in anticipation of the ROK Karting Nationals that take place at the Celso Scribante Circuit next weekend. This Saturday sees the fourth round of the local regional and club championship taking place, and many out-of-town competitors will be grabbing the opportunity to get in some last-minute testing before the nationals take place. The Scribante track has long been considered as one of the favourite circuits on the national scene by the competitors due to a mix of tight technical sections as well as long sweeping high-speed corners. Local star Jack Moore returns from his international campaign and will be the driver to beat in the OKJ Rok class along with fellow local lad Aashay Nagura, who are joined by out-of-town drivers Zuan Breytenbach and Aleksander Praizovic. Hoping for a strong showing in his first season of National competition is 16-year-old Wyatt Jonas, who will be competing in the OK-N Class. Having driven a kart for the first time at the age of 12 at the Algoa Indoor Grand Prix Track, which was situated at the Moffett-on-Main Shopping Centre before relocating to Baywest Mall, Jonas had his first taste of the thrill that kart racing has to offer. He then joined the junior ranks of the MSR4-stroke kart before moving up to the senior ranks, where he put in some notable performances that led to him joining forces with Neil Basilio in the NBR Racing to compete in the National Series. Saturday's racing action is set to get under way from 8am. Entry is free to spectators, and food and beverages will be on sale. The Herald
News24
13-06-2025
- Business
- News24
Transnet averts strike as unions accept pay deal
South Africa's state-owned ports and freight-rail company reached a pay deal with its two recognised labour unions, averting a strike that threatened to disrupt mineral and agricultural exports. The agreement, which followed an arbitration process led by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, provides for 6% annual increases for three years, including the current financial year, Transnet said in a statement. The United National Transport Union (UNTU), which represents more than half of of Transnet's 46 000 employees, had previously rejected a wage increase offer of 6% annually in the first two years starting April 1 and 5.5% in the third year. 'The finalisation of the three-year wage agreement provides labour stability and will enable the company to focus on its immediate strategic priorities of improving operational and financial performance,' Transnet said in the statement. The deal includes increases to basic salary, pension fund contributions, medical aid subsidies and housing allowances, the company said. Both unions — UNTU and the South African Transport and Allied Workers' Union — have accepted the offer, it said. The above-inflation pay increase will put further strain on Transnet's finances. Moody's Ratings has placed the company assessment on review, warning that it will run out of money for operations and debt-servicing within three months unless it gets a government bailout. South Africa's government said this week it will give Transnet additional guarantees to settle all its debt that falls due and execute its capital-investment program. Transport Minister Barbara Creecy announced the approval of a R51 billion guarantee facility for Transnet last month and the process of giving it additional support will be finalized by July 25, according to the Department of Transport. The company's five-year corporate plan shows it needs to repay R99.6 billion.
Mail & Guardian
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
Gavin Evans on fathers, faith and fearless reporting in South Africa
Journalist and writer Gavin Evans When I meet Gavin Evans on a Friday morning, it's to talk about his memoir Son of a Preacher Man, which he's visiting South Africa to promote. But I'm more interested in hearing what it was like to report for the Mail & Guardian in the dying days of apartheid. Evans was one of the first reporters hired by the paper. It was the mid-Eighties, and Evans had just started his career in Gqeberha, then known as Port Elizabeth. 'My journalism career started at the Eastern Province Herald in '84,' he recalls. 'There was a company then called South African Associated Newspapers. They had a three-month programme and all the new journalists went through it. After that, you started at places like the Eastern Province Herald or the Post. I was on the Herald.' Evans' journey would soon take him to the Rand Daily Mail, Business Day and eventually the pioneering Weekly Mail, which would later become the Mail & Guardian. 'I knew Anton Harber because he'd also been at the Rand Daily Mail,' Evans explains. 'Irwin Manoim was there too, and Clive Cope was around. They were the three who set it up. I went along to the opening meeting and came up with story ideas. Initially, I was freelancing while working for the SAN Transvaal News Bureau. But then Anton offered me a job.' For Evans, joining the Weekly Mail was more than just a career move, it was a leap into a newsroom that operated with a shared spirit of purpose. Gavin Evans' father Bruce's consecration in 1975 'It was a wonderful working environment,' he says. 'Everyone got paid the same, from editors to everyone else. I don't know about the cleaning staff, but for all the journalists, it was the same salary. It was a brave decision but it worked for a while.' At the Weekly Mail, Evans carved out a distinctive voice. 'Initially, I was doing politics,' he says, 'but I knew a lot about boxing. So, I said, 'You guys need a boxing correspondent!' I wrote about boxing in a different way. The other boxing correspondents were white guys who didn't know any of the black boxers. I did. I had access nobody else had.' His work soon drew the attention of the Sunday Times, which asked him to be their boxing correspondent too. Evans also became the mysterious voice behind the Weekly Mail's satirical gossip column. 'No one was told except for a few people in the know who the writer behind it was,' he explains. 'We were poking fun at government people, and writing it in a tone of naivety, but of course it was all about exposing them. John Perlman did it before me, and then I was the writer of the column for probably the longest stretch — at least two years.' The era was dangerous for journalists willing to speak truth to power. Evans recalls the paper's investigative spirit, which led to the exposure of the so-called 'third force' — the apartheid state's clandestine efforts to foment violence. 'We broke the story of the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), the state's assassination group,' he says. 'Military intelligence was funding Inkatha to hack people to death on the trains. We broke that story too.' Evans' investigations and his political activity with the ANC and SACP made him a target. In the late Eighties, he says, the CCB hired 'Peaches' Gordon, a killer from a notorious Cape Town gang, to assassinate him. 'His instructions were to stab me to death and steal my watch and wallet to make it look like a straight robbery,' Evans says evenly. 'But I was in hiding at the time. The ANC had said to me, 'You must go into hiding.' I stayed in 18 different houses in six months — all in Johannesburg. I'd move and move and move. He followed me to five houses but each time I'd already left weeks before.' Even the killer's ruse of offering sensitive documents, something that had once yielded a groundbreaking story for Evans, couldn't lure him out. 'He phoned me and said, 'I'm a comrade. I've got documents for you about the state. Can you meet me?' But there was something about him that didn't ring true. So I didn't turn up. It turned out to be my life he was after.' By the end of the Eighties, the Weekly Mail, along with international partners, had exposed the third force's operations. In the aftermath, the government scrambled to contain the fallout. A family portrait of Joan, Bruce, Michael and Gavin from 1965 'They set up a tame judge, Justice Harms, and the Harms Commission to investigate,' Evans says. 'They admitted all the failed assassinations, including mine. Peaches Gordon was arrested and gave a full statement, including in my case. Then they released him, but he was later killed by the CCB with a bullet to the back of his head.' Evans had a complicated relationship with his father, who was a man of peace, but also of contradictions. In Son of a Preacher Man, he grapples with these paradoxes — his father's fervent faith and quiet complicity, his support for his son's political defiance and his own hand in shaping a world where violence was a constant threat. 'I never even looked at my earlier book when I wrote this one,' Evans tells me. 'I wanted it to be fresh.' Son of a Preacher Man delves far deeper than his memoir, Dancing Shoes is Dead, which mingled his love for boxing with glimpses of his life. Here, the focus is squarely on the fracture between father and son, a rift that began one night when Evans was 14 and his father beat him with his fists — a rift that only healed decades later, after an exchange of letters. Listening to Evans recount his early years as a journalist in South Africa, it's clear that the violence of the state — detentions, beatings, tyre-slashings — took a toll on him. 'I thought none of this affected me,' he says. 'But it did. I was having dreams of being buried alive or escaping. I became more aggressive.' These traumas burrowed deep into his psyche, manifesting in ways he didn't recognise until much later. Yet even in the darkness, there were moments of almost cinematic defiance. Evans recalls the day security police barged into his house, threatening him over military service. 'They said, 'Either you cooperate, or the military police will arrest you at work.' I told them, 'Get the fuck out of my house!'' The next day, his motorbike's tyres were slashed. But in a surprising twist, his father quietly intervened. Using his weight as a bishop, he wrote to the authorities, arguing that his son deserved a delay in conscription. Evans only discovered this act of paternal protection after his father's death, when he stumbled upon the letters in a box of papers. 'It made me cry,' he says softly. 'We'd always had a bit of distance, but I never told him I was proud of him too.' That fragile reconciliation came just before his father's final decline. Diagnosed with motor neurone disease, he had less than a year to live. Evans speaks of those last months with a tenderness that cuts through the decades of conflict: 'We had our reckoning, and then it was gone.' If there's a thread running through Evans' life, it's the question of what it means to stand firm when the world seems determined to push you down. In South Africa, that meant working for the M&G during its tumultuous early years — reporting from a newsroom in Braamfontein, trading stories and dodging censorship, feeling invincible in his twenties, even as he was detained and assaulted by the state. Gavin Evans' last amateur fight in 1982 — a knock-out win. 'You think it's not affecting you,' he says. 'But it does. It seeps in.' After moving to England in the early Nineties, Evans continued to write and teach. Son of a Preacher Man is his ninth non-fiction book, and today he lectures first-year and postgraduate journalism students at Birkbeck, University of London. Evans, now 65, speaks of his family. 'I've got two daughters, Tessa and Caitlyn, both of whom appear in the book. Towards the end, there's a chapter about Tessa and her husband Ciaran and their son, Ferdi. 'The final chapter is all about Ferdi. You know, the book's about fathers and sons, and now it's also about grandfathers and grandsons, because I spend a lot of time with Ferdi. I adore him. He's three and three-quarters, and if you ask him how old he is, that's what he'll tell you — three and three-quarters.' These personal milestones deepened his understanding of the legacy of fatherhood, both in the book and in life. Reflecting on his days as a young journalist in South Africa and his complex relationship with his father, Evans sees his own journey as a testament to resilience and the redemptive power of storytelling. As he guides the next generation of journalists, he remains mindful of the lessons of the past and the bright promise of those still to come.
News24
06-06-2025
- Politics
- News24
Unfinished business: Uncovering the buried crimes of apartheid regime
EDITORIAL: Unfinished business - Uncovering the buried crimes of apartheid regime Lukhanyo Calata never had the chance to know his father. In 1985, when he was just three years old, his father, Fort Calata, was brutally murdered alongside Matthew Goniwe, Sparrow Mkonto, and Sicelo Mhlauli. Collectively, they became known as the Cradock Four. Despite two inquests into their deaths, no one has ever been held accountable for their kidnapping, assault, or the gruesome act of setting their bodies alight following their arrest at a roadblock set up by the Security Branch near Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha). In 1999, six former police officers connected to the Cradock Four's arrests and murders appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), seeking amnesty. Their application was denied. Yet, even after this, no prosecutions followed. For decades, Calata has sought answers, questioning why - more than 30 years after the democratic election of the ANC - justice remains elusive for the Cradock Four. This week, a third inquest got under way, seeking to uncover who was truly responsible for the death of the anti-apartheid activists. This inquest comes shortly after the announcement that retired Constitutional Court justice Sisi Khampepe will lead a judicial inquiry into whether there were deliberate attempts to block the investigation and prosecution of apartheid-era crimes. Beyond the Cradock Four, there are an estimated 400 unsolved cases from South Africa's apartheid era. In this week's Friday Briefing, News24's legal journalist, Karyn Maughan, delves into the law enforcement paralysis that followed the TRC and its devastating impact on the families of victims. Lukhanyo Calata, in his contribution, writes poignantly about his family's anguish and the pain of asking questions when no one remains alive to provide answers. Additionally, in this week's edition, in-depth writer Muhammad Hussain interviews ActionSA parliamentary leader Athol Trollip regarding the party's proposal to amend the Constitution. Explore these insightful contributions below. The apartheid government got away with murder... and SA needs to know why There is compelling evidence that apartheid-era atrocity cases were not prosecuted because of alleged political interference from the ANC government. And, Karyn Maughan writes, it's crucial this toxic subversion of accountability is finally explained – and confronted. Read the rest of the submission here. An ANC failure: The long journey for justice for the Cradock Four Lukhanyo Calata, son of Fort Calata - one of the Cradock Four who were brutally murdered - shares his reflections on a renewed inquest into apartheid-era atrocities. He argues that these proceedings, including an inquest into the Cradock Four's deaths, will expose the harm inflicted by the ANC and unravel the reasons behind the historical obfuscation. Read the rest of the submission here. Q&A with Athol Trollip | ActionSA constitutional change: 'If people want to call it xenophobic, so be it' ActionSA parliamentary leader Athol Trollip speaks to in-depth writer Muhammad Hussain and defends his party's submission to modify the Constitution's 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it' principle.
