Durban - A building on the Westville campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) will be named after retired vice-chancellor, Professor Malegapuru William Makgoba.
A public lecture series will also bear his name, in honour of the tenure of the immunologist and physician from Sekhukhune in Limpopo, it was announced at a farewell dinner for Makgoba by UKZN’s council on Monday night.
The dinner was attended by UKZN chancellor and treasurer-general of the ANC, Zweli Mkhize, and Professor Loyiso Nongxa, who is the chairman of the National Research Foundation (NRF) board and a longtime friend of Makgoba.
Makgoba, who will be succeeded by NRF chief executive Albert van Jaarsveld in February, is the founding vice-chancellor of the merged UKZN.
Before that, he was the vice-chancellor of the University of Natal, and the president of the Medical Research Council.
Naming a street in Pretoria after Makgoba was also on the cards, the dinner guests heard.
The chairwoman of UKZN’s council, Phumla Mnganga, who Makgoba credits with teaching him how to “be human”, called him the “quintessential African scholar”.
“Prof Makgoba, I can confidently speak on behalf of all the stakeholders of UKZN when I say that you have served with distinction… Professor, you have fought the good fight, you have finished the race ahead of your peers, you have shone the brilliant light of African scholarship.
“Most critically, you have infused UKZN with a shared understanding of African scholarship, an understanding that African scholarship must engage with the global knowledge system on its own terms,” Mnganga said.
Nongxa, who gave the keynote address, said that he had known Makgoba “since the English winter of 1979” when both were at Oxford University, and that his first impression of Makgoba was of someone who was at once humble and supremely confident.
“While I had been at Oxford for more than a year, still struggling to figure out what it was about mathematics that I didn’t know in order to embark on my PhD, he had been there for two months, and already knew what he was going to do for his PhD,” said Nongxa.
At his turn to speak, Makgoba thanked the teachers who had nurtured him as a primary school pupil, and as a university student, and thanked his peers and students for the lessons he had learnt on his journey as leader of UKZN.
The Mercury