Johannesburg -
From January, the Medical University of South Africa (Medunsa) will be no more. Instead, the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU) will be the latest university in South Africa.
The formation of SMU was promulgated in May this year and will incorporate Medunsa in Ga-Rankuwa, which was a campus of the University of Limpopo.
The University of Limpopo was formed in 2005 when the University of Turfloop and Medunsa merged.
Higher Education Minister Dr Blade Nzimande met the interim council on Friday and said the university was ready to open its doors next year.
Medunsa is being delinked from the University of Limpopo. In November 2010, a task team was established to make recommendations on the development of a new site for health science training in Polokwane.
It was to also look into the impact of a merger in health care training at Medunsa and the measures required to strengthen the Medunsa campus at the University of Limpopo. After the task team report, it was decided to demerge the two institutions.
Nzimande said the department would not tolerate any strike actions at the new institution. There was a two-month long strike at Medunsa earlier this year when students demanded action against lecturers teaching fifth-year paediatrics who, they claimed, victimised students and deliberately failed some.
They also demanded better funding for students and the immediate promotion of affected students to sixth year with full credit when the academic programme resumed. Students destroyed property and several lecturers were suspended.
“In the new year one of the first meetings I am going to have will be with workers and student organisations to minimise disruptions that we have every year. We are going to be very tough about the destruction of property,” he said.
T the department wanted to ensure that the disruptions that happened at Medunsa did not spill over into SMU, he said.
This is the third new university that the six-year old department has opened. The other universities are the University of Mpumalanga and the Sol Plaatje University in the Northern Cape which started operating this year. This year, the two new universities accommodated 150 students each and hope the number will increase in the new year.
Nzimande said construction was already under way for new buildings at both the University of Mpumalanga and the Sol Plaatje University. The 2014 start-up programmes for the Sol Plaatje University were a bachelor of education (senior phase and further education and training) and a diploma in retail business management
The Mpumalanga University specialises in agriculture and biodiversity, linking into food security, natural resource management, nature conservation, plant and animal sciences, forestry and wood sciences, technology as well as wildlife management.
On Friday, Nzimande said: “SMU will inherit 4 000 Medunsa students and it will take 1 000 new students. The plan is that by 2024, it will be increase its size to 10 000 students. Former Medunsa students will be SMU students as from next year.”
The interim SMU council members include Prof Olive Shisana, former director-general of the Health Department and now chief executive of the HSRC; Dr Nothemba Semelela, co-ordinator of the new national strategic plan on HIV-TB and STIs; and, Prof Alpheus Mabose Segone, a medical specialist at Medunsa campus.
Pretoria News