Times Higher Education ranks UKZN in the Top 400 Page 3

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2YOUR MONTHLY CAMPUS NEWSPAPER • VOLUME 9 • NUMBER 9 • SEPTEMBER 2012UKZN Mechanical Engineeringteam races in Solar ChallengeASHAY NATHOOGROUP of mechanicalengineering students andAtwo academics at UKZN’sSchool of Engineering built avehicle they are racing in theSASOL Solar Challenge.Team members, particularlyexcited as this is UKZN’s first entryin the event, were prepared forserious competition and sometough conditions on the 5400kmacross some of South Africa’s mostdemanding terrain.The Challenge is currentlyunderway, with the route passingthrough several major SouthAfrican cities. There was anovernight stop inPietermaritzburg and the UKZNteam was cheered in by severalmembers of the Universitycommunity.The team comprises of twolecturers, Mr Clinton Bemont andMs Kirsty Veale, and studentsMohammed Mahomedy, MitchellMeyer, Charles Raaff, CameronMcKenzie, Jason Canny, AdhikarHariram, Ndivho Mmbengwa andBongane Sandlane.UKZN’s Apalis solar car wasconceived as a final year designproject in the School ofEngineering under the SolarEnergy Research Group (SERG) byLecturers Bemont and Veale. Thecar has a lightweight carbon fibrebody and chassis supported by analuminium and chromoly subchassis.It is powered by 6m² ofstate of the art silicon solar cells,charging a bank of 464 lithium-ionbatteries, which drive a highefficiency electric motor.Bemont and Veale said that they‘would like the success of thisproject to create futureopportunities for undergraduateand masters’ students to continuethe research into renewable energymethods and electric vehicles.Mechanical Engineering’s Apalis Solar Car Team.‘The project has been great funand an amazing opportunity foryoung engineers. Our goal for thisyear’s race is to successfullycomplete the 5400km course andthen over the next two years refinethe car for the 2014 race. It wouldalso be great to be able to take partin the World Solar Challenge nextyear with a new group of studentswilling to work hard and learn.’The project has attractedsignificant interest andsponsorship from industry. Themajor sponsors for UKZN’s entry inthe race are the UKZN’s School ofEngineering, the Technology andInnovation Agency and Unilever.Other significant sponsors areChemspec, Gochermann SolarTechnology, Krank and PerryYamaha.International hospital design competition to benefit KZNAnswering questions about the design competition are from left: Professor Alan Dilani; Dr Aaron Motsoaledi; Provincial Minister of Health, DrSibongiseni Dhlomo, and Vice-Chancellor of UKZN, Professor Malegapuru Makgoba.UKZN researcherco-authors article onfirst HIV surrogatetransmission case in SALUNGA MEMELADETAILS about the first provenHIV-1 surrogate transmissioncase in South Africa wererecently published in an article -co-authored by a UKZN scientist- in the world’s leading medicaljournal, The Lancet.The case study highlights theneed for safe and appropriateinfant feeding practices inAfrica, including HIV testing ofall breastfeeding surrogates andmothers.Dr Tulio de Oliveira, a SeniorResearcher at UKZN’s WellcomeTrust-Africa Centre, was thesenior author of The Lancetarticle which provides detailsabout a 10-week-old girl who wastaken to hospital by her HIVnegativemother and diagnosedwith the virus. Transmissionwas initially thought to havetaken place in hospital but laterthe mother confirmed her sisterhad been breastfeeding the babyintermittently over a period offour weeks.The sister and her own fivemonth-oldchild weresubsequently found to be HIVpositive.The case is of specialimportance in view of thedecision to halt the provision offormula feeds at public healthfacilities in South Africa.The South African Ministryof Health says the country hasone of the highest HIV and AIDSepidemics and one of the lowestexclusive breastfeeding rates inthe world, where fewer than 10percent of infants areexclusively breastfed.In order to increase the rateof exclusive breastfeeding, theMinistry recently announcedthat formula feeding should beremoved from all public healthfacilities in the country. Thiscontroversial policy is backed bythe expanded used ofantiretroviral (ARV) drugs and arecent decrease of mother-tochildHIV transmission in SouthAfrica.‘In the current case in SouthAfrica, we could clearly showthat the virus infecting the aunt,cousin and infant was linked.This and other evidence ruledout the nosocomial transmissionscenario,’ said de Oliveira.‘The resolution of thesurrogate transmission case inSouth Africa was only possibledue to the work of a team ofmedical doctors and socialworkers. The identities of all theindividuals involved wereprotected and they received thebest treatment and careavailable.LUNGA MEMELAAN international competition tofind a winning design for UKZN’snew medical teaching hospital hasbeen launched by the NationalMinister of Health, Dr AaronMotsoaledi.Fully sponsored by theInternational Academy for Designand Health (IADH), Motsoaledi saidthe competition would savegovernment between R300 and R500million in design fees for hospitalsaround the country.Addressing a gathering on theHoward College campus he saidSouth Africa had during the past 20years produced an average of 1 200medical doctors every year“regardless of the demand andregardless of the quadruple burdenof disease”.Motsoaledi said the countryneeded world-class teachinghospitals in order to meet theDepartment of Health’s target ofproducing at least 3 600 medicaldoctors annually.Construction of the newlearning hospital using thewinning design from thecompetition is expected to begin onvacant land adjoining the HowardCollege campus in 2014. All UKZNHealth Sciences Disciplines andKing Edward VIII Central Hospitalwill be integrated on the newpremises.The new Limpopo AcademicHospital, the Eastern Cape’sNelson Mandela AcademicHospital, Mpumalanga TertiaryHospital and the Dr GeorgeMukhari and Chris HaniBaragwanath hospitals in Gautengwill benefit from adaptations of thewinning design.Professor Alan Dilani, GeneralDirector of IADH, said thecompetition was being run in thespirit of Mandela Day and thewinning design should reflect that.Founded in 1997 by scientists atthe Karolinska Institute inStockholm, IADH is a non-profitorganisation dedicated to thestimulation and application ofresearch concerning theinteraction between design, health,science and culture.Professor Rob Slotow, ActingDeputy Vice-Chancellor for theCollege of Health Sciences, said theCollege looked forward toproducing a new cadre of healthcare professionals, ‘fit-for-purpose’to deliver on the new NHI.Slotow said the six new flagshipprojects would allow academicinstitutions to expand the healthworkforce equipped withknowledge skills and competenciesappropriate to the country’s healthcontext and aligned with thecountry’s health system.Dr Tulio de Oliveira.
YOUR MONTHLY CAMPUS NEWSPAPER • VOLUME 9 • NUMBER 9 • SEPTEMBER 20123Times Higher Educationranks UKZN in Top 400UKZN has for the first time been placedin the Top 400 in the Times HigherEducation World UniversityRankingsVice-Chancellor and Principal ProfessorMalegapuru Makgoba said the high rankingwas a fantastic achievement for UKZN. ‘Allcredit must go to the university's academicstaff, students and leadership.‘Nothing is more gratifying thanachievement and success in academia. Thisachievement affirms our strategy. Finally,the African eagle has landed!’The University of Cape Town, theUniversity of the Witwatersrand (Wits) andStellenbosch University are also in the Top400. No other African universities made therankings.The University of Cape Town was placed113th leaving it as the only institution on thecontinent in the Top 200. Wits is in the bandbetween the 226 and 250 positions whileIMRAAN BUCCUSSOUTH Africa is going through a toughtime politically. Having commemorated theanniversary of Steve Biko’s death recently, Ithought it appropriate to reflect on thereflections around Biko and what thismeans for the crisis of leadership that weface in SA. Important I think, especially in acity central to the Biko story.The 12th of September has becomesomething of an unofficial day ofremembering Steve Biko and reflecting onhis legacy. Amidst growing anger in activistcircles about attempts to ‘privatize’ theright to remember Biko it is pleasing to notethe diversity of speakers and events.Barney Pityana, Biko’s close comrade andthe man who actually coined the phrase‘black man you’re on your own’, spoke inPretoria. Here in Durban the eminentphilosopher Dr Percy More spoke to mystudents and in Cape Town the greatNigerian writer, Ben Okri spoke.There are new books out on Biko byDaniel Magaziner and Xolela Mangcu; andNigel Gibson’s new book on Frantz Fanonalso deals extensively with Biko. While thevarious political groups that emerged fromthe Black Consciousness Movement are alltiny, intellectually moribund and lacking inany real popular support Biko himself hasbecome an iconic figure in intellectualcircles.Biko and Rick Turner, a philosopherteaching at Howard College, were theleading intellectuals of the 1970s. They bothcame to prominence here in Durban andwere both murdered by the state. The twomen, who were good friends, became theleading figures in what is now known as‘The Durban Moment’, a brief period inwhich Durban became the centre of radicalintellectual and political life in SouthAfrica.Although Biko inspired the BlackConsciousness Movement, which waslargely a movement of black intellectuals,and Turner was a key figure in theemergence of the black trade unionmovement, they shared an interest incutting edge international thinkers of theday like Jean-Paul Sartre and Paulo Freire.This placed their thought and activismfirmly in the camp of the more democraticforms of radical thought that emergedaround the world under the banner of ‘thenew left’ in the wake of the struggles thatemerged around the world in 1968. In acountry where the left had long beendominated by the twin authoritarianisms ofStalinism and Trotskyism this was a realbreakthrough.Local figures like the late Strini Moodleyand Bishop Rubin Phillip, who were bothStellenbosch lies in the 251st and 275thgrouping.The California Institute of Technology inthe US was ranked first, Oxford and Stanfordwere joint second, and Harvard was fourth.The ranking organisers did not giveUKZN’s exact position saying it would beunfair to do so as the movement at that endof the table was very slight.Times Higher Education takes intoaccount 13 indicators in establishingrankings including the average number oftimes the university;s research papers arevery close to Biko, as well as mypostgraduate teacher, David Hemson, whoworked closely with Turner, have provideda living link to this great moment in ourcity’s history for new generations ofintellectuals and activists.But in all of the new books about Biko,as well as the various talks that were givenaround the country on 12th September, thestress has been laid not so much on payingtribute to heroes of the past but on findingways to meet the intellectual and politicalchallenges of the present. In Cape TownBen Okri said that people get the leadersthat they deserve. And in Pretoria BarneyPityana stessed the gross failures ofleadership that have come to typify ourcountry. Even leading figures in the ANC,like Jay Naidoo, Pallo Jordon and RonnieKasrils have been publically expressingtheir serious concern about the failures ofleadership that we see all around us.The groundswell of public anger atcorrupt and incompetent leaders has nowreached crisis proportions. Now that thecited, staff-to-student ratio and the numberof PhD and undergraduate degreesawarded.Mr Simon Pratt, product manager atThomson Reuters which facilitates therankings, said: ‘We continue to see a highlevel of engagement and collaboration fromparticipating universities.‘This year we had 700 institutionsactively participating in the InstitutionalProfiles project. This is a strongendorsement of the rigorous data collectionprocess and analysis.‘As we enter the fourth year of theInstitutional Profiles initiative we have thebroadest and deepest set of keyperformance indicators on Universitiesglobally, drawing on Thomson Reutersinstitutional reputation and citation data.This is the ideal foundation for the TimesHigher Education World UniversityRanking,’ said Pratt.Steve Biko and the challenges of the presentBantu Stephen Biko was born in Tylden in theEastern Cape on 18 December 1946, the thirdchild of the late Mathew Mzingaye and AliceNokuzola Mamcethe Biko. He attendedprimary school in King William’s Town andsecondary school at Mariannhill, a missionaryschool in KwaZulu-Natal.Biko registered for a degree in medicine atthe black section of the Medical School of thethen University of Natal.Biko’s horizons extended further than themedical profession and he soon became aprominent student leader co-founding the SAStudents Organisation (SASO) in 1968 andbeing elected its first President at theinaugural congress held at Turfloop in 1969.SASO was created out of the frustrations ofBlack students within the liberal and multiracialNUSAS who felt the student body wasunwilling to adopt radical policy positionsand preferred playing ‘safe politics’.rebellion of the poor, which has beengrowing since 2004, has exploded across theplatinum belt our leaders have realised thatthey can’t carry on as usual. But instead ofan attempt to resolve the crisis by takingpublic participation and negotiationseriously our leaders are trying to resolve itwith coercion and violence. There is a witchhunt on to find the ‘third force’ behind theinsurrectionary mood sweeping thecountry. Some have pointed to Malema,others to Britain. Some have even spoken ofa ‘counter-revolutionary’ force like Renamoemerging.We should remember that in the 70’s thenational liberation movement denouncedBiko as a CIA agent. The authoritarian leftin and out of the national liberationmovement has never been able tounderstand that people are perfectlycapable of exercising political agency ontheir own. We have seen this duringapartheid era and in the democratic era.When people have organised themselves ontheir own rather than under the authorityof the official left this has constantly beenresponded to with conspiracy theoriescentering around evil agitators and wildslander rather than attempts to understandwhy it is that people have organisedthemselves.Biko stressed that it was the mind of theoppressed that is the most importantterrain of struggle. If today’s protestorswere engaged as people with minds insteadof with witch hunts for the agitators andconspiracies our democracy would be a lotstronger. What would Biko have done?Imraan Buccus is Research Fellow inthe School of Social Sciences at UKZNand Academic Director of a universitystudy abroad programme on politicaltransformation.Call for indigenouslanguages inHigher EducationLUNGA MEMELATHE College of Health Sciences (CHS) is progressingtowards the development and implementation ofpolicies to ensure UKZN produces a new generationof multilingual and culturally sensitive graduatesskilled and competent to address South Africa’shealth needs.In line with this, the College recently held aNational African Languages Colloquium. Over twodays, representatives from Higher Educationinstitutions and various disciplines at UKZNdiscussed curriculum transformation comprisingeffective discipline-specific communication skills,and the teaching and learning of indigenouslanguages along with cultural sensitivity, therebyproducing sought after graduates.The colloquium promoted African languages aseffective communication mediums in tertiaryinstitutions, shared experiences on the promotionand implementation of policies and strategicallyplanned for the development and implementation ofAfrican language policies.Representing the UKZN Teaching and LearningOffice (UTLO), Dr Rubby Dhunpath informeddelegates that 44 percent of the student body at UKZNused English as a home-language while 46 percentused isiZulu and 10 percent other languages.Dhunpath said there was a perceived dominanceof English as an international language, while in factSouth Africa boasted 11 official languages.Dhunpath highlighted that 81 percent of KwaZulu-Natal’s population were isiZulu speaking. Thispresented various challenges for Western-trainedhealth professionals in the province as doctor /patient consultation needed to rise above the culturalcommunication barrier.Critical issues for consideration in theintellectualisation of African languages in SouthAfrican Higher Education were discussed after anopening address delivered by Professor NobuhleHlongwa, College Dean: Teaching and Learning,Humanities.Hlongwa touched on legislative and policy context;language policy and planning in South Africaninstitutions of Higher Education (HE), and ways oflinking the implementation of language plans tothroughput in HE.‘IsiZulu is not a nice-to-know anymore,’ saidUKZN’s Professor Noleen Turner, who spoke aboutthe implementation of African languages in healthsciences professional training.Turner said UKZN currently had 400 studentsstudying isiZulu as a second language and should thelanguage policy be implemented; the numbers wouldshoot up to 4 000 students competent at least on thebasic level.Professor Fanie Botha, Director for CHSProfessional Services, said: ‘It is hoped that Africanlanguages will soon be recognised on the sameplatform as the English language. This will thenensure greater emphasis is placed on not justlearning the language but also the culture, therebyimproving relationships between health sciencesprofessionals and their clients.’Dr Chris Ellis (right) who discussed challenges incross-cultural communication with African patients.
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