In today’s #SliceofGasant column, Gasant Abarder pays tribute to a man who played a seminal role in putting the University of the Western Cape (UWC) on a breakneck trajectory and paved the way for not only this institution to thrive but left an indelible mark on the South African higher education landscape.
The mood at the UWC campus was as grim as the weather yesterday. One of the giants of its history – and indeed of the legacy of the South African Higher Education landscape – passed away on Sunday.
The first time I met Professor Brian O’Connell was in my office when I was the editor of the Cape Times. He was smartly-dressed and you knew immediately he was a man of great stature. There was an aura about him that made you realise he was a dignified and distinguished gentleman.
We had serious and grave business to discuss but he always held his composure in the tough talk and we shook on what we had discussed with the view that a matter that was important to him had been resolved.
What a surprise a few years later, when Prof came down to the basement where the media office was located that I was now running in 2018, in the bowels of the admin building to personally welcome my co-manager Nashira and me to our new roles.
A few weeks later, I squinted my eyes to see who the tall and skinny senior gentleman was, impeccably dressed, picking up litter in the university’s quad. To my surprise, it was the now-retired former Rector and Vice-Chancellor of UWC, Prof O’Connell.
I felt embarrassed as he lifted the lid on a big wheelie bin to dispose of the items of litter he had collected. Before I said anything, he offered: ‘It’s fine. I want to help keep the campus clean because it is beautiful and litter-free. Today is windy so it is understandable there are some small items of litter lying around. The colleagues really take care of the campus, but it wasn’t always this way.’
I would learn from longer-serving colleagues that Prof would do the same during his tenure as Rector and Vice-Chancellor from 2001 to 2014. It epitomised his servant leadership. He picked up litter and encouraged students to do the same.
It is through this gesture that a few years later, momentum was given to UWC becoming the Greenest Campus in Africa – three years running. Its Cape Flats Nature Reserve on the campus lends to the aesthetic of what is truly a place you can be proud to call your workplace.
But that wasn’t the only thing Prof cleaned up during his tenure. He took over at a difficult time in the country’s transition to democracy. There was a brain drain as President Mandela nicked some of UWC’s best academics and researchers to serve in his government, including Prof O’Connell’s predecessor, the late Rector and Vice-Chancellor Professor Jakes Gerwel, as his Director-General.
Prof had to navigate choppy waters during his term as the university battled with financial challenges because it was disinvested by the apartheid government because the ‘University of the Left’, as it was then known, had dared to defy its policies and was a thorn in its side.
Then he famously prevented the government from merging UWC with the then Peninsula Technikon, which he at the time described as a recipe for disaster. He was successful and persuaded the government to leave the university intact.
He also skilfully integrated Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Dentistry into UWC and it is now one of the leading faculties in the world – producing more than half of South Africa’s dentists and oral hygienists as a partner of the World Health Organization.
Prof also secured funding to build an enormous state-of-the-art infrastructure to house the university’s science research endeavour, which later dealt telling blows to the COVID-19 pandemic.
When he handed it over to his successor, Professor Tyrone Pretorius, he handed over a university in good standing, not only financially but on a trajectory to become one of the leading research universities in the developing world.
It was his up yours – not that I could ever imagine Prof ever making such a gesture – to the apartheid government who imagined UWC as a place for people of colour to train as teachers, nurses and admin clerks. Now UWC offers this and more, produces the leading Square Kilometre Array scientists, offers courses in virtual reality and produces its own water to take the load off our drought-stricken region.
I got to know Prof a little better when he was our player/coach/captain of the Rectorate’s six-a-side cricket team for the staff wellness day. He made us practice for the event and would be dismayed if we couldn’t make training. He inspired us so much for the friendly event that we were ready to run through brick walls. He contributed with his little dart off break bowling that didn’t really spin but was hard to get away.
On Sunday, a giant tree in South Africa’s tertiary education sector fell. But it was a tree that nurtured all around it and left everyone in its shade better off and more prosperous. This is Prof’s legacy.
Rest easy, Prof, and enjoy the little darts you’re bowling in heaven.
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Picture: Supplied
