Alumni in the news April 2020
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Witsies making the headlines
COMMERCE, LAW AND MANAGEMENT
Kyle Pillay (BAccSc 2016) earned a place on South African Institute of Chartered Accountants’ prestigious Honours Roll. The roll is made up of 12 candidates who demonstrated exceptional performance and insight in the way they completed case-study tasks. Read his career projections, lessons learned from his journey here.
Christopher Malikane (BSc 2000, MCom 2002), Associate Professor in the School of Economics and Finance at Wits, asks if the South African Reserve Bank is practicing quantitative easing.
Fhedzisani Pandelani (BProc 1993, LLB 1995, HDipColLaw 1996), chair of the Gauteng Liquor Board, has been appointed as South Africa’s first solicitor-general for two years by justice and correctional services minister Ronald Lamola. He faces a huge task to tackle the state liability bill.
Mpho Manyala-Chitapi (LLB 2013) was the black female partner at Africa’s largest law firm, ENSafrica before Nedbank appointed her as the Head Legal: Group Technology. She shares how she balances her work and the burden of “black tax”.
ENGINEERING AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Hannah le Roux (BArch 1987, MArch 2002), Associate Professor of Architecture at Wits, shares four ideas from history that offer healthier design.
Cikida Gcali (BSc Eng 2014), Senior Customer Strategy and Operations Manager at UberEats, shares how to handle the challenges that come with being a black woman in a male-dominated space.
Maemo Machaba, a civil engineering student as well as Managing Director at Aura Entle Engineering and Construction, is part of an engineering trio who developed a unique technology to build double and triple-storey houses without using pillar support. He shares how they were provided resources to be innovative.
Alboricah Tokologo Rathupetsane (BSc Eng 2016) has been shortlisted for the prestigious Commonwealth Short Story Prize for 2020 for her submission of “The Faraway Things”. Listen to Alboricah talk about her submission here.
Professor Mitchell Gohnert (PhD 1995), from the School of Civil and Environment Engineering, has contributed to a vital resource on construction techniques in precast, 3D printing and shell structures through the TCI Information Centre. This operates as a public concrete technology library and is accessible to anyone in South Africa interested in or needing information on concrete topics.
Simo Mkhize (BSc Eng 1997) has been appointed as new chief commercial officer Cell C. He holds an MBA from Milpark Business School, a postgraduate diploma in telecoms from BPI College in Austria and a BSc in electrical engineering from Wits.
MEDICINE
Dr Susan Williams (MBBCh 1994, MMed 2009, PhD 2013), senior Lecturer in Opthalmology at Wits, writes African genetic studies offer hope for preventing a common cause of blindness.
HUMANITIES
Elaine MacDonald (BA Hons 2003) author, scriptwriter and children’s television presenter has launched her second book I See a Rhinoceros through Penguin Random House.
Storyteller and entrepreneur Juliet Vuyiseka Rozani (BA DA 2014), launches a children’s book Azira: The African Princess, a story about a girl whose heart is filled with kindness.
Kundai Moyo (BA Fine Art), a Zimbabwean-born artist, has been selected to join the KZNSA Gallery for its second season of the Young Artists’ Project. She considers questions around love, and its conduits: care, recognition, respect and intimacy.
Dr Nduka Mntambo (BA DA 2006, MA 2010) is the Head of Film and Television programme at the Wits School of Arts. He won Best Visual Art award for his installation Asymmetries at the 2020 Humanities and Social Sciences Awards. The awards honour scholarly work based on social relevance and contribution to the humanities and social sciences. See more of his work here:
Artist Serge Alain Nitegeka (BA Fine Art 2010) is profiled in The New York Times. He shares his art and the refugee condition during a time of global lockdown.
Candice Chirwa (BA 2017) is an author, professional speaker and radio host. She is known as the “minister of menstruation” because she of her activism which makes menstrual education fashionable.
SCIENCE
Dr Kimberley Chapelle (BSc 2013, BScHons 2014, MSc 2016) and Professor Jonah Choiniere from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits published in Scientific Reports. They found present 3D reconstructions of the 2cm-long skulls of some of the world’s oldest dinosaur embryos show similarities to today’s crocodiles, lizards, and chickens.
Professor Lee Berger (PhD 1999, DSc 2014), Chair in Paleo-anthropology from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits, explains how fossil skulls rewrite stories of ancient two ancient human ancestors.
He also produced a series of online video lectures giving a fascinating inside look at the University’s world-renowned fossil vault.