53 Notable alumni of
Rhodes University
Updated:
Rhodes University is 1043rd in the world, 22nd in Africa, and 6th in South Africa by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 53 notable alumni from Rhodes University sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff.
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Embeth Davidtz
- Occupations
- actortelevision actorfilm actorstage actorfilm director
- Biography
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Embeth Jean Davidtz is a South African-American actress and director. She has appeared in movies such as Schindler's List, Matilda, Bridget Jones's Diary, and The Amazing Spider-Man, and in the television series In Treatment, Californication, and Mad Men.
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Alice Krige
- Occupations
- television actorstage actoractorfilm actor
- Biography
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Alice Maud Krige is a South African actress. Her big break came in 1981, when she starred as the Gilbert and Sullivan singer Sybil Gordon in the British historical film Chariots of Fire, and as Eva Galli / Alma Mobley in the American supernatural horror film Ghost Story. She received a Laurence Olivier Award for her performance in the West End theatre production of Arms and the Man (1981) and later joined the Royal Shakespeare Company.
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Ian Douglas Smith
- Occupations
- farmerpolitician
- Biography
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Ian Douglas Smith GCLM ID was a Rhodesian and later Zimbabwean politician, farmer, and fighter pilot who served as Prime Minister of Rhodesia (known as Southern Rhodesia until October 1964 and now known as Zimbabwe) from 1964 to 1979. He was the country's first leader to be born and raised in Rhodesia, and led the predominantly white government that unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom in November 1965 in opposition to the demands for the implementation of majority rule as a condition for independence. His 15 years in power were defined by the country's international isolation and involvement in the Rhodesian Bush War, which pitted the Rhodesian Security Forces against the Soviet and Chinese-funded military wings of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU).
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Chris Hani
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Chris Hani was a South African military commander, politician and revolutionary who served as the leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and chief of staff of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the former armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). He was a fierce opponent of the apartheid government, and was assassinated by Janusz Waluś, a Polish immigrant and sympathiser of the Conservative opposition on 10 April 1993, during the unrest preceding the transition to democracy.
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Dana Wynter
- Occupations
- television actorstage actoractorfilm actor
- Biography
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Dana Wynter was a German-born British actress, who was raised in the United Kingdom and southern Africa. She appeared in film and television for more than 40 years, beginning in the 1950s. Her best-known film performance was in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). A tall, dark, elegant beauty, she played both victim and villain. Her characters both in film and on television sometimes faced horrific dangers, which they often did not survive, but she also played scheming, manipulative women on television mysteries and crime procedural dramas.
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Kaneez Surka
- Occupations
- television producerYouTuberfilm directorcomedian
- Biography
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Kaneez Surka is a South African improv artist, actress, comedian and a YouTuber, based in India. She started her career with the show The Week That Wasn't. She has performed on various stand up platforms. She was a judge on the first two seasons of the Amazon Prime Video stand-up comedy reality show Comicstaan. She also hosts an online comedy game show, The General Fun Game Show on YouTube.
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Max Theiler
- Occupations
- physicianchemistvirologist
- Biography
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Max Theiler was a South African-American virologist and physician. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1951 for developing a vaccine against yellow fever in 1937, becoming the first African-born Nobel laureate.
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Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams
- Occupations
- politicianminister
- Biography
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Stella Tembisa Ndabeni-Abrahams is a South African politician who is currently serving as the Minister of Small Business Development since 5 August 2021. She previously served as Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies from November 2018 to August 2021. She is a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) and a National Working Committee (NWC) of the African National Congress (ANC).
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Humphry Knipe
- Occupations
- screenwriterwritersociologist
- Biography
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Victor Humphry Knipe was a sociology and history author, and adult film writer, director, and website administrator. He was a co-author of The Dominant Man: The Pecking Order in Human Society, a sociology book which has been translated into five languages, and the sole author of The Nero Prediction, a historic novel about Emperor Nero and astrology, which won the 2006 Independent Publisher Book Award for "Best Historical Fiction."
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James Martin
- Occupations
- screenwriterwriterbusinesspersonconsultantengineer
- Biography
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James Martin was a British information technology consultant and author, known for his work on information technology engineering.
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Ian Roberts
- Occupations
- singeractortelevision actor
- Biography
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Ian Roberts is a South African actor, playwright and singer. A native English speaker, he is also fluent in Afrikaans and Xhosa.
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Mcebisi Jonas
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Mcebisi Hubert Jonas is a South African politician and businessman who was the Deputy Minister of Finance of South Africa between May 2014 and March 2017. He is best known as a state capture whistleblower. In 2016, he publicly alleged that the Gupta brothers had offered him the post of finance minister under President Jacob Zuma.
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Frederick Brownell
- Occupations
- vexillologistheraldist
- Biography
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Frederick Gordon Brownell OMSS SM & Bar MMM KStJ was a South African herald, vexillologist, and genealogist.
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Reuven Bar-On
- Occupations
- psychologist
- Biography
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Reuven Bar-On is a psychologist and one of the leading pioneers, theorists and researchers in emotional intelligence. Bar-On introduced the concept of an “EQ” (“Emotional Quotient”) to measure “emotional and social competence”, although the acronym was used earlier to describe ideas that were not associated with emotional intelligence per se. In the first copy of his doctoral dissertation, which was submitted in 1985, Bar-On proposed a quantitative approach to creating “an EQ analogous to an IQ score”.
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Trevor Hastie
- Occupations
- university teacheracademicstatistician
- Biography
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Trevor John Hastie is an American statistician and computer scientist. He is currently serving as the John A. Overdeck Professor of Mathematical Sciences and Professor of Statistics at Stanford University. Hastie is known for his contributions to applied statistics, especially in the field of machine learning, data mining, and bioinformatics. He has authored several popular books in statistical learning, including The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction. Hastie has been listed as an ISI Highly Cited Author in Mathematics by the ISI Web of Knowledge. He also contributed to the development of S.
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David Webster
- Occupations
- political activistanti-apartheid activistanthropologist
- Biography
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David Webster was a South African academic and anti-apartheid activist. He worked as an anthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he was a senior lecturer at the time of his assassination.
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Mbali Ntuli
- Years
- 1988-.. (age 38)
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Mbali Ntuli is a South African politician and a former member of the Democratic Alliance (DA). She is the former Provincial Campaigns Director for the party in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). She resigned as a member of the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature in March 2022, where she served as the DA KZN Spokesperson on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA). She previously served as leader and Chairperson of the Democratic Alliance Youth. She was elected to this position in May 2013.
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Rob Davies
- Occupations
- university teacherministerpolitician
- Biography
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Robert Haydn Davies was minister of trade and industry of South Africa from 2009 to 2019.
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Olivia Forsyth
- Occupations
- spypolice officer
- Biography
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Olivia Anne Marie Forsyth, agent number RS407 and codename "Lara", is a former spy for the apartheid government in South Africa. Having attained the rank of lieutenant in the Security Branch of the South African Police (SAP), Forsyth defected to the African National Congress (ANC) and was incarcerated at Quatro prison camp in northern Angola. Following her escape, Forsyth spent six months hiding in the British embassy in Luanda.
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Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela
- Occupations
- university teacherpsychologistwriter
- Biography
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Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is the Research Chair in Studies in Historical Trauma and Transformation at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. She graduated from Fort Hare University with a bachelor's degree and an Honours degree in psychology. She obtained her master's degree in Clinical Psychology at Rhodes University. She received her PhD in psychology from the University of Cape Town. Her doctoral thesis, entitled "Legacies of violence: An in-depth analysis of two case studies based on interviews with perpetrators of a 'necklace' murder and with Eugene de Kock", offers a perspective that integrates psychoanalytic and social psychological concepts to understand extreme forms of violence committed during the apartheid era. Her main interests are traumatic memories in the aftermath of political conflict, post-conflict reconciliation, empathy, forgiveness, psychoanalysis and intersubjectivity. She served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). She currently works at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein as a senior research professor.
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Penny Siopis
- Occupations
- visual artistvideo artist
- Biography
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Penny Siopis is a South African artist from Cape Town. She was born in Vryburg in the North West province from Greek parents who had moved after inheriting a bakery from Siopis maternal grandfather. Siopis studied Fine Arts at Rhodes University in Makhanda, completing her master's degree in 1976, after which she pursued postgraduate studies at Portsmouth Polytechnic in the United Kingdom. She taught Fine Arts at the Technikon Natal in Durban from 1980 to 1983. In 1984 she took up a lectureship at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. During this time she was also visiting research fellow at the University of Leeds (1992–93) and visiting professor in fine arts at Umeå University in Sweden (2000) as part of an interinstitutional exchange. With an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University, Makhanda – Siopis is currently honorary professor at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town.
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Lucie Pinson
- Occupations
- activist
- Biography
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Lucie Pinson is a French environmental activist focused on influencing banks, insurance companies, and investors to stop investing in coal projects. She is the founder and director of the NGO Reclaim Finance and a 2020 Goldman Environmental Prize winner.
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Paul Verryn
- Years
- 1952-.. (age 74)
- Occupations
- Christian minister
- Biography
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Paul Verryn is an ordained minister of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. Known for his anti-apartheid activism, he was Bishop of the church's Central District between 1997 and 2009. During that period, he was a prominent and controversial figure for his activism against xenophobia, and clashed with the South African government over his decision to accommodate hundreds of refugees at his Central Methodist Church, Johannesburg city centre.
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Eric Louw
- Occupations
- diplomatministerpolitician
- Biography
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Eric Hendrik Louw was a South African diplomat and politician. He served as the Minister of Finance from 1954 to 1956, and as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1955 to 1963.
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Wamkele Keabetswe Mene
- Occupations
- diplomateconomist
- Biography
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Wamkele Mene is the Secretary General of the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat. In February 2020, he was elected as the first Secretary General of the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat.
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Matthew Buckland
- Occupations
- journalistbusinessperson
- Biography
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Matthew Buckland was a South African Internet entrepreneur and businessman who founded and exited a digital agency and publisher Creative Spark, acquired in 2015 by UK firm M&C Saatchi PLC (LSE: SAA), the holding group of M&C Saatchi. Buckland was also the founder of Burn Media, a suite of technology publishing brands which includes Memeburn, Ventureburn.com, Gearburn.com and others.
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Billie Zangewa
- Occupations
- visual artisttextile artist
- Biography
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Billie Zangewa is a Malawian artist who hand sews silk fabrics to create collage tapestries, and who now lives in Johannesburg. Since 2004, her art has been featured in international exhibitions including the Paris Art Fair at the Grand Palais in Paris.
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Joan Hambidge
- Occupations
- poetwriter
- Biography
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Joan Helene Hambidge, is an Afrikaans poet, literary theorist and academic. She is a prolific poet in Afrikaans, controversial as a public figure and critic and notorious for her out-of-the-closet style of writing. Her theoretic contributions deal mainly with Roland Barthes, deconstruction, postmodernism, psychoanalysis and metaphysics.
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Guy Butler
- Occupations
- poet
- Biography
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Frederick Guy Butler was a South African poet, academic and writer.
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Pippa Heylings
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Phillippa Frances Heylings, known as Pippa Heylings, is a British politician who has served as Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire since 2024. A member of the Liberal Democrats, she previously represented Histon and Impington on the South Cambridgeshire District Council from 2018 to 2024.
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Heather Ford
- Occupations
- researcher
- Biography
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Heather Ford is a South African researcher, blogger, journalist, social entrepreneur and open source activist who has worked in the field of Internet policy, law and management in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. She is the founder of Creative Commons South Africa. She has studied the nature of power within Wikipedia and is a researcher at the University of Leeds.
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Margaret Ballinger
- Occupations
- university teacherpolitician
- Biography
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Margaret Ballinger was the first President of the Liberal Party of South Africa and a South African Member of Parliament. In 1944, Ballinger was referred to as the "Queen of the Blacks" by Time magazine.
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John Lockley
- Occupations
- healershaman
- Biography
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John Keith Kelly Lockley is a white South African who is initiated as an igqirha, a traditional healer or sangoma of the Xhosa people.
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Dion Forster
- Years
- 1972-.. (age 54)
- Occupations
- chaplain
- Biography
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Dion Angus Forster is a South African academic and clergyman. He serves as University Research Professor of Public Theology and Ethics in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, in the School of Religion and Theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
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Robert Hamerton-Kelly
- Occupations
- writer
- Biography
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Robert Gerald Hamerton-Kelly was a Christian theologian, ordained United Methodist pastor, ethics scholar, and author and editor of several books on religion and violence. He served as Dean of the Chapel at Stanford Memorial Church at Stanford University for 14 years and was on the faculty of the university for more than 30 years. A leading advocate of the work of René Girard's theory of mimetic desire, Hamerton-Kelly co-founded several organizations dedicated to the study of the theory and edited several important texts about it.
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Verashni Pillay
- Occupations
- journalist
- Biography
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Verashni Pillay is a South African journalist and editor. She was the editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post South Africa and the Mail & Guardian. She was head of digital at South African radio station, POWER 98.7 and currently runs her own company, explain.co.za.
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Margaret Mary Smith
- Occupations
- scientific illustratorphysicistchemistichthyologist
- Biography
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Margaret Mary Smith, was an ichthyologist, accomplished fish illustrator, and an academic.
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Kathleen Satchwell
- Years
- 1951-.. (age 75)
- Occupations
- lawyerjudge
- Biography
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Kathleen Margaret "Kathie" Satchwell is a retired judge and human rights advocate. She served on the Gauteng Division of the High Court (formerly the South Gauteng High Court) in South Africa from 1996 and is recognised for her contributions to constitutional jurisprudence, gender equality, and the transformation of the South African judiciary. She is also known for her legal activism during the apartheid era and leadership of the Satchwell Commission in road accident compensation reform.
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Denise Robinson
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Denise Robinson is a former South African politician, a previous Member of Parliament with the Democratic Alliance, and the Shadow Minister of Women in the Presidency.
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Barry Streek
- Occupations
- journalistanti-apartheid activist
- Biography
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Barry Streek was a liberal South African political journalist and anti-apartheid activist.
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Mark Winkler
- Occupations
- writer
- Biography
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Mark Winkler is a South African writer of literary fiction living in Cape Town. He is the author of six novels, An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Absolutely Everything (2013), Wasted (2015), The Safest Place You Know (2016), Theo & Flora (2018), Due South of Copenhagen (2020) and The Errors of Dr Browne, published in August 2022.
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Billy Kahora
- Years
- 20th Century
- Occupations
- journalistscreenwriter
- Biography
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Billy Kahora is a Kenyan writer and editor based in Nairobi. He was commended by the 2007 Caine Prize judges for his story Treadmill Love. His stories "Urban Zoning" and "Gorilla's Apprentice" were shortlisted for the prize in 2012 and 2014, respectively. He is the author of works including the non-fiction book The True Story of David Munyakei, wrote the screenplay for Soul Boy (2010) and co-wrote Nairobi Half Life (2012). As Managing Editor of Kwani Trust, Kahora has edited seven issues of the Kwani? journal. He is a contributing editor to the Chimurenga Chronic.
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Phumzile van Damme
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Phumzile Thelma Van Damme is a South African tech consultant and activist who specialises in combating political disinformation and misinformation. A former politician, she represented the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the National Assembly of South Africa between May 2014 and May 2021. She was the party's Shadow Minister of Communications from October 2015 to December 2020.
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Ishtar Lakhani
- Years
- 1985-.. (age 41)
- Occupations
- women's rights activisthuman rights defenderstrategist
- Biography
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Ishtar Lakhani is a feminist activist from South Africa, whose work focuses on issues of social justice, in particular the rights of sex workers. In 2020 she was added by the BBC on their 100 Women list.
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Janet B. W. Williams
- Years
- 1947-.. (age 79)
- Occupations
- social worker
- Biography
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Janet B. W. Williams is an American social worker who focuses on the diagnosis and assessment of mental disorders. She is Professor Emerita of Clinical Psychiatric Social Work (in Psychiatry & Neurology) at Columbia University. She was a major force in writing the PHQ-9, a 9-question instrument given to patients in a primary care setting to screen for the presence and severity of depression.
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Toby Shapshak
- Occupations
- journalist
- Biography
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Toby Shapshak is a South African journalist, editor and publisher of the South African edition of Stuff magazine and writes a weekly opinion column for the Financial Mail, called Pattern Recognition and a column for Forbes magazine. Formerly a senior newspaper reporter covering everything from crime to politics, he has been writing about innovation, telecoms and the internet and the impact it has on Africa for more than 20 years.
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Gerrit Verschuur
- Occupations
- university teacherastronomer
- Biography
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Gerrit L. Verschuur is an American scientist who is best known for his work in radio astronomy. Though a pioneer in that field, Verschuur is also an author (he has written about astronomy, natural disasters, and earth sciences), inventor, adjunct professor of physics for the University of Memphis, and Astronomer Emeritus - Arecibo Observatory and now semi-retired. He served for a time as the Chief Scientist for Translucent Technologies, LLC; a company which is based in Memphis, Tennessee.
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Ebenezer Ntlali
- Years
- 1954-.. (age 72)
- Occupations
- Anglican priest
- Biography
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Ebenezer St Mark Ntlali is a South African Anglican retired bishop. He was the fourteenth Bishop of Grahamstown.
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Isabella Matambanadzo
- Occupations
- writer
- Biography
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Isabella Matambanadzo (born 5 June 1973) is a Zimbabwean writer, gender and feminist activist active with the African Feminist Forum. With a background in print, radio and television Journalism, she has used media to amplify women's voices. She also has a background in reporting on breaking news stories in and around Africa having previously worked with Reuters News Agency from 1999 to 2001.
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Imogen Wright
- Occupations
- bioinformaticiansoftware developer
- Biography
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Imogen Wright is a South African software developer and bioinformatician. They are co-founder and CTO of Hyrax Biosciences, a software development company specialising in DNA analysis programs.
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John Cupido
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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John Cupido is a South African politician, a Member of Parliament in the Eastern Cape Provincial Parliament for the Democratic Alliance (DA) where he is the Shadow MEC of Health and also the DA's spokesperson on Economic Development, Environmental Affairs & Tourism; and acting spokesperson on Sports, Recreation, Arts & Culture. He was first elected as a City Councillor in 2006 in East London where he led the Buffalo City DA Caucus till his election to the Provincial Legislature in the 2009 General Election in April 2009 at the age of 32.
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Errol Harris
- Occupations
- philosopher
- Biography
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Errol Eustace Harris, sometimes cited as E. E. Harris, was an American South-African philosopher. His work focused on developing a systematic and coherent account of the logic, metaphysics, and epistemology implicit in contemporary understanding of the world. Harris held that, in conjunction with empirical science, the Western philosophical tradition, in its commitment to the ideal of reason, contains the resources necessary to accomplish this end. He celebrated his 100th birthday in 2008.
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Michael Berning
- Biography
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Mike Berning was a South African librarian, author, and bell ringer. He is best known as a Head of Cory Library (1965) and Deputy University Librarian.
