Dr Marianne Cronje’s office speaks volumes about her. From the framed pictures of her husband and two sons to the neatly stacked documents, everything points towards a woman who is extremely well organised.
This serves the senior lecturer in the biochemistry department of the University of Johannesburg (UJ) well as she juggles teaching and research. ”Obviously we cannot do things as well as those guys who exclusively conduct research, but the advantage of teaching is that you are always on top of the basics,” she says.
Cronje’s major research project looks at the role of heat-shock proteins (proteins that develop when exposed to heat and oxidative stress) in programmed cell death in plants and malignant cells.
Programmed cell death refers to the self-destruction that kicks in when a cell’s lifespan is over or if it becomes defective. If the programme goes haywire, this could lead to cancer in animal cells and disease susceptibilty in plants.
In the case of cancer, cells produce large volumes of HSP70, a heat-shock protein, which prevents programmed cell death and aids cancer cells in their indestructibility.
In turn, in the plant environment, the protection that heat-shock proteins afford programmed cell death may well be the mechanism of heat-related disease susceptibility in warm conditions.
Cronje revels in her scientific pursuits. ”To fit a piece of the puzzle and watch it coming together is unbelievably satsifying,” she says.
From a young age, Cronje knew she wanted to be a scientist, but was not sure of ”what kind” of scientist. She settled for a BSc degree majoring in biochemistry and zoology at RAU. The family moved and she completed her studies up to master’s level at the University of the Free State.
After returning to Jo’burg, she did part-time lecturing at Technikon Witwatersrand, had a stint in industry and finally took up a lecturing job at UJ. It has been at UJ that she has been making her mark as a researcher.
What is Thuthuka?
The National Research Foundation’s Thuthuka programme aims to bolster research capacity in South Africa in all areas, including the social sciences, humanities, sciences and technology. Thuthuka, which launched in 2001, focuses on redress and equity in knowledge production emanating directly from the Employment Equity Act.
The programme addresses equity issues by:
- building the individual capacity of young women and black academics to contribute directly to the skills and competencies needed for development in all fields of knowledge in South Africa;
- growing a pool of postgraduates to supply the academic labour market with new blood; and
- assisting in identifying and mobilising resources that will eliminate barriers that had an adverse impact on the research capacity of designated groups, such as women and black academics.
The programme has grown phenomenally. In 2001, Thuthuka supported 17 black male researchers. By 2006 the number of researchers had grown to 475. Similarly, the programme’s budget increased from R714 000 in 2001 to R32-million last year.
Top Performer Award: Researchers in Training sub-programme
After three days of trying to pin down Shakes Binza, he finally surfaces at a community hall in Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape.
Binza is often out and about, mostly running workshops. The event in Uitenhage entailed the training of ward councillors on the role of computers in local government.
Binza is the director of the Raymond Mhlaba Institute of Public Administration and Leadership at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth. He is also a full-time lecturer in the department of politics and governmental science at the university.
His work at a grassroots level has been aimed at setting up structures to promote engagement between the university and local communities. In turn, this feeds into his doctoral research in the field of South African developmental metropolitan government.
”I have a passion for research. If I remain an academic, research is what I want to do,” he said.
But, growing up in the former Ciskei in Middeldrif near Alice, Binza never thought he would end up an academic. In fact, he must have wondered whether he would make it through school at all.
In standard four (now grade six) he attended school in a mud rondawel. There were no toilets. When he moved on to standard five, he had to travel on foot up to 40km a day to attend school. While at high school there were disruptions and politics.
”I thought I would be a lawyer. The only successful black people were lawyers, doctors, teachers and nurses,” he says.
But in his first year as a public administration and management student at Port Elizabeth Technikon (which merged with the University of Port Elizabeth and the Port Elizabeth campus of Vista university in 2005), Binza realised two things: ”As a poor guy, I wanted to graduate from poverty. I also noticed that there were very few black professors. It enticed me.”
Binza is doing well as an academic. The clues are the Thuthuka award and his CV listing all the papers he has presented at local and international conferences, and has published in national and international journals and refereed in conference proceedings.
Top Performer Award: Researcher Development Initiative for Black Academics sub-programme
Dr Daniel Mashao’s exceptional mathematical abilities as a young boy earned him the nickname ”computer”.
The nickname triggered a curiosity that still appears to be the driving force behind the chief technology officer at the State Information Technology Agency (Sita).
”When we did sums on the board, my teacher, Mr Mangena, used to say: ‘This boy is a computer.’ I did not know what it was. I wanted to find out,” says Mashao.
He decided to study towards computer engineering — a field not on the map yet — and received special permission from the then government to study at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in the 1980s. But he had to settle for electrical engineering.
Four years later he graduated cum laude. After working for General Electric, he became interested in a master’s degree and returned to UCT. During this time, he was invited to Brown University in Rhode Island in the United States.
Upon his return to South Africa, while travelling, he lost every bit of work he did on his master’s in the US in a train on Johannesburg station. ”I had to redo everything,” says Mashao.
After completing his MSc at UCT, he returned to Brown University for his PhD. In the late 1990s, he joined UCT as a lecturer, where he remained until his appointment at Sita last year.
At Sita, his responsibility is to generate the ideas that can make e-government a reality. ”I also see my role at Sita as developing leaders — quite similar to what I did at UCT,” he says.
Mashao is currently working with several postgraduate, mainly PhD students at Sita, which is based in Pretoria, and since 2000 has supervised about a dozen master’s students, four PhDs and nine honours students.
It is his commitment to the students he supervises that has earned Mashao the Thuthuka award.
”I am glad at what I have achieved,” he says, adding that he was not sure whether he would return to a university one day. ”I see where I am working now that I am making a difference to people,” Mashao says.