32 Fricker Road, Illovo, 2196, Johannesburg DEALERS IN: Tel: 011 880 9116 | WhatsApp:079 784 0101 info@collectorsinvestments.com www.collectorsinvestments.com By appointment only Coins And Banknotes Medals and Militaria Watches and Pocket Watches Cameras and Silverware All Gold and Silver Jewellery General Antiques and Collectables Max Price says he believes he has made an impact by shaping debates as a thought leader, taking risks, and introducing changes. According to this teacher, researcher, public health professional, and former vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town (UCT), one example was introducing the idea of an Internal Reconciliation Commission following the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “It invited past students and staff to make submissions to an independent tribunal about their apartheid-related experiences in the faculty,” said Price, a dean of the faculty of health sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand at the time. “This became a public report which advanced reconciliation and transformation of the faculty and was emulated by several faculties elsewhere.” More examples of Price’s impact include starting the first private academic hospital in South Africa, the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre, and the first substantial university research company, the Wits Health Consortium. “At UCT, I advanced debates nationally on how institutions might think about honouring historical figures and how to deal with artworks that have colonial or oppressive connotations,” said Price, a saxophone and running enthusiast. “I championed alternative student selection policies that addressed the concern with affirmative action based primarily on race rather than disadvantage. I would like to believe that these policies have helped my institutions and others to create more inclusive environments. “As dean at Wits, I’m proudest of the educational reforms I introduced such as the four-year graduate entry medical degree, the new Bachelor of Health Sciences degree, and the establishment of new academic departments.” Price, a 68-year-old King David Victory Park alumnus and presently a scholar in residence at the Atlantic Institute, Oxford, believes he has inspired others over the past few years by demonstrating resilience in the face of considerable challenges and demonstrating that a university in South Africa can succeed in the global landscape. “UCT ranks in the top 1% of universities worldwide despite unlevel global playing fields and the most significant student unrest in our history.” Price’s biggest challenge was having to deal with disruptive and sometimes violent student protests about nine years ago while he was vice-chancellor at UCT. “Many have commented to me that they don’t know how I survived. I do think I was resilient, that I managed to maintain strong conviction, that I was on the right track and give direction to the university community, and that I brought the ship through the storm,” said Price, whose book on that period, Statues and Storms: Leading through Change, has stimulated critical debate and made it on the Sunday Times 2024 non-fiction long list. Price, appointed by Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to the first ministerial committee on financing healthcare in 1994, was once detained in solitary confinement. “The camaraderie I found when the detainees would sing in our cells and then as a trusted anti-apartheid ally in various movements, created a sense of being part of the struggle, which motivated and sustained me for years,” he said. Environmental management consultant Margaret Rawicz is proud that at the age of 73, many continue to ask her to give presentations and lectures on her career and how the environmental field has evolved. Rawicz is also proud to have recently completed a Doctorate on the Exodus in Biblical Studies. Having journeyed the exodus route from Egypt herself, this degree enabled her to “understand whether what I had seen in my lone explorations of the route was the same as when the Israelites were there 3 500 years ago. This led me to do incredibly difficult research to determine what the climatic and ecological conditions were so long ago. I’m ready to publish findings for the benefit of the Jewish and other religious communities and secular biblical scholars.” This Hyde Park High alumnus, who has many qualifications, says, “I’m unique because I’m often on the cutting edge of a new way of thinking that opens up new ways of doing business, and I think about problem solving in disparate fields of interest, and integrate it with Torah thinking.” When she completed a Master’s degree in landscape architecture at Pretoria University in 1980, her thesis was titled, “Environmental factors in relation to the location and planning of industrial areas in South Africa”. “It resulted in new insights and introduced the need to do environmental impact studies in South Africa,” Rawicz says. “After the thesis, it was legislated as a mandatory requirement for any form of development to submit an environmental impact study to the government before a project could be implemented.” Rawicz has presented publications at environmental conferences to educate business and the government to undertake investigations into environmental considerations as part of their planning. It has influenced the South African government to pass laws to improve attitudes to social and environmental matters, and business and industry to take better social responsibility for the environmental impacts that pollution has on communities. • Margaret Rawicz is also nominated in the Europcar Women in Leadership category Max Price Margaret Rawicz Absa Professional Excellence Award Nominees
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