Jakes Gerwel

Gert Johannes Gerwel (18 January 1946 – 28 November 2012) known mononymously as Jakes, was a South African academic and anti-apartheid activist. He served as director-general of the presidency when Nelson Mandela was in office. In 1999 Gerwel was instrumental in brokering the deal under which Lockerbie bombing suspects were extradited to Scotland. Following Mandela's presidency, Gerwel chaired the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, and also took up a number of academic and business positions until his death in November 2012.

Early life and education Gert Johannes Gerwel was born in 1946 to farmworkers on a sheep ranch in the town of Kommadagga, which is situated between Grahamstown and Somerset East on South Africa’s Eastern Cape. Gerwel matriculated from Paterson High School in Port Elizabeth, and from 1965 to 1967, Gerwel pursued a degree in Afrikaans-Nederlands at the University of the Western Cape. In 1971, Gerwel began studying at the University of Brussels and received his doctorate in literature and philosophy in 1979 for his thesis “Literature and Apartheid.”

Career Gerwel lectured at the Hewat Teachers' Training College in Crawford, Cape Town for eighteen months before continuing his education at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Gerwel returned to the University of the Western Cape in 1980 as a professor. He became UWC’s dean of the Arts faculty in 1982 and was later appointed vice-chancellor of UWC in June 1987. Gerwel would serve as vice-chancellor of the University of the Western Cape for the next seventeen years, until he was appointed director general of the president by Nelson Mandela in his post-Apartheid Cabinet. Following the end of Mandela’s term in office in 1999, Gerwel served as chancellor of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, till his death in 2012.

During his time at the University of the Western Cape, Gerwel catalyzed its shift away from the apartheid educational paradigm. In his 1987 inaugural address as Vice-Chancellor of the UWC, Gerwel famously advocated for the university to declare, “the democratic movement as the dominant ideological orientation describing our operative context.” He argued that the UWC could represent the radical Left in an educational sphere that was dominated by Afrikaner nationalism and anglophone liberalism. Though Gerwel supported the idea of the UWC subscribing to a Leftist ideological orientation, he assured students that the university was committed to scholarly discourse and research.

Legacy In January 2015 Vanguard Drive (the M7 road), a major road running from Cape Town's northern suburbs to the Cape Flats, was renamed in Jakes Gerwel's honour.

Jakes Gerwel Technical School in Bonnievale, Western Cape is named in after him.