South Africa - People

There are currently 108 South African students studying at Oxford. The majority are full-time postgraduates, and nearly two-thirds of them are pursuing research degrees. South African students at Oxford can apply for a range of scholarships which are open to African students, as well as some specifically reserved for Southern Africans and South Africans.

The Oppenheimer Fund scholarships were endowed to the University in 1993 by Harry Frederick Oppenheimer, a noted South African businessman, philanthropist, and opponent of apartheid. The Fund promotes links between the University of Oxford and South Africa by assisting South African students wishing to pursue graduate study at Oxford.

One of the scholarship schemes run by The Africa Educational Trust (AET) is the Kenneth Kirkwood Fund which was established in 1998 in honour of the memory of Kenneth Kirkwood, the first Professor of Race Relations and Co-ordinator of African Studies at St Antony’s College. Kenneth Kirkwood was a founding member of the Africa Educational Trust. The fund provides small grants for maintenance, fees or for emergency payments for students from Southern Africa, including South Africa. Both undergraduate and postgraduate students are eligible and priority is given to those students studying subjects which are relevant to the development of their home countries. First consideration is given to students studying at Oxford’s St Antony’s College. 

There are currently a total of 18 South Africans working at the University.  The majority of them are in research-focused posts.  

Dr Malcolm McCulloch
Dr Malcolm McCulloch is head of the Energy and Power group, Director of the Institute for Carbon and Energy Reduction in Transport at the Oxford Martin School and Senior Tutor in Engineering at Christ Church. He is an electrical engineer focusing on sustainable energy technologies. Malcolm has active research programmes in the three sectors of domestic, transport and renewable generation. His research into the domestic sector lead to the creation of a spin-out company called Intelligent Sustainable Energy of which Malcolm is a non-executive director. In the transport sector his focus is on electric and hydrogen vehicles, and he was involved in the development of the Morgan LifeCar – the first ever Hydrogen sports car. In renewable energy generation, he is part of a team developing tidal flow devices and a second related project to develop slow speed direct coupled generators.

Professor Anton Van De Merwe
Anton Van Der Merwe is Professor of Molecular Immunology at the Oxford Molecular Pathology Institute in the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology and Nicholas Kurti Senior Research Fellow at Brasenose College. He heads up a research group which tries to understand how T cells and Natural Killer cells recognize infected or otherwise abnormal cells.

Professor Van De Merwe is Director of Graduate Studies for the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology and Director of the Medical Sciences Graduate School and Doctoral Training Centre. Professor Van Der Merwe received all of his medical training and higher education at the University of Cape Town. This includes an MBChB (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery), a BSc (Hons) and a PhD in Medicine.

Prominent South African Oxonians of the past century have included:

• Pixley ka Isaka Seme, who founded the ANC in the early 20th century
• Bram Fischer, the anti-apartheid activist and lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela at his treason trial
• Piet Koornhof, who was a cabinet minister during apartheid in the 1970s and 1980s
• Frene Ginwala, speaker of the first post-apartheid parliament, the South African National Assembly.

Other key figures include Loyiso Nongxa, the current Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and Rhodes scholar Justice Edwin Cameron, a Supreme Court judge in South Africa and a former prominent human rights lawyer particularly in the late apartheid era. Justice Cameron is well known for championing the rights of people living with HIV and Aids and was South Africa’s first holder of public office to declare publicly that he was living with AIDS. His exceptional achievements were recognised by Oxford in 2011 when he was awarded an honorary degree in civil law.

There are currently 1,077 alumni in South Africa. They are catered for by two main alumni groups in Capetown and Johannesburg. The Oxford & Cambridge Society of Cape Town has more than 250 members and organises a wide range of events and activities.  The alumni group based in Johannesburg, the OCBASA (Oxford and Cambridge Business Alumni in South Africa), has a business focus and is open to all alumni of Oxford or Cambridge who studied, or are currently engaged in, business.