In a Sunday Times opinion piece – Ten-years-after-his-death-jakes-gerwels-legacy-at-uwc-remains-strong – UWC Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Prof Tyrone Pretorius wrote:.
“Apart from the different positions that he held and the various accolades over the years, I am reminded that throughout his life, Jakes was deeply rooted in the Eastern Cape, where he was born in 1946 on a sheep farm in Kommadagga, close to Somerset East. In addition to the unique landscape and vegetation of that area, I always have a sense that there is a humbleness and an unpretentiousness about the Eastern Cape, and maybe this is partly what shaped Jakes into the unique leader and human being that he was.
A colleague told me that she once asked Jakes what he always carried in his briefcase, and he answered: “Many things, depending on circumstances, but always an atlas of the world and a copy of the Afrikaans writer N.P. van Wyk Louw’s anthology ‘Versamelde Gedigte”, because, there is enough in Van Wyk Louw’s work to keep one busy for an entire lifetime.”
Jakes’s love for the work of Karel Schoeman and N. P. van Wyk Louw is well known. I do, however wonder about the atlas. Maybe one carries an atlas of the world to be able to explore what is new and unknown, but also to make sure that you can always find your way home again. For UWC, Jakes Gerwel’s legacy is an integral part of what we constantly come home to because he taught us that “the integration of academic and intellectual life with and the development of it out of the reality of people’s social experience and world is essential both for the order of our functioning and, more importantly, for the vitality and quality of our intellectual environment”.
Professor Jakes Gerwel, ten years later, you are still acutely missed.”
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