I got in to the University of Cape Town because I had done accountancy at school. The other universities in South Africa would not accept students with a matric in accountancy for social work degrees. I still find this baffling.
So it was by this quirk of silly administrative logic that my alma mater was the wonderful University of Cape Town. It is there that I first understood my intellectual character and there that I developed my political skills and there that I met the love of my life.
This is why I want to remember today, the birthday of the University of Cape Town in 1829 as the South African College.
The inception of a college was initially formed under the Dutch colonists in 1790 but it to Lord Somerset, the British governor of the Cape that the foundation of the South African College is owed.
The College split into a school and a University in 1874. The University’s main campus is situated on what must be the most beautiful piece of real estate in the world, overlooking the Cape Flats as it spreads northward.
It is fitting then that today in 1971, the first CAT scan of the brain was conducted using technology developed, in part by Nobel laureate, Allan McLeod Cormack whose alma Mater was the University of Cape Town.
– Posted by Douglas Racionzer (serendipiday.blogspot.com)