Professor who raised a generation of students and scholars

Zimbabwean academic, Professor Phinias Mogorosi Makhurane, who died on 1 December, helped a number of Southern African states' future leaders get scholarships while he was a representative of the International University Exchange Fund (IUEF) in the region during the 1970s.

Born in Gwanda in January 1939, he taught during his lifetime at a number of universities in Southern Africa and helped to start universities in Botswana, Swaziland and Namibia, as well as Zimbabwe’s National University of Science and Technology (NUST). He was the inaugural chairman of the African Virtual University, and a member of the Namibian Presidential Commission on Higher Education whose report led to the establishment of the University of Namibia.

In his country of birth, Makhurane made history by becoming the first black person to attain a degree in physics and mathematics.

Studies in United Kingdom

His long journey of imparting knowledge started in 1965, when his former school principal in Zimbabwe offered him temporary employment to teach physics. Soon thereafter, he left for Sheffield University in the United Kingdom to study for his masters and PhD in solid state physics.

From 1968 to early 1974 he taught at the University of Zambia, after which he secured a post at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS) and was based in Botswana, first as dean of science and then as deputy rector.

UBLS was a predecessor to the National University of Lesotho, the University of Botswana and University of Eswatini. During the life of UBLS, only the first part of degree programmes was taught in Botswana and subsequent parts were taught in either Lesotho or Swaziland.

Makhurane’s compatriot, Professor Ngwabi Bhebhe, who was dean of humanities on the Swaziland campus of UBLS, said the setting of examinations, their marking, moderation and consideration by faculties and senate were centralised and members of staff commuted across to South Africa for their meetings.

Setting up universities

In a tribute to Professor Makhurane, Bhebhe, who went on to found the Midlands State University in Zimbabwe, said their time at UBLS gave them the necessary experience to start other universities.

“While the university communities at the three campuses [of UBLS] appeared happy with the arrangements, governments were unhappy and the upshot of it was Lesotho’s nationalisation of the local campus and most of the university assets and records, leaving Swaziland and Botswana to cope with the completion of Part II degree programmes of their students,” he said.

“We learned how to set up degree programmes, to plan for their requisite human and infrastructural resources – so that by 1978-79 we had almost attained our goals of building the two universities, although they continued to operate as colleges.”

“As Prof Makhurane admits in his biography, the Botswana and Swaziland situation gave us our first experience in setting up universities, which would be handy when he would be asked to come up with the National University of Science and Technology, and I with the Midlands State University.”

After Zimbabwe attained independence in 1980, Professor Makhurane left Botswana to become University of Zimbabwe deputy vice-chancellor in 1981.

Farsighted

Bhebhe said Makhurane was farsighted and the first to express the need for the expansion of Zimbabwe’s university education to cope with the increased output of advanced-level school leavers after independence.

Bhebhe said the issue was only taken seriously by government in 1989 when it set up the Williams Commission, which recommended a second university with a science bias be built in the country’s second city Bulawayo.

Makhurane – first as the university’s foundation committee chair, and later, as its founding vice-chancellor – brought his enormous experience as a higher education architect and delivered NUST to the nation.

However, Bhebhe said Makhurane should be remembered not only for what he did in higher education.

Support for students

“When he was teaching at the University of Zambia, he was appointed representative of the IUEF which was based in Geneva and raised funds in Scandinavian countries and Holland. He was given wide powers in the administration of the fund, which catered largely for students coming from non-independent Southern African countries, especially from Rhodesia, South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia),” he said.

“There are many Zimbabweans, South Africans and Namibians who today occupy strategic positions in those countries who benefited from Professor Makhurane’s administration of IEUF.”

The most prominent Zimbabwean to benefit was Zimbabwe’s current president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who studied law at the University of Zambia.

In a speech before Makhurane’s burial, Dr Dumiso Dabengwa, a stalwart of Zimbabwe’s war of independence, said Makhurane provided critical support to the educational needs and activities of liberation movements from Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia.

He said Makhurane not only worked with educational and technical institutions, but sourced educational materials and financial support for political prisoners and detainees.

Preparation for leadership

“This is because he saw it as essential that those intending to run countries and their institutions at some point needed to be prepared for their responsibilities and future roles.”

In a condolence message, Mnangagwa said Makhurane played an important role in the reconstruction of independent Zimbabwe through higher education.

“At independence, he heeded the call to come back home and help with the reconstruction of our nation, concentrating his efforts in the area he knew and did best, namely that of higher education. He helped raise generations of students and scholars, many of whom occupy influential positions in the country and beyond,” said Mnangagwa.

For his efforts, the Zimbabwean government declared him a national hero, the highest honour in Zimbabwe, mostly bestowed on those who contributed to the country’s war of liberation.