Special evening with the Phantom

Enjoy a night at the opera and support a good cause - the April 7 performance of Phantom of the Opera has been dedicated to the Ziphelele Mbambo Scholarship Fund of the UCT/MRC Research Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine (ESSM).

Professor Tim Noakes, Discovery Health chair of exercise science and sports medicine at UCT, has appealed to the public to support fund-raising for this scholarship. He said that in contributing to sport in South Africa, there must be transformation at a scientific level too.

However, a university education is expensive, putting it beyond the reach of many potential candidates and, in addition, some young black scientists. Ziphelele Mbambo, who died in 1999, was one of the first, and it is through his memory that the Sports Science Institute wants to attract and reward young black scientists entering this field.

The scholarship is aimed at helping to bring about employment equity in the field of exercise science and will aid previously disadvantaged students, particularly in the field of biokinetics, and is being co-ordinated by Associate Professor Lambert and Lorraine Sivewright at the ESSM.

They hope to raise R2-million by July 2005.

Mbambo graduated from UCT in 1999 after completing his MSc. A promising sport scientist and long distance runner, he was killed in a hijacking incident in KwaZulu Natal.

Considered by all who knew him as a charismatic young man with a keen sense of humour, he had worked hard and made many sacrifices to achieve his goals including a PhD from UCT.

However, this was never to be as he was tragically killed a week before his wedding day.

It was the indelible mark he had left on his colleagues of the Sports Science Institute and Medical School, which spawned the desire to remember him.

Tickets for Phantom of the Opera are R250 and R350 can be booked through Linda on (021) 659-5600 or Liesel (021) 650-4570/2459.