Farewell to Miriam Hoosain, ED: HR

Dear colleagues and students

In April 2022, I announced that our Executive Director: Human Resources (ED: HR) Ms Miriam Hoosain will take early retirement. Her last day of service is 31 January 2023. I therefore write, on behalf of the university community, to bid fond farewell to Ms Hoosain, who has held the role since January 2011.

UCT is not just a collection of lecture halls. It is not only research excellence, teaching and learning or our long-standing history that makes UCT what it is. UCT is its people – they make the university what it is. Human capital is intrinsically linked to the proper functioning and success of the university. I would like to pay tribute for the invaluable contribution Ms Hoosain has made in HR – the lifeblood of an organisation.

She joined the university’s HR department in 1999, as an employment equity officer. She has held numerous positions in the department over the years, including manager: HR information systems (2002–2004) and senior HR advisor to the Faculty of Health Sciences (2004–2010).

Before joining UCT, she worked as a scientist at the Centre for Epidemiological Research at the South African Medical Research Council, researcher for the Gender Equity Unit, lecturer in the psychology department at the University of the Western Cape, and researcher at the New York Psychiatric Institute in the United States.

Some of the more notable HR highlights under Ms Hoosain’s leadership include:

• On 1 July 2016 UCT officially welcomed approximately 1 000 insourced employees who became part of the UCT community. This followed the signing of a historic agreement to absorb outsourced workers onto the university payroll.
• The Disciplinary Policy was implemented on 1 August 2021. It is the first time at UCT that a disciplinary policy applies to all staff given that previously, academic staff and professional, administrative support and service staff had separate disciplinary policies.
• The submission of the Annual Training Report and Workplace Skills Plan 2021 under the COVID-19 environment was a major success, as was HR managing to recoup four months of Skills Development Levy contributions, as per the COVID-19 relief “holiday” granted by the Education, Training and Development Practices Sector Education and Training Authority.

Once again, I express my sincere gratitude to Ms Hoosain for all her work as a member of the UCT executive. I applaud her for her total commitment to the university and for carrying out her mandate in the HR function for the benefit of the university’s academic, administrative and research functions.

Please join me in thanking her for her many years of service at the institution and in wishing her well in her future endeavours.

Sincerely

Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng
Vice-Chancellor

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