Dr Zuleiga ‘Julie’ Jaffer: parent, student, facilitator, lecturer and self-proclaimed provocateur

Dr Zuleiga ‘Julie’ Jaffer is a 1975 medical graduate. Her years at the University of Cape Town (UCT) mirror those of apartheid-classified ‘Coloured’ students of those years. At her class’s 40th anniversary in 2015, she delivered a speech recounting her experience as a student, her family’s principles, her involvement in the transformation space and her life as a mother and educator. This is her story: 

"Good morning friends,

Peace be with you. 

I am going to speak about my association with the Faculty over the years, how it has changed and what challenges it still faces.  

We have a Faculty Charter which many people either do not know about or do not pay much attention to.  

Through my experiences in the Faculty, I have come to the conclusion that the Faculty Charter is essential as a unifying document and is needed to guide change.  

I also wanted to make the class of 1975 aware of the ‘rumblings’ under the surface. However, that has been made redundant by the Rhodes Must fall and Fees Must Fall campaigns. The rumblings have turned into an explosion which is now centre stage. 

Clearly, much still needs to be understood and addressed.  

On reflecting on the past, I do so with the understanding that my interpretations of what happened are influenced by my experience over the years and I often think back laughing at myself and the situations that I had found myself in.  

When I started at UCT in 1969, this is what the university looked like: the statue of Cecil John Rhodes was firmly in place.  

Of course, I was not really concerned about that. It was a different time, and it was the year that Imam Haron was killed in detention. He was buried on my 18th birthday, 29 September, and that night the earth shook.  

Yes, I started in 1969. I joined this class in 1971 as I had failed second year.  

I do hope that all of you know that the opinion other students who study pure maths, philosophy and engineering had of medical students was that we are not really that bright. We only knew how to memorise facts and then regurgitate them effectively.  

When I failed second year one of the things that was said was that I was really very intelligent, and it was just that I had not applied myself adequately. 

My failing had put me into a different league.  

Undergraduate years 

As you all know, during the first week at university we had the honour of meeting Dr Elsworth, a lovely, charming man who had the unusual skill of knowing all our names at our first visit to his laboratory. I was about to scoop up some chemical substance when he peered at me and said: ‘Miss Jaffer, this is chemistry, not domestic science.’ 

I smiled sheepishly and tried to proceed with the task at hand and since that day I have always been very precise when measuring ingredients while cooking.  

What I needed to say to him was that it was the first time that I had been in a laboratory as South Peninsula High School, a good so-called ‘Coloured’ school, did not have a lab.  

Twenty-five years later in 1995 my son also came to UCT without having worked in a lab.  

At present, SP’s lab is being built.  

Another experience that I would like to share is one that happened during obstetrics.  

On a ward round at Peninsula Maternity Hospital, Dr Michael asked me to do a PR on a patient in labour to ascertain the degree of dilatation of the cervix.  

I was extremely embarrassed and until today do not know how to do that assessment.  

Apart from my embarrassment, I cringe while thinking of the patient’s discomfort. This was on a big ward round. These sorts of insensitive practices still happen today, and humiliation is still being used as a pedagogic tool.  

Anyway, I did have my moment of revenge with Dr Michael during the gynae block.

Graduation 

‘Wie is hy en wie is ek’?  

My father was influenced by the Unity Movement’s principle of non-racialism and, of course, by Islamic teachings of the oneness of humankind. He translated this into the light-hearted saying, ‘Wie is hy en wie is ek’? 

We engaged in numerous forms of protests, which were often directed against ourselves.  

I decided to attend the graduation ceremony even though I had not participated in the class photograph or attended the class dinner.  

I decided to attend even though some of our classmates did not, for the sake of my parents, Hassan and Rahmat Jaffer.  

By graduation I had been married for almost a year and thus had a husband and in-law parents, Allie and Ayesha Moosa, accompanying me on graduation day. Needless to say, my father enjoyed the graduation day very much. After all, his daughter graduated on the same day as the son of Professor Chris Barnard. 

Ja, wie is hy en wie is ek?  

Then, to add to his entertainment, when he went to the bathroom after the ceremony, who should he meet there, involved in the same activity as he was? None other than the chancellor of the university, Mr Harry Oppenheimer.  

Yes, we are all people, essentially the same. 

Internship at Somerset Hospital 

1976 ─ that momentous year when South Africa was set on its path towards change.  

This is a picture of the members of the medicine department at Somerset Hospital: Professor Keeton with his team ─ Sophie, Jenny, Noelene, Rabia etc., and me, trotting around Somerset Hospital doing my internship, wearing platformed shoes.  

We had the usual challenges of internship: sleeplessness, inexperience, bullying by seniors and, in addition, it was 1976, so it could not be business as usual.  

Sophie and I organised a march including the Somerset Hospital staff members across the board. We wanted to pledge solidarity with the people protesting in the rest of the country. The march was a success. Unfortunately, Dr Louis Van Der Poel was detained the next day as he was considered to be the big leader.  

We also arranged a meeting and asked/demanded that the heads of Medicine, Surgery and Gynae attend. After that year, the Faculty started to change its programmes. ‘Brown’-skinned registrars were allowed to work at Groote Schuur Hospital, though they could not see ‘White’-skinned patients and did not have a place to sleep.  

In 1995, Riaad started at medical school. It was a different place. There were no issues regarding ‘Black’ and ‘White’ wards, ‘Black’ and ‘White’ autopsies, ‘Back’ and ‘White’ cadavers. He could engage with life at the university in a normal way.  

Student health service 

In 1996, I was appointed as deputy director of the Student Health Service (now the Student Wellness Service). There, I was exposed to the hardships and alienation that students from disadvantaged communities were suffering. I used to tell them that they need to hang in there because some day when their children come to university, they will be in a position to support them. Their children would not struggle as they are struggling.  

Their children are still at school. The ones here now still do not have parents that can support them financially.   

Faculty charter 2002  

Preamble  

Post-apartheid South Africa is emerging from decades of systematic discrimination that affected every aspect of society, including the health sector, resulting in profound inequities in health status in the population. Central to the reconstruction of South African society is the need to develop a culture of human rights based on respect for human dignity and non-discrimination.  

Although there were significant attempts by staff, students and the institution to resist apartheid, UCT was not immune to the racist, sexist and other discriminating practices and values that typified society under apartheid. As UCT grapples with transformation, we remain with the legacy of these discriminatory practices.  

To overcome this legacy of apartheid and other forms of discrimination, UCT Health Sciences’ Faculty is producing this charter as a basis for transformation of the institutional culture of the Faculty, to ensure that students and staff have access to an environment where they are able to realise their full potential and become active participants in the academic life of the Faculty.  

The charter was adopted at a wonderful ceremony at the Baxter Theatre in 2002. 

I was present and therefore promptly forgot about the charter until later.  

For the past 10 years, I have been involved with the Faculty as a parent, student, facilitator, lecturer and provocateur.  

My daughter, Yumna, started medicine in 2007 and she could engage openly in all student activities and got involved with service-orientated organisations and took on various leadership roles, including becoming president of SHAWCO Education. She personally had a full and balanced experience at UCT.  

She has since entered the places of work doing her internship and there, she has come up against unacceptable practices due to the entrenched systems of patriarchy and medical hierarchy.  

In 2011, while working as a lecturer in palliative medicine, it was brought to my attention that students had to declare their race (I prefer the term apartheid category) when signing attendance registers. The reason for this was that overseas funders needed proof of transformation when funding St Luke’s Hospice. I consider this to be an unacceptable practice. I discussed this with a group of final-year medical students during a tutorial at St Luke’s Hospice in Lentegeur.  

Interestingly, many of them had refused to categorise themselves in apartheid categories.  
They, however, opened up and told me how they are being discriminated against in the Faculty.  

An angry ‘Black’ young man said: 'We are being discriminated against, but you cannot your finger on it.' I promised that I would do something about the matter. I would try to put my finger on it.  

Anyway, I did some work in this sphere and started a project called ‘Healing through Transformation ─ Putting Your Finger on it.’ 

One needed to understand why this was happening in post-apartheid South Africa at the University of Cape Town, which was led by people who believed in an egalitarian and non-racial society.  

At the time, I was trying to work out how to unify the Faculty around the issues of transformation and thought that I should use the Constitution of South Africa and the Bill of Human Rights for this purpose.  

It then occurred to me that we had the Faculty Charter, which is quietly displayed in the entrance hall and which nobody takes much notice of.  

I am happy to say that it has since been re-adopted by the Faculty during its centenary celebrations.  

2015 brought in the Rhodes Must Fall and the Fees Must Fall campaigns with all its progressiveness and trauma. 

It is necessary for all peace-loving South Africans, wherever we are, to work towards a united, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist, prosperous South Africa.  

We need to lose the apartheid categories. We need to focus on our common humanity. We need to see ourselves as human beings, South Africans, global citizens, creatures of God.  

We have achieved a great deal in this country.  

I am now a full citizen in the land of my birth and have tasted the fruits of freedom.  

I am acutely conscious of the fact that many of my compatriots have not yet had the full advantage of freedom.  

At this Faculty it is our responsibility to stop students and staff from feeling discriminated against. The Faculty is taking this very seriously and has started a programme called ‘Intersections of Healing.’ Leslie London, Sipho Dlamini and I are provocateurs on the White Privilege/Black Pain Committee. We have our work cut out for us.  

We need a Faculty where everyone feels at home and, as stated on the Faculty Charter, that they are able to realise their full potential and become active participants in the academic life of the Faculty.  

In case we think that these are lofty ideals and not achievable, we in South Africa have many wonderful role models who were prepared to stand up and be counted under very difficult circumstances.  

The spirits of our foremothers are still with us.-Lilian Ngoyi, Rahima Moosa, Evelyn de Bruyn, Helen Joseph. 

We need to tap into their strength and experience to sustain us.  

We need to take the negative feelings of anger, frustration, 
guilt and change it into compassion and re-energise  
ourselves to achieve these ideals". 

Following Julie’s departure from UCT in 2017, she has been involved in family matters. Her interests lie in transformation, politics and women’s rights advocacy.   

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