Dr Iqbal Survé.

Student leaders dig deep

Present and prospective student leaders got to indulge in some intense self-reflection at a personal-development course offered by Unilever South Africa in April. Last year, 27 students were handpicked from clubs, societies and other groups from around campus to take part in the two-day workshop, also known as the Unilever Leadership Programme. Presented by Durban-based training group Apple Tree, the programme was designed to familiarise the students with the higher aspects of leadership and management. "The usual leadership-training programmes rely on orators and dynamic speakers to put across an image and not an ideal," says Ramzi Solomon, winner of the 2004 award for most outstanding student leader in sport at UCT. "Apple Tree's ideal entails living your purpose and not living up to the expectations of others."

Alumni lead the charge

The university has kicked off its UCT Alumni Leadership Forum, an initiative to breathe new life into its relationship with its far-flung graduates. Dr Iqbal Survé (above), the UCT alumnus who now heads black empowerment company Sekunjalo Investments Ltd, was the forum's first speaker, addressing some 100 other alumni who attended the launch last week. In his talk, Linkages in the Development of Africa, and the kind of leadership the country needs in business (and other spheres), Survé spoke on the ties that bind the Third World with the First, the past with the present (and the future), and South Africa with the rest of the continent. The bulk of South Africans are growing poorer, and other African nations see South African companies as the "new colonisers", he said. "Tragically, the captains of industry in our country have failed us in South Africa, and they have failed us in Africa."