Newsletter, May 2025
Dear Alumni and Friends,
Warm greetings to you from an Autumnal campus – the vines are turning red on buildings across campus, a sure sign to students to knuckle down in advance of mid-year exams. We hope that this will be a rewarding and fulfilling year for each of you. While the country and higher education sector face many challenges with reduced government tuition and accommodation subsidies, a particular issue for us in Cape Town where housing is expensive, there is still a great deal of good news to celebrate at UCT, including the Autumn graduation ceremonies and a wonderful Varsity Cup rugby victory by the Ikey Tigers in recent weeks.
The Ikey Tigers put on a gladiator-style performance to end an 11-year title drought, with a commanding 44-21 victory over the FNB Maties at the FNB Varsity Cup final in Stellenbosch. Despite not having the home-crowd advantage in the packed Danie Craven stadium, the Ikeys outplayed the Maties with sublime skills and excellent running. Captain Keagan Blanckenberg won the Player that Rocks award and winger Ntokozo Makhaza was awarded the FNB SA Overall Player that Rocks award for his two tries, four penalties and four conversions, which contributed 32 points to the score.
All the Best,
Sarah Archer
Executive Director, Development and Alumni, UCT
UCT welcomes 4 500 new first year students
UCT welcomed approximately 4500 new first-year students to UCT at the start of the year, reflecting how student enrolment is up.
It is encouraging to note that 26 out of 37 of the country’s top matriculants for 2024 who applied to study at UCT have enrolled at the university.
GSB named top EMBA programme in Africa
UCT’s Ethics Lab Charts a Bold Path for Health and AI in Africa
The University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB) reaffirmed its position as one of the world’s leading business schools.
Its Executive MBA (EMBA) was named the top EMBA programme in Africa and 11th globally in the newly released 2025 CEO Magazine Global MBA Rankings.
Graduation Highlights
Addressing teachers, tutors, parents, mentors, guardians and friends, UCT Vice-Chancellor Professor Mosa Moshabela said,
“We are here to celebrate and rejoice and to recognise the journey that our graduates have travelled to this point. On behalf of this esteemed institution, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to each and every one of you. It takes talent and intelligence [to get to graduation] but without your support, their success would not be celebrated in the manner we are celebrating.”
Over 5 700 students graduated during 15 ceremonies.
Honorary doctorate recipient
Honorary doctorate recipient
UCT also conferred an honorary doctorate – Doctor of Science in Medicine (honoris causa) – to clinician-scientist, entrepreneur and humanitarian Professor Michael Hayden during the Faculty of Health Sciences’ (FHS) ceremony on 1 April.
As a distinguished alumnus of UCT, Professor Hayden is known as a guiding light in biomedical research and a great inspiration to friends and colleagues across the world. Hayden graduated from UCT with a First Class Honours in MBChB in 1975.
After obtaining his PhD in human genetics and a diploma in child health from UCT in 1979, he went abroad to further his career in medical genetics, completing a postdoctoral fellowship and residency in Internal Medicine from Harvard Medical School before moving to the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1983
Interested in more Alumni News? Visit https://alumni.uct.ac.za/news
