It is significant that Professor Mapule Ramashala died in Pretoria during Mandela month. She was appointed by the late president to serve on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and she admired Nelson Mandela's strategic and humanitarian leadership.

Mapule Frances Ramashala was born on January 14 1937 in Stirtonville (now Reiger Park), Boksburg, the eldest child of Ramalemane Elias Ramashala and Mannyane Evelyn Ramashala (née Sebogodi).She attended the local primary school and Lemana Secondary School in Louis Trichardt before matriculating at Khaiso Secondary School in what was then Pietersburg (Polokwane).Ramashala demonstrated impressive intellectual ability early in life and received the Morris Isaacson Race Relations Scholarship and the GA Denny Social Science and Service Scholarship. When she graduated with an MA in clinical psychology from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1964, she was the first black person to graduate as a psychologist.In 1965, she became a Fulbright International Scholar, and this enabled her to pursue her graduate studies in the US. She was awarded her master's in public health from Johns Hopkins University and obtained a PhD in education from the University of Massachusetts.She spent the early part of her career working on innovative programmes aimed at increasing access to higher education for disadvantaged young people.She was director of counselling for the Upward Bound Programme at the University of Massachusetts, an instructor in a "university without walls" programme in Brooklyn, New York, and chair of the Urban University Department at the State University of Rutgers in Newark, New Jersey.The Rutgers programme was one of three established by the university as a pre-college enrichment programme to provide higher education opportunities for disadvantaged young people in New Jersey. She was asked to duplicate the programme at Oakland University in Michigan.From 1976, Ramashala worked in the mental health sectors of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, she established a quality assurance committee of psychiatrists. Her study of the mental health effects of psychiatric medications and the prescribing patterns of psychiatrists contributed to development of regulations in this regard.Ramashala began teaching at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, in the master's in human services programme in 1980. She made her mark supervising student research projects and undertaking active research, and became an authority on strategies to address the problems of the elderly among minority groups in the US.She conceptualised studies to identify why these elderly people were not using the services designed to help them, and developed strategies and outreach programmes to increase their access to services.She developed programmes to increase the number of staff from minority groups in management positions in the network serving the aged. She was also chosen to facilitate capacity building for research and demonstration projects in historically black colleges and universities in the southeast and northeast corridors of the US.Ramashala was a master of grant-writing, and received nearly $1-million to fund research and capacity-building programmes in the field of minority ageing, as well as a three-year $1-million grant to establish a multidisciplinary centre for ageing at Lincoln University focusing on increasing the number of African-American geriatricians in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware and Washington, DC.She was director of the Grantsmanship Institute at Lincoln University, which was established to develop and present grant-writing and programme-planning workshops in the fields of education, health and human services. The institute was instrumental in increasing the number of minority organisations and historically black colleges and universities that got grants.Ramashala returned to South Africa in 1995 and joined the Medical Research Council as group executive for research capacity development. Later, under Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, she was appointed as a commissioner on the TRC.Ramashala went on to hold a number of positions in the South African higher education sector. She served as vice-chancellor of the University of Durban-Westville from 1998 to 2002 and as vice-chancellor of the Medical University of South Africa in 2003 and 2004. She was also on the "size and shape" task team of the Council on Higher Education.She was a member of the Human Sciences Research Council and the National Advisory Council on Innovation, and was vice-chairwoman of the Electoral Code of Conduct Observer Commission of KwaZulu-Natal. In 1999, she was appointed chairwoman of both the National Research Foundation and the Employment Equity Commission. She was a member of the World Health Organisation's expert panel on ageing and health.She lived her life with distinction and served both her country of birth and her adopted country, the US, where she lived for 30 years.Lincoln University, colleagues and friends in the US plan to pay tribute to this remarkable woman at a memorial service in Pennsylvania.She is survived by her daughter Nakazzi and her grandson Nafis, among others.Robala Ka Khotso, Mokoena!1937-2016..