Belinda Bozzoli who has died in Johannesburg at the age of 74 was a university of Witwatersrand professor emeritus and shadow minister of higher education, science and technology for the DA.
A former professor of sociology at Wits she was the first sociologist to be awarded an A-rating from the National Research Foundation.
She was Wits university deputy vice-chancellor (research) and chair of the National Research Foundation board.
Higher education and research remained her reigning passions until the day she died.
In one of her last, typically trenchant, no-holds-barred articles written during the coronavirus pandemic she warned that the ability of SA universities to conduct world-class research and produce the kind of quality scientists, “the Abdool Karrims of this world”, who played such a critical role in advising the government’s response to the crisis, was being crippled by government budget cuts.
Postgraduate students, “unlike undergraduates who have had billions spent on them after the Fees Must Fall protest”, were desperately underfunded, she wrote. It was very difficult to get a postgraduate bursary, “especially if you are doing a three-year-long PhD”.
There was a serious reduction in the number of research-active academics, the most crucial people in the entire science system who generate and perform innovative research and train and supervise the students.
Hundreds of highly qualified researchers working in areas from nuclear physics to diversity studies, “who do all the training of postgraduate students”, would not receive sufficient funding to continue as they should.
Higher education and research remained her reigning passions until the day she died.
This was endangering collaborative, wide-ranging research among academics and senior students, critical for international research networks, innovation and spin-off initiatives.
There were worrying cuts in areas concerned with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, she said.
Key projects and programmes in biomanufacturing, precision health, robotics, laser science, nano-science, titanium science and aerospace would be severely cut.
As a former chair of “centres of excellence” in many these fields while at Wits, she knew what she was talking about.
She questioned the ANC’s “real as opposed to ideological” commitment to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
“A genuine fear is that these cuts will damage the system irrevocably and that one of the most precious parts of our society will deteriorate beyond repair. When the next pandemic comes along, who will there be to advise and guide us?”
Bozzoli was born in Johannesburg on December 17 1945. Her father Guerino Bozzoli, who was born in Italy but brought up in SA, was vice-chancellor of Wits University from 1969 to 1977.
After matriculating at Parktown Girls High she obtained a BA in political science and geography and BA Honours in African Studies (first class) at Wits, an MA in African Studies and political science and a DPhil at the University of Sussex. The title of her thesis was: “The roots of hegemony: ideology, interests and the legitimation of South African capitalism, 1890-1940”.
She worked as a primary and high school teacher in Johannesburg and London, a journalist on the Rand Daily Mail and research assistant at the centre for international and area studies at the University of London, before becoming a lecturer in sociology at Wits, associate professor and professor of sociology, head of the department of sociology and head of the school of social sciences.
In 2003 she became deputy vice-chancellor of research.
Unlike many universities around the world where deputy vice-chancellors of research are often not well regarded researchers themselves, Wits had a tradition of appointing top researchers to the post, and her reputation for research was already formidable.
Before taking up this position she had held visiting fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, Oxford and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, largely on the back of her contribution to the Wits History Workshop, which from its beginnings in 1977 produced critically acclaimed research on the underside of the South African experience.
In addition to numerous articles, papers, essays and publications she edited, introduced and co-wrote — “Labour, Townships and Protest: Essays in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand” (1979); “The Political Nature of a Ruling Class: Capital and Ideology in SA” (1981); “Town and Countryside in the Transvaal: Capitalist Penetration and Popular Response” (1983); “Marxism, Feminism and SA Studies” (1983), a critique of Marxism’s failure to comprehend the full significance of gender; “Class, Community and Conflict: SA Perspectives” (1987) and so on — she wrote two standout books.
Her 1991 study, Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Migrancy and Life Strategy in SA, 1900-1980, was considered essential reading in the South African historiography dealing with black women’s experiences of apartheid.
Using oral accounts of their personal histories, it recounts the lives and experiences of 22 black SA women from one small town in the Western Transvaal.
This was one of four books which finance minister Tito Mboweni in a tweet several weeks ago praised as “intellectually enriching”, and urged people to find.
In Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid (2004) she examined the so-called 1986 Alexandra Rebellion, a devastatingly bloody six-day war sparked by the death of youth activist Michael Diradeng.
Using trial and police records, interviews, periodicals, excerpts from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and extensive engagements with Alexandra political activists of the time, she examined how township dwellers “scripted, staged, performed and interpreted different meanings of power” and began to revolt in a manner unprecedented in our history ... it was a crucial period of awakening”, she wrote.
As well as the heroic aspects of the revolt she dealt unflinchingly with the dark side, the witch burnings, necklacings, kangaroo, or so-called “people’s courts”, one of the first intellectuals to give such controversial aspects of the struggle serious academic treatment.
Possibly because of this, beyond academics and intellectuals in the UK and US, the book was virtually ignored by the local academic community. She believed it contained important messages, insights and analysis and was disappointed with its reception in SA. She said researching and writing the book had left her burnt out.
A work in progress: “When Rape is Rampant”, a study in which she aimed to explore the reasons why SA is experiencing an epidemic of rape, examining this society and the gender relations embedded in historical and comparative terms, remained just that.
This was partly because she was unsure about whether to enter such “a painful area”.
But then after Wits refused to renew her contract and she joined the DA in 2014, her ongoing battle against inadequate government funding of universities and their inevitable decline left her with no time.
She wrote an extensive outline, but the fact she wasn’t able to take her study of sexual violence further was one of her lasting regrets.
Bozzoli was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year.
She is survived by academic, sociologist and author Charles van Onselen, to whom she was married for 49 years, and three children.
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