JONATHAN JANSEN | Covid-19 has robbed SA of so many human libraries of knowledge

Every morning I wake up, it seems there is another friend or family member who has been hospitalised, intubated or has died from Covid-19. Even non-coronavirus deaths are amplified because of the heartache of the many who have succumbed to the dreaded virus. Sometimes the cause of death is hard to discern: was it really heart problems, as the family is quick to report, or were the cardiovascular problems Covid-19-related? This week I have to find ways of including at least three drive-by and two online memorials in a packed schedule of remembering the dead. Behind the numbers are the names of real people whose amazing lives have been lost in the sheer frequency of death around us.

This week we lost some of the most incredible South Africans, who have made invaluable contributions to education. I wish to honour them.

Dr Johan van Zyl (not the Sanlam guy, the Toyota guy) is rightly known for his global leadership role as the face of Toyota Motor Corporation. After all, he was the president and CEO of Toyota Motor Europe and CEO of the Europe Region, quite apart from chairperson of Toyota Motors SA. But few know the humble 63-year-old Potchefstroom graduate who four times a year sat with me in an education trustees meeting to plan how to improve teaching and learning in the primary schools of rural KZN, where Toyota employees send their children. Once a year this giant of the motor-manufacturing industry would travel with a small group of us into rural settlements to listen to children recite poetry and replace pit latrines with decent toilets. I will always remember his words at one of our meetings, when we struggled to understand why a government of the people could not give its most vulnerable citizens the dignity of a flushing toilet. With sadness on his face, Johan gave an explanation that makes perfect sense: “They just don't care.” Now he is gone.

A few weeks ago Roy Hellenberg called me with a request I would normally decline in these times. Please come to my school in Johannesburg and inspire my teachers, my children and my parents. Even though I would be double-jabbed by the time of the planned event, I was apprehensive about climbing on a packed plane out of Cape Town and risking health and lives. But this was my childhood friend, who had landed a prized principalship of an outstanding school and was eager to make a lasting difference through his leadership. So I said yes. It was his close friend and a partner in diversity training in schools, Dylan Wray, who called me all choked up one morning. What is wrong, Dylan? Roy had died. I remembered how the three of us wrote a book together, A School Where I Belong, and the many, many hours Roy spent in mainly former white schools teaching them how to include and embrace the blessing of difference. At the front of the packed hall stood this celebrated history teacher, leading with his life. Now he, too, is gone.

When universities fell into trouble, the Mr Fixit for human resources problems was Peter Morris. So I asked Peter to lunch a few weeks ago to interview him for a book I am writing on dysfunctional universities. He was animated and so excited about his current work at a Vaal university under administration, where he brought unions and staff to the table to rebuild the HR capacity of that institution. Peter was a walking encyclopedia of HR knowledge, but what struck me was that he understood the broader significance of a fairly technical discipline — building and sustaining the academic project. Every act of performance management or staff compensation had a larger goal, and that was to advance teaching, learning and research in the modern university. As I switched off the recording device I wondered out loud what higher education would do without the reservoir of knowledge this amazing man brought to the table. Now Peter is gone too.

When this pandemic and its variants are finally behind us, we will have to take stock of what we lost in terms of human talent and expertise. There needs to be a plan for replacing, over time, these libraries that have left us, as a friend likes to refer to the passing of knowledgeable people. Highly skilled people cannot be replaced overnight and in a school system that remains broken (dropouts are a major, uncalculated tragedy of these Covid-19 times), it will be hard to make up for these incalculable losses in the education community.

Rest in peace and rise in power, my dear departed friends.

You have run a good race.