Albert Lutuli
Inkosi Albert John Lutuli known by his Zulu name Mvumbi, was a South African teacher, Nobel Peace Prize winner, politician. Luthuli was elected president of the African National Congress in 1952, at the time an umbrella organisation that led opposition to the white minority government in South Africa, served until his accidental death, he was awarded the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the non-violent struggle against apartheid. He was the first person of African heritage to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Luthuli was a lay preacher of the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa based at its Groutville Congregational Church in Stanger, KwaZulu Natal, where Luthuli was laid to rest upon his passing in 1967. Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli was born in Solusi Mission Station near Bulawayo, in southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. While his date of birth remains unknown, he calculated his year of birth to be 1898, his father, John Bunyan Lutuli, was the younger son of a tribal chief at Groutville in the Umvoti Mission Reserve near Stanger, Natal.
He became a Christian missionary at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and at the time of Albert's birth, was working as an interpreter among the Matabele of Rhodesia. His mother, Mtonya Gumede, spent part of her childhood in the household of Cetewayo kaMpande, the king of the Zulu Kingdom, but was raised in Groutville. Albert was the couple's third child. Since no information is available about his siblings, it is assumed. John Bunyan Lutuli, Albert's father, died. Sometime between 1906 and 1908, he accompanied his mother to his ancestral home in Groutville. There he lived in the household of his uncle, Martin Lutuli, who had succeeded his grandfather as the tribal chief. In 1911, supported by his mother, who now worked as a washerwoman, Albert entered the local Congregationalist mission school. Here he studied until standard four. Living with his uncle, he imbibed tribal traditions and values. In 1914, Albert was shifted to Ohlange Institute, it was a boarding school, run by Dr. John Dube, the founding President of the South African Native National Council and here he studied for two terms.
On passing the year-end examination at Ohlange Institute, Albert was transferred to a Methodist institution at Edendale, near Pietermaritzburg to undergo a teachers' training course. He graduated from there in 1917; the third son of Seventh-day Adventist missionary John Bunyan Lutuli and Mtonya Gumede, Albert Lutuli was born near Bulawayo in what was called Rhodesia, around 1898. His father died, he and his mother returned to her ancestral home of Groutville in KwaDukuza, South Africa, he stayed with his uncle, Martin Lutuli, at that time the elected chief of the Zulu Christians inhabiting the mission reserve area now covered by the Umzinyathi District Municipality. Lutuli attended the Adams College south of Durban. On completing a teaching course at Edendale, near Pietermaritzburg, Lutuli accepted the post of principal and only teacher at a primary school in rural Blaauwbosch, Natal. Here Lutuli became a lay preacher. In 1920 he received a government bursary to attend a higher teachers' training course at Adams College, subsequently joined the training college staff, teaching alongside Z. K. Mathews, head of the Adams College High School.
To provide financial support for his mother, he declined a scholarship to University of Fort Hare. In 1928 he became secretary in 1933 its president, he was active in missionary work. In 1933 the tribal elders asked Lutuli to become chief of a Christian branch of the Zulu tribe in succession to his uncle. For two years he hesitated, but became a chieftain, he held this position until he was removed from his office by the Apartheid government in 1953. Their having done so notwithstanding, amongst his people he retained the use of the dignity "chief" as a pre-nominal style for the remainder of his life. In 1936 the government disenfranchised the only black Africans who had voting rights at that time — those in Cape Province. In 1948 the Nationalist Party, in control of the government, adopted the policy of apartheid and over the next decade the Pass Laws were tightened. Prior to Luthuli's involvement with the African National Congress Luthuli had served on the executive committee of the Christian Council of South Africa.
Luthuli was one of its delegates to an International Missionary Conference held in Madras, India, in 1938. In 1944 Lutuli joined the African National Congress. In 1945 he was elected to the Committee of the KwaZulu Provincial Division of ANC and in 1951 to the presidency of the Division; the next year he joined with other ANC leaders in organizing nonviolent campaigns to defy discriminatory laws. The government, charging Lutuli with a conflict of interest, demanded that he withdraw his membership in ANC or forfeit his office as tribal chief. Refusing to do either, he was dismissed from his chieftainship. A month Lutuli was elected president-general of ANC, formally nominated by the future Pan Africanist Congress leader Potlako Leballo. Responding the government imposed two two-year bans on Lutuli's movement; when the second ban expired in 1956, he attended an ANC conference only to be arrested and charged with treason a few months along with 155 others. In December 1957, after nearly a year in custody during the preliminary hearings, Lutuli was released and the charges against him and sixty-four of his compatriots were dropped.
He stood close to the International Fel
Alfred Baphethuxolo Nzo
Alfred Baphethuxolo Nzo was a South African politician. He served as the longest-standing secretary-general of the African National Congress, he occupied this position between 1969 and 1991. He was the South African minister of foreign affairs from 1994 to 1999, he was the first black health inspector in the country. The Alfred Nzo Award is now awarded to deserving health practitioners in South Africa, he was sent off to the Eastern Cape to receive missionary education. After completing his matric, he enrolled for BSc degree at Fort Hare University in 1945. At Fort Hare he joined the African National Congress Youth League and became involved in students politics. In his second year of study he left university and started work as health inspector at KwaDukathole in Germiston and was transferred to the Alexandra health and community centre in 1951; as health inspector, Nzo developed much understanding of the lives of millions of South Africans in the 1950s. He got involved in the organising of the Defiance Campaign in 1952.
He was involved in the campaign to interview people about the kind of society in which they would like to live. It was this campaign that culminated in the Congress of the People in 1955, at which the Freedom Charter was adopted. In 1956 Nzo was elected the chairperson of ANC branch in Alexandra. In 1957 he organised the Alexandra bus boycotts in which people walked nine miles from the township to the city and back every day for three months to protest the increase in fares, his involvement in political activities cost him his job. His expulsion from work meant that he lost his residential permit to live in Alexandra, he was subsequently arrested several times and sentenced to five months' imprisonment for not having a residence permit. He served his sentence at Modderbee Prison. In 1958, Nzo was elected to the regional and national executive committees of the ANC. In 1962, he was placed under 24-hour house arrest and in June 1963 detained for a period of 238 days; the following year, Nzo went into exile and took up posts in various countries including Egypt, India and Tanzania.
In 1969, Nzo was elected ANC Secretary-General at the Morogoro Conference in Tanzania, re-elected to this position at the Kwabe Conference in 1985. On 30 December 1979 he and Oliver Tambo met Tim Jenkin, Stephen Lee and Alex Moumbaris, ANC members and escapees from incarceration at Pretoria Central Prison as political prisoners, their presence was announced by the ANC in early January and Tambo introduced them at a press conference on 2 January 1980. After the unbanning of the liberation movements in 1989, Nzo formed part of the ANC delegation that entered into deliberations with the National Party government. Nzo lost the position of Secretary-General to Cyril Ramaphosa at the ANC July 1991 National Conference held in South Africa for the first time after the unbanning of the liberation movements, he was elected deputy head of the ANC's security department. After the first democratic elections in 1994, Nzo was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government of Nelson Mandela. After the 1999 national elections, Nzo retired from politics and in December of the same year he died of a stroke.
He was buried at the Westpark Cemetery in Johannesburg
South Africa
South Africa the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by 2,798 kilometres of coastline of Southern Africa stretching along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans. South Africa is the largest country in Southern Africa and the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and, with over 57 million people, is the world's 24th-most populous nation, it is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different African languages, nine of which have official status; the remaining population consists of Africa's largest communities of European and multiracial ancestry. South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a wide variety of cultures and religions, its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the constitution's recognition of 11 official languages, the fourth highest number in the world. Two of these languages are of European origin: Afrikaans developed from Dutch and serves as the first language of most coloured and white South Africans.
The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup d'état, regular elections have been held for a century. However, the vast majority of black South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994. During the 20th century, the black majority sought to recover its rights from the dominant white minority, with this struggle playing a large role in the country's recent history and politics; the National Party imposed apartheid in 1948. After a long and sometimes violent struggle by the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid activists both inside and outside the country, the repeal of discriminatory laws began in 1990. Since 1994, all ethnic and linguistic groups have held political representation in the country's liberal democracy, which comprises a parliamentary republic and nine provinces. South Africa is referred to as the "rainbow nation" to describe the country's multicultural diversity in the wake of apartheid; the World Bank classifies South Africa as an upper-middle-income economy, a newly industrialised country.
Its economy is the second-largest in Africa, the 34th-largest in the world. In terms of purchasing power parity, South Africa has the seventh-highest per capita income in Africa; however and inequality remain widespread, with about a quarter of the population unemployed and living on less than US$1.25 a day. South Africa has been identified as a middle power in international affairs, maintains significant regional influence; the name "South Africa" is derived from the country's geographic location at the southern tip of Africa. Upon formation, the country was named the Union of South Africa in English, reflecting its origin from the unification of four separate British colonies. Since 1961, the long form name in English has been the "Republic of South Africa". In Dutch, the country was named Republiek van Zuid-Afrika, replaced in 1983 by the Afrikaans Republiek van Suid-Afrika. Since 1994, the Republic has had an official name in each of its 11 official languages. Mzansi, derived from the Xhosa noun umzantsi meaning "south", is a colloquial name for South Africa, while some Pan-Africanist political parties prefer the term "Azania".
South Africa contains human-fossil sites in the world. Archaeologists have recovered extensive fossil remains from a series of caves in Gauteng Province; the area, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has been branded "the Cradle of Humankind". The sites include one of the richest sites for hominin fossils in the world. Other sites include Gondolin Cave Kromdraai, Coopers Cave and Malapa. Raymond Dart identified the first hominin fossil discovered in Africa, the Taung Child in 1924. Further hominin remains have come from the sites of Makapansgat in Limpopo Province and Florisbad in the Free State Province, Border Cave in KwaZulu-Natal Province, Klasies River Mouth in Eastern Cape Province and Pinnacle Point and Die Kelders Cave in Western Cape Province; these finds suggest that various hominid species existed in South Africa from about three million years ago, starting with Australopithecus africanus. There followed species including Australopithecus sediba, Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo rhodesiensis, Homo helmei, Homo naledi and modern humans.
Modern humans have inhabited Southern Africa for at least 170,000 years. Various researchers have located pebble tools within the Vaal River valley. Settlements of Bantu-speaking peoples, who were iron-using agriculturists and herdsmen, were present south of the Limpopo River by the 4th or 5th century CE, they displaced and absorbed the original Khoisan speakers, the Khoikhoi and San peoples. The Bantu moved south; the earliest ironworks in modern-day KwaZulu-Natal Province are believed to date from around 1050. The southernmost group was the Xhosa people, whose language incorporates certain linguistic traits from the earlier Khoisan people; the Xhosa reached the Great Fish River, in today's Eastern Cape Province. As they migrated, these larger Iron Age populations
History of the African National Congress
The African National Congress is the current governing of the Republic of South Africa. The ANC was founded in 1912 in Bloemfontein and is second the oldest liberation movement in Africa and one of the oldest liberation movements in the world; as a resistance movement, the ANC was predated by a number of black resistance movements, among them Umkosi Wezintaba, formed in South Africa between 1890 and 1920. The organisation was founded as the South African Native National Congress on in Bloemfontein on 8 January 1912, its founders were Saul Msane, Josiah Gumede, John Dube, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Sol Plaatje along with chiefs, people's representatives, church organisations, other prominent individuals. It aimed to bring all Africans together as one people to defend their freedoms; the organisation was renamed the ANC in 1923. The organisation, from its inception represented both traditional and modern elements, from tribal chiefs to church and community bodies and educated black professionals, though women were only admitted as affiliate members from 1931 and as full members in 1943.
The formation of the ANC Youth League in 1944 by Anton Lembede heralded a new generation committed to building non-violent mass action against the legal underpinnings of the white minority's supremacy. In 1946 the ANC allied with the South African Communist Party in assisting in the formation of the South African Mine Workers' Union. After the miners strike became a general strike, the ANC's President General Alfred Bitini Xuma, along with delegates of the South African Indian Congress attended the 1946 session of the United Nations General Assembly where the treatment of Indians in South Africa was raised by the Government of India. Together, they raised the issue of the police brutality against the miners strike and the wider struggle for equality in South Africa; the ANC worked with the Natal Indian Congress and Transvaal Indian Congress. In 1948, the Afrikaner nationalist National Party unexpectedly came into power defeating the more moderate United Party despite the fact that that party had won more votes.
The National Party had campaigned on the policy of apartheid an extreme form of institutionalised racial segregation. During the 1950s, non-whites were removed from electoral rolls and mobility laws were tightened, political activities restricted; the successes achieved by the Indian independence movement under the leadership of Gandhi and resulting in the independence of India in 1947, inspired black South Africans to resist the racism and inequality that they, all other non-whites, experienced. They began collaborating jointly campaigning for their struggle to be managed by the United Nations; the ANC found its role model in the initial movement by the Indian political parties. They realised that they would need a fervent leader, like Gandhi was for the Indians, who was, in the words of Nelson Mandela, "willing to violate the law and if necessary go to prison for their beliefs as Gandhi had". In 1949 the ANC saw a jump in their membership, which lingered around five-thousand, began to establish a firm presence in South African national society.
In June 1952, the ANC joined with other anti-Apartheid organisations in a Defiance Campaign against the restriction of political and residential rights, during which protesters deliberately violated oppressive laws, following the example of Mahatma Gandhi's passive resistance in KwaZulu-Natal and in India. The campaign was called off in April 1953. In June 1955 the Congress of the People, organised by the ANC and Indian and white organisations at Kliptown near Johannesburg, adopted the Freedom Charter, which became the fundamental document of the anti-Apartheid struggle with its demand for equal rights for all regardless of race; as opposition to the regime's policies continued, 156 leading members of the ANC and allied organisations were arrested in 1956. The ANC first called for an academic boycott of South Africa in protest of its Apartheid policies in 1958 in Ghana; the call was repeated the following year in London. In 1959 a number of members broke away from the ANC because they objected to the ANC's reorientation from African nationalist policies to non-racialism.
They formed the rival Pan Africanist Congress, led by Robert Sobukwe. The ANC planned a campaign against the Pass Laws, which required black South Africans to carry an identity card at all times to justify their presence in white areas, to begin on 31 March 1960; the PAC pre-empted the ANC by holding unarmed protests 10 days earlier, during which 69 protesters were killed and 180 injured by police fire in what became known as the Sharpeville massacre. In the aftermath of the tragedy, both organisations were banned from political activity. International opposition to the regime increased throughout the 1950s and 1960s, fuelled by the growing number of newly independent nations, the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain, the civil rights movement in the United States. In 1960, the president of the ANC, Albert Luthuli, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; this feat that would be repeated in 1993 by Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk jointly, for their actions in helping to negotiate peaceful transition to democracy after Mandela's release from prison.
Following the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, the ANC leadership concluded that the methods of non-violence such as those utilised by Gandhi against the British Empire during their colonisation of India were not suitable against the Apartheid system. A military wing was formed in 1961, called Umkhonto we Siz
Sol Plaatje
Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje was a South African intellectual, linguist, politician and writer. Plaatje was a founder member and first General Secretary of the South African Native National Congress, which became the Africal National Congress; the Sol Plaatje Local Municipality, which includes the city of Kimberley, is named after him, as is the Sol Plaatje University in that city, which opened its doors in 2014. Plaatje was born in Doornfontein near the sixth of eight sons, his grandfather's name was Selogilwe Mogodi but his employer, the Boer farmer Groenewald, nicknamed him Plaatje in 1856 and the family started using this as a surname. His parents Johannes and Martha were members of the Tswana nation, they were worked for missionaries at mission stations in South Africa. When Solomon was four, the family moved to Pniel near Kimberley in the Cape Colony to work for a German missionary, Ernst Westphal, his wife Wilhelmine. There he received a mission-education; when he outpaced fellow learners he was given additional private tuition by Mrs. Westphal, who taught him to play the piano and violin and gave him singing lessons.
In February 1892, aged 15, he became a post he held for two years. After leaving school, he moved to Kimberley in 1894 where he became a telegraph messenger for the Post Office, he subsequently passed the clerical examination with higher marks than any other candidate in Dutch and typing. At that time, the Cape Colony had qualified franchise for all men 21 or over, the qualification being that they be able to read and write English or Dutch and earn over 50 pounds a year. Thus, when he turned 21 in 1897, he was able to vote, a right he would lose when British rule ended. Shortly thereafter, he became a court interpreter for the British authorities during the Siege of Mafeking and kept a diary of his experiences which were published posthumously. After the war, he was optimistic that the British would continue to grant qualified franchise to all males, but they gave political rights to whites only in the 1910 Union of South Africa. Plaatje criticised the British in an unpublished 1909 manuscript entitled "Sekgoma – the Black Dreyfus."
As an activist and politician he spent much of his life in the struggle for the enfranchisement and liberation of African people. He was a founder member and first General Secretary of the South African Native National Congress, which would become the African National Congress ten years later; as a member of an SANNC deputation he travelled to England to protest the Natives Land Act, 1913, to Canada and the United States where he met Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois. While he grew up speaking the Tswana language, Plaatje would become a polyglot. Fluent in at least seven languages, he worked as a court interpreter during the Siege of Mafeking, translated works of William Shakespeare into Tswana, his talent for language would lead to a career in writing. He was editor and part-owner of Koranta ea Becoana in Mafikeng, in Kimberley Tsala ea Becoana and Tsala ea Batho. Plaatje was the first black South African to write a novel in English – Mhudi, he wrote the novel in 1919, but it was only published in 1930.
He wrote Native Life in South Africa, which Neil Parsons describes as "one of the most remarkable books on Africa by one of the continent's most remarkable writers", Boer War Diary, first published 40 years after his death. Plaatje made three visits to Britain. There he met many people of similar views. One was the cinema and theatrical impresario George Lattimore who in 1923 was promoting with Pathé, Cradle of the World, the "most marvellous and thrilling travel film screened". In a letter to the pan-Africanist W. E. B. Du Bois, Lattimore reported that he was having a "successful run" at the Philharmonic Hall in London; the show, which had the character of a revue, included live singing. Plaatje was recruited by Lattimore to take the role of an African tribesman. Plaatje was a committed Christian, organised a fellowship group called the Christian Brotherhood at Kimberley, he was married to Elizabeth Lilith M'belle, a union that would produce five children – Frederick, Richard and Olive. He was buried in Kimberley.
Over a thousand people attended the funeral. 1935: three years after his death, a tombstone was erected over Plaatje's grave with the inscription: "I Khutse Morolong: Modiredi Wa Afrika – Rest in Peace Morolong, You Servant of Africa". Decades passed. "Much of what he strove for came to nought," writes his biographer Brian Willan, "his political career was forgotten, his manuscripts were lost or destroyed, his published books unread. His novel Mhudi formed part of no literary tradition, was long regarded as little more than a curiosity." 1970s: interest was stirred in Plaatje's journalistic and literary legacy through the work of John Comaroff (who edited for publication The Boer War Diary of Sol T. Plaatje, by Tim Couzens and Stephen Gray
University of the Witwatersrand
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, is a multi-campus South African public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more known as Wits University or Wits; the university has its roots in the mining industry, as do Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand in general. Founded in 1896 as the South African School of Mines in Kimberley, it is the third oldest South African university in continuous operation; the university has an enrolment of 38,353 students as of 2017, of which 20 percent live on campus in the university's 22 residences. 65 percent of the university's total enrolment is for undergraduate study, with the remaining 35 percent being postgraduate. The 2017 Academic Ranking of World Universities places Wits University, with its overall score, as the highest ranked university in Africa. Wits was ranked as the top university in South Africa in the Center for World University Rankings in 2016. According to the CWUR rankings, Wits occupies this ranking position since 2014.
The university was founded in Kimberley in 1896 as the South African School of Mines. It is the third oldest South African university in continuous operation, after the University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University.. Eight years in 1904, the school was moved to Johannesburg and renamed the Transvaal Technical Institute; the school's name changed yet again in 1906 to Transvaal University College. In 1908, a new campus of the Transvaal University College was established in Pretoria; the Johannesburg and Pretoria campuses separated on 17 May 1910, each becoming a separate institution. The Johannesburg campus was reincorporated as the South African School of Mines and Technology, while the Pretoria campus remained the Transvaal University College until 1930 when it became the University of Pretoria. In 1920, the school was renamed Johannesburg. On 1 March 1922, the University College, was granted full university status after being incorporated as the University of the Witwatersrand; the Johannesburg municipality donated a site in Milner Park, north-west of Braamfontein, to the new institution as its campus and construction began the same year, on 4 October.
The first Chancellor of the new university was Prince Arthur of Connaught and the first Principal was Professor Jan Hofmeyr. Hofmeyr set the tone of the university's subsequent opposition to apartheid when, during his inaugural address as Principal he declared, while discussing the nature of a university and its desired function in a democracy, that universities "should know no distinctions of class, race or creed". True to Hofmeyr's words, from the outset Wits was an open university with a policy of non-discrimination on racial or any other grounds. There were six faculties—Arts, Medicine, Engineering and Commerce—37 departments, 73 academic staff, 1,000 students. In 1923, the university began moving into the new campus vacating its former premises on Ellof Street for the first completed building in Milner Park: the Botany and Zoology Block. In 1925, the Prince of Wales opened Central Block; the university's first library, housed at the time in what was meant to be a temporary construction, was destroyed in a fire on Christmas Eve in 1931.
Following this, an appeal was made to the public for ₤80,000 to pay for the construction of a new library, the acquisition of books. This resulted in the rapid construction of the William Cullen Library. During this period, as the Great Depression hit South Africa, the university was faced with severe financial restrictions. Nonetheless, it continued to grow at an impressive rate. From a total enrolment of 2,544 students in 1939, the university grew to 3,100 in 1945; this growth led to accommodation problems, which were temporarily resolved by the construction of wood and galvanised-iron huts in the centre of the campus. During World War II, Wits was involved in South Africa's war efforts; the Bernard Price Institute of Geophysical Research was placed under the Union of South Africa's defence ministry, was involved in important research into the use of radar. Additionally, an elite force of female soldiers was trained on the university's campus. In 1948 the National Party was voted into power by South Africa's white electorate on a platform of "apartheid".
The NP's aim was to create an artificial white majority in most of South Africa by depriving the black majority of their citizenship, making them citizens of the "homelands" associated with their ethnic groups instead. These were, in theory, "self-governing", in four cases were granted "independence", but in reality, their lack of economic infrastructure left the independent homelands as little more than South African puppet states. This policy of "grand apartheid" was accompanied by the extension of racially discriminatory measures within so-called "white South Africa", including the segregation of universities. Wits managed to remain an open institution, but by 1956 the NP government began to push for the full implementation of university apartheid. In response, in 1957, the University of Cape Town, Rhodes University and the University of Natal issued a joint statement entitled "The Open Universities in South Africa", committing themselves to the principles of university autonomy and academic freedom.
In 1959, the apartheid government's Extension of University Education Act forced restricted registrations of black students for most of the aparth
University of South Africa
The University of South Africa, colloquially Unisa, is the largest university system in both South Africa and Africa by enrollment. It attracts a third of all higher education students in South Africa. Through various colleges and affiliates, UNISA has over 300,000 students, including international students from 130 countries worldwide, making it one of the world's mega universities and the only such university in Africa; as a comprehensive university, Unisa offers both vocational and academic programmes, many of which have received international accreditation, as well as an extensive geographical footprint, giving their students recognition and employability in many countries the world over. Founded in 1873 as the University of the Cape of Good Hope, the University of South Africa spent most of its early history as an examining agency for Oxford and Cambridge universities and as an incubator from which most other universities in South Africa are descended. In 1946, it was given a new role as a distance education university and today it offers certificate and degree courses up to doctoral level.
In January 2004, Unisa merged with Technikon Southern Africa and incorporated the distance education component of Vista University. The combined institution retained the name University of South Africa, it is now organised by school. Unisa's Muckleneuk Campus is a major landmark of the capital city, it was in 1972 that Unisa moved into its new home on Muckleneuk Ridge having vacated the old quarters in central Pretoria. The complex of buildings was designed by Bryan Sandrock Architects in the 1960s and expresses an international style characterised by monumental proportions and engineering feats like the cantilevered structures; the most striking feature is the long projection from the brow of the hill, supported by a giant steel girder resting on a massive column. In Pretoria is the Sunnyside campus, the main area of student activity; the Florida campus in Johannesburg is Unisa's science campus. The College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences and some departments of the College of Science and Technology is housed here.
The science campus contains a library, two auditoriums and a large study area. It includes a horticultural centre and a multipurpose research and training facility designed to meet the education and research needs of students in a range of programmes including agriculture, ornamental horticulture and nature conservation; the university has seven regional centres in servicing students in all nine provinces. These are: Eastern Cape Gauteng Kwazulu-Natal Limpopo Province Midlands Mpumalanga Western Cape According to data extracted from the final audited Higher Education Management Information System submissions to the Department of Higher Education and Training, Unisa had 355,240 students enrolled in 2013 from South Africa and other international states; the largest portion of these students are South African, being 91.4% of the sum of the student enrollments. The College of Economic and Management Sciences is the largest of the eight colleges, with 26.7% of the total student enrollments. According to the same HEMIS submission, Unisa had 5,575 staff members in 2013.
The staff complement consisted of 2,593 males. 2011 figures from the Department of Institutional Statistics and Analysis at the university show that the majority of the staff employed are non-professional administrative staff, being 56.8%. The number of institutional/research professionals are 33.2% of the sum of the staff employed. As one of the world's mega universities, Unisa presents academic offerings associated with both technological and traditional universities; these include, but are not limited to, a combination of career-orientated courses associated with a university of technology, formative academic programmes linked to a traditional university. College of Accounting Sciences College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences College of Education College of Economic and Management Sciences College of Graduate Studies College of Human Sciences College of Law College of Science and Technology Graduate School of Business Leadership In addition to the eight colleges and SBL, Unisa has numerous bureaus, institutes and units supporting academic development and research.
In 2015, the University of South Africa was ranked the 6th best university in South Africa by the Times Higher Education. This makes the university the 6th best university in Africa, out of 30. Unisa received a Royal Charter in 1877, it operates under the Statute of the University of South Africa issued in terms of the Higher Education Act, is accredited by the South African Department of Education and the Council on Higher Education. Its qualifications are registered with the South African Qualifications Authority. Unisa is inter alia listed in the following publications: International Handbook of Universities published by the United Nations Education and Cultural Organization and verified by the International Association of Universities. In other cases the publication of an institution’s name in specific authoritative publications forms the basis of accreditation. Students must
