28 Jan 2025

This lecture will discuss the history and science of psilocybin. An overview of the latest scientific evidence of psilocybin’s therapeutic potential will be discussed. Recent studies have demonstrated promising results in treating mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, PTSD and substance use disorders, but are these treatment avenues worth pursuing? The lecture will examine the brain mechanisms by which psilocybin is known to induce its effects, particularly its ability to promote neuroplasticity. The way studies of this nature are conducted in humans will also be discussed.

The Gift of the Givers has intervened where there have been floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, drought, wars, hurricanes, Covid-19 and a range of other disasters across the world. This lecture will take participants through the logistics, challenges, emotions, and human impact of these disasters, and the various modalities of intervention by its highly skilled teams, which are part of the most complete disaster response organisation in the world.

Armed with a Pitman’s shorthand and typing course and a curious mind, Tony Heard became a cub reporter at the Cape Times in 1955, just after he completed matric. He studied part-time at UCT as he rose rapidly through the ranks of the liberal media during apartheid. Heard displayed a curious mix of caution and courage. Several events and decisions shaped his life, and that of his family. Heard’s brother Ray and both parents were journalists. His mother Vida was a magazine editor and author.

Italian prisoners of war in South Africa during the Second World War left an indelible mark on the country’s history through their presence as labourers on many farms and on road building. They also brought with them music, art and skilled craftmanship that enriched the dour Protestant existence of the South African population. Many Italian war veterans chose to return to South Africa after the war and, to keep the memory of their captivity alive, they formed the Zonderwater Block society which is still thriving among descendants of former captives.

In her book, Ausi Told Me, June Bam-Hutchison explores the links between an indigenous culture around plants, rituals and healing, and its continued existence in a hybridised form among communities living on the Cape Flats today. This link is carried through the Ausi – the carriers of intergenerational knowledge about plants and healing. She dispels two powerful myths: that of an ’extinct’ indigenous culture, and that the San and Khoi were a ‘pure blood’ group that were not ‘culturally hybridised’. She will be in conversation with Yaliwe Clarke.

Born in 1948, Vince van der Bijl’s life has been intertwined with politics and sport as a history teacher, sales rep and managing director of a paper merchant company owned by British American Tobacco. This was followed by his becoming the director of Cricket South Africa High Performance and, lastly, as manager of the International Cricket Council’s senior global umpires and referees. As a cricketer and administrator, he has been involved in all levels of cricket and has always been politically motivated. In retirement he started an NPO, MasiSports.

This lecture series was launched as a tribute to Professor Stuart John Saunders, a former vice-chancellor and professor of medicine at UCT. It has been made possible by his late wife, Anita Johanna Saunders, and is intended to honour the values demonstrated during Professor Saunders’ fifteen years at the helm of the university, where he acted as vice-chancellor between 1981 and 1996, as well as the value of his contribution to the medical field. The speaker will be Professor Ntobeko Ntusi, president and CEO of the SA Medical Research Council.

This course will explore how wildlife documentary filmmakers in southern Africa came to re-shape and dominate the field. It will move from the making of Cherry Kearton’s Dassan (1930) to Craig Foster’s My Octopus Teacher (2020), looking at what helped local filmmakers triumph. Participants are advised to watch as many wildlife documentaries from the relevant filmmakers as possible. Many of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom films are online while other films, or excerpts from them, are on YouTube or available at a fee through Vimeo.

William Kentridge will discuss his chamber opera, The Great Yes, The Great No and related film To Cross One More Sea. The chamber opera reimagines the historical journey of the ship, the Capitaine Paul-Lemerle which sails for Martinique from Marseilles in 1941 with artists and intellectuals on board fleeing Vichy France, including surrealist André Breton, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, Cuban painter Wifredo Lam, communist novelist Victor Serge and exiled German author Anna Seghers. The production is part play, part Greek choir, part chamber opera – all interwoven with Kentridge’s breathtaking surrealist visuals.