A week today, I fly to South Africa. Last time I was there was nearly twenty years ago. Here is something I once wrote and never “published” or posted. It is part of a tribute to Professor J.E. Jennings who taught me soil mechanics and introduced me to mining. He also instilled in me a regard for others that even now is not universal.
Jennings was a liberal in the days when it was dangerous to be liberal. He ranted about the inequities of the apartheid system. He helped his maid and her family. The maid’s children and numerous partners slept in the servants quarters of his large house in Parktown just north of the university. There were far more people in those quarters than the was allowed. He paid for her to build a home in her native homeland (as it was then called.) She retired there with a pension he paid her. This was revolutionary in those days.
One morning, he called me and two other post-grad students into his office. Solemnly he sat us down and swore us to discretion. He had managed to persuade the “powers-that-be” to allow three Black students from Fort Hare, a Black college in the Transki to come and study civil engineering at Wits. We were assigned to “help and encourage” these students. As Jennings said: “We need Black civil engineers; there is nowhere but here for them to study; and we cannot allow them to fail.”
With Jennings always over our shoulder, we helped those fellows, we tutored them, helped them with their homework, protected them for overt racialism, and became their friends. They graduated and have since contributed to the profession.
Need I say more in tribute to a man I revere and honor?
