media releases - Untimely death of Prof Godfred Humphrey

The Unisa community has reacted with shock to the untimely death of Prof Godfred Humphrey, who died in a car accident last Friday.

His funeral will be held in Helderkruin, Roodepoort on Saturday.   The funeral procession will leave at 08:30 from 21 De Havilland Avenue, Helderkruin, Roodepoort and the service will start at 09:00 at the Discovery Christian Life Centre, 61 Celeste Crescent, Discovery roodepoort.  He will be buried at Westpark cemetry.

A memorial service will be held at Unisa’s Florida Campus on Monday at 11:00.

 Prof Humphrey was born on 15 January 1955 in Greggs Village, St Vincent, (in the Bahamas) where he received his primary education. He underwent secondary education at Redefield secondary school in Blackbird Leys, Oxford, England.

He then moved on to the University of Salford in the United Kingdom, where he graduated with a B Sc. degree in chemistry in 1978, and a MSc degree in chemistry in 1980 with a dissertation entitled “ Reactions of 3-Formylchromone Derivatives.”  He obtained his PhD in Chemistry from the Victoria University of Manchester in 1982, with a thesis entitled “An Investigation of Intramolecular Nucleophilic Substitution in Indole and Some Related 5- Membered Heterocycles.” 

He began his academic career in 1982 as a tutor of Mathematics and Life and Social Skills at the Information Technology Centre in Moss Side, Manchester, England. This was followed one year later, with a lecturing post at Central Manchester College (formerly Openshaw Technical College). In 1984 he accepted a lecturing post in Chemistry at the University of the North-West, in Mafikeng, where he was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1987. He served as Deputy Dean and Dean of the School of Education and played an instrumental role in the transformation of the School of Education into the faculties of Education, Human Sciences and Science and Technology. He was the first Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology.

During the fifteen years spent at UNW he was involved in teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, research and postgraduate supervision, academic administration and various community involvement activities.

In 1999 he accepted the post of Dean of the Division of Applied Natural Sciences and Engineering at TSA, and became involved in the realignment of the division’s strategic objectives to meet the transformation needs of the institution and the country. Some key areas of leadership included:

• staff development – alignment of academic staff qualification with rank;
• employment equity – development of succession plans and equity junior lectureships;
• curriculum review – Conversion of courseware into electronic format with the view of offering all Applied Natural Sciences and Engineering as standardised short courses and in a blended Distance Education mode that will include online offerings;
• development of the division’s community outreach strategy through activities of the Institute for the Development of Science Engineering and Technology.

He was involved in several strategic initiatives at the institutional level, including:

• the development of the TSA distance co-operative education model and policy;
• the re-engineering of Professional and Educational Services;
• and being seconded in October 2001, to the Office of the Principal and Vice-chancellor to operationalise the merger process. It is anticipated that the secondment will end towards the end of 2003. 

Technikon SA conferred a professorship on him in July 2002.

Prof Humphrey had extensive teaching experience in chemistry at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His research experience included the supervision of postgraduates and spans synthetic organic chemistry, science education and Indigenous Knowledge Systems. He was experienced in areas of research design and methodology of quantitative and qualitative research. More recently he became increasingly involved in participant-observer research on the development of the TSA distance co-operative and higher education management education model, and the TSA-UNISA-VUDEC merger process. He also had extensive experience in the management of higher education institutions.

An established academic, higher education administrator and researcher, he  authored twelve industrial reports and monographs, and several publications in accredited scientific journals (with a further eleven in preparation). He also published widely in popular journals and monograph series.  He delivered several invited papers at conferences, as well as at local and international conferences, seminars and workshops (with a further four papers accepted for presentation at upcoming international conferences).

His research  resulted in involvement as a project leader or researcher in various collaborative research projects addressing industry-related problems or societal needs, such as:

• Three projects on misconceptions caused by inadequate practical work in schools
• A long-term project on the determination of the water quality of potable borehole water in rural and peri-urban villages in the Molopo region of the North-West province
• An audit of indigenous technologies in the North-West province
• A long-term project on Phytochemical studies of indigenous plants involving research capacity building at UNW through postgraduate training, sponsored by the National Research Foundation.
• Design of a collaborative interdisciplinary research and development strategy for Indigenous Technological Knowledge based on plant use.
• Participant-observer research on mergers, higher education management and co-operative education.

He was the leader of a collaborative research and development project on indigenous plant use. The project involves Technikon SA, the University of Fort Hare, the University of Venda and the University of Zimbabwe. The project aims to develop Human Resource capacity for the study and development of Indigenous Technological Knowledge and plant product commercialisation. Currently five Masters and one Doctoral student were conducting research in the field of Indigenous Knowledge Systems under his supervision.

Some of his academic and professional involvement in the last ten years included external examinership, involvement in the restructuring of the North West colleges of education and nursing, involvement in the development of the South African IKS policy and Bill as a Task Team member in the Department of Science and Technology (formerly Department of Arts Culture, science and Technolgy) and strategic planning for the National IKS strategy. Prof Humphrey  participated in several workshops on research strategic planning at the NRF and Department of Science and Technology (IKS, Directorate) and a workshop on scenario building for the transformed Higher Education sector organised by the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research. He was currently involved in the reconstruction and transformation of the higher education system.

 He was also involved in the community through Reconstruction and Development type projects on school outreach, development of school science teaching and learning, Science Maths and Technology teacher and school administrator capacity building, rural water supply and quality, development of Indigenous knowledge, and SMME development.

In addition he was a cricket fanatic and player and also enjoyed playing squash, table tennis and snooker. He is survived by his wife Ntombizodwa, and his four children,  Lungile, who is two years old, Simangaliso - twenty-two years old, Nomalanga- nineteen years old and Jabulani -who is seventeen- years old. 

For further enquiries regarding the funeral arrangements, please contact Mr Vusi Mkhwanazi on (083) 675 2182.