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Home Home About UJ Governance

 Governance of the University of Johannesburg


The University of Johannesburg (UJ) is fortunate to have widely respected leaders supporting its move forward to the next level of excellence in teaching, research and community outreach.

Leading the University community to become the institution it envisages, Prof Ihron Rensburg, Vice-Chancellor and Principal – assisted by a senior executive management team that comprises five deputy vice-chancellors – oversees strategic and institutional planning, finance, human resources and operations, academic matters and research, innovation and advancement. Together with the Registrar, the nine executive deans of faculties and the executive directors, these leaders constitute a team that guides UJ on its way forward.

 

Council Chairperson:
Prof Roy Marcus

Roy Marcus

Prof Roy Marcus was elected as Chairperson of the Council of the University of Johannesburg in March 2006.

Prof Marcus graduated with a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1972. In 1974 and 1978, he was awarded an MSc and a PhD respectively for research work conducted in the field of the pipeline transportation of solids. In 2004, he received an Honorary Doctorate in Technology from the Technikon Witwatersrand.

He was appointed as the Transvaal Industries’ Professor of Mechanical Engineering in 1980 and soon afterwards as Head of the School of Mechanical Engineering. In 1983, he was appointed as the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and, in 1985, as the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand. During his stay at the University of the Witwatersrand, he was responsible for the establishment of the Materials Handling Research Unit and was founding Director of the Science Park at Frankenwald.

In 1986, he joined Cargo Carriers, where he was appointed to the post of Managing Director in 1987. Since leaving Cargo Carriers, he has occupied senior executive positions in several local and international companies, in the fields of venture capital, property development, management consulting, manufacturing and mining.

From the inception of the new democracy until 2004, Marcus played an active role in the development of the new government’s science and technology initiatives, acting as the Ministerial Advisor on science and technology and the Chairperson of the National Advisory Council on Innovation.

He is currently the Chairperson of the Da Vinci Institute for Technology Management: a private postgraduate school of business that specialises in the management of technology, innovation and people. He also chairs the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Belarus and the South African Power Utility Research Advisory Board. He is an honorary professor at the University of Warwick and the University of Johannesburg and a fellow of the South African Academy of Engineering.

Marcus has been appointed by the Deputy President to the technical working group of JIPSA and represents South Africa as a board member of the International Sustainable Trade and Innovation Centre.


Chancellor:
Prof Njabulo S Ndebele
 
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​Prof_Njabulo_Ndebele.jpg ​
Prof Njabulo Ndebele was inaugurated as the Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg in November 2012. He is the second Chancellor of the University since the merger in 2005.
 
Prof Ndebele was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy by the University of Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland (now the National University of Lesotho) in 1973; a Master of Arts in English Literature by the University of Cambridge in 1975; and a Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing by the University of Denver in 1983. He also studied at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, where he was the first recipient of the South African Bursary.
 
Prof Ndebele served as Vice-Chancellor and Principal at the University of Cape Town from July 2000 to June 2008, following tenure as a scholar in residence at the Ford Foundation’s headquarters in New York. He joined the Foundation in September 1998, immediately after a five-year term of office as Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Limpopo in Sovenga, in the then Northern Province. Previously he served as Vice-Rector of the University of the Western Cape. Earlier positions include Chair of the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand; and Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Dean, and Head of the English Department at the National University of Lesotho.
 
An established author, Njabulo Ndebele recently published a novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela to critical acclaim. An earlier publication Fools and Other Stories won the Noma Award, Africa’s highest literary award for the best book published in Africa in 1984. His highly influential essays on South African literature and culture were published in a collection Rediscovery of the Ordinary.
 
Njabulo Ndebele served as President of the Congress of South African Writers for many years. As a public figure he is known for his incisive insights in commentaries on a range of public issues in South Africa.
 
Prof Ndebele is also a key figure in South African higher education. He has served as Chair of the South African Universities Vice-Chancellor’s Association from 2002–2005, and served on the Executive Board of the Association of African Universities since 2001. He has done public service in South Africa in the areas of broadcasting policy, school curriculum in history, and more recently as chair of a government commission on the development and use of African languages as media of instruction in South African higher education. He recently became President of the AAU and Chair of the Southern African Regional Universities Association.
 
He holds honorary doctorates from universities in the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Japan, South Africa and the United States of America. The University of Cambridge awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Law in 2006, and he was made an honorary fellow of Churchill College in 2007. In 2008 the University of Michigan awarded him another Honorary Doctorate in Law.
 
Prof Ndebele married Mpho Kathleen Malebo on 30 July 1971. They have one son, two daughters and a grandchild.

 

 

Vice-Chancellor:
Prof IL Rensburg

Prof Ihron Rensburg became Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Johannesburg in 2006, where he has stewarded the University during its demanding and novel merger. He was previously (2001-2006) Chief Executive of Strategic Corporate Services at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, in which capacity he also served as Chairperson of the National Broadcasting Association (South Africa), President of the Southern African Broadcasting Association and Founder of the continental African Broadcasting Union.

He is widely known for his policy, strategy, leadership and managerial skills, which have been ably demonstrated during his stewardship of South Africa’s post-apartheid education policy, legislation and programmes. As Deputy Director-General of the country’s national Department of Education (1995-2001), he led several teams that designed and created the new system of national and provincial education departments, as well as designed and implemented the new National Curriculum for Schools and developed various policies and legislation for school, further and higher education. It is because of this knowledge, experience and insight that the Faculty of Education at the University of Johannesburg appointed him as an honorary professor in 2007.

Prof Rensburg was an anti-apartheid activist and leader (1976-2004) and, during this time, spearheaded the creation of local, regional and national teachers’ and students’ movements and was elected leader in various civic organisations at local, regional and national levels.

Prof Rensburg holds a Doctorate in Philosophy in International Development Education from Stanford University, USA, where he completed his dissertation with distinction, titled Collective Identity and Public Policy: From Resistance to Reconstruction in South Africa, 1986-1995. He holds an MA degree in Political and Organisational Sociology, also from Stanford University, USA, and a BPharmacy degree from Rhodes University. In 2004, he completed the Global Executive Development Programme at the Graduate Institute of Business Science at the University of Pretoria, where he completed his dissertation with distinction, titled Unleashing Peak Performance and Resilience in Times of Great Challenge: How True Leaders Make the Difference.

In 2010, President Jacob Zuma named Prof Rensburg as a member of the National Planning Commission: a 25-member team that is responsible for drafting a long-term national development plan for the country. He is currently the Chairperson of Higher Education South Africa.
Prof Rensburg has won many fellowships and academic awards, including those from the Ford Foundation, the Human Sciences Research Council, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Merck, Sharpe & Dohme Pharmaceuticals and Rhodes University. He was also awarded the Metropolitan Eastern Cape Award in 2006 for his contribution to post-apartheid education reconstruction and development.

He serves in a non-executive capacity in many non-governmental organisations, including the READ Foundation (Chairperson) and the Council of Leaders of the Bethesda Methodist Mission, Berea, Johannesburg (Chairperson).

Rensburg is married to Sizeka and the couple has a teenage son, Lizolethu.
     
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