Dear Joan,
I have told you over the years that you are my hero, and it remains true. I admire your courage, your intellect, your great heart and your willingness to take on injustice, unfairness and the abuse of power with every resource that you have.
Since we met in the days of the RITS program me at UKZN - who can remember what year that was? - I've been awed and to be honest, frustrated by your unusual take on things and also sometimes fearful for you. You were never able to let injustice or care-lessness go, to brush it off or pretend it was not there, even when it threatened your very health and life. Yet every time it got scary, you turned out to
You have walked the borderlands in your academic career and made them a place where others can settle with pride and pleasure. Our time together in the bogs of the post-merger chaos - inducting new, bright, enthusiastic lecturers and starting to create a new story of DIT and DUT out of the strengths of the previous institutions seems to now be paying off. The narrative is amazing and one that brings joy to my heart every time I see something new flower out of your thought of 10 and 15 years ago. I'm pretty sure that the institution does not realize how much of the organism that is DUT, is due to your wanting to tell a new and transformational story.
Thanks to you, I have learned to be an academic who can be a real person, not a university ghost but a scholar who thinks and feels and can make a difference. I am somewhat terrified at whether I can continue to do without you in our work, but will be in the moment and make the little differences daily that may shake worlds.
The words that come to me now are imagining that God might say, "Well done my true and faithful
You make a difference. I wish you freedom, light, joy and growth on your retirement.
Lots of love,
Liz
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