Prof. Klopper of the Univ. of Zululand has given me persmission to post this note on the school merger issue: ************** If you have followed the news about events in South African higher education over the past year or so, you will have seen that SA's whole education system is being reconfigured, from pre-primary school to university level. The University of Zululand, 180 km north of Durban on the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) north coast, is set to become a comprehensive institution that will mainly offer undergraduate programs in the humanities, education, commerce, science and technology. In Durban itself, a yet unnamed new university will by the end of 2003 be the product of a merger between two existing universities, the University of Natal (UN) and the University of Durban-Westville (UDW). The Pietermaritzburg campus of UN will also be part of the merged institution. Pietermaritzburg lies about 80 km inland, west of Durban, in the KZN midlands near the Drakensberg (a name of Dutch origin literally meaning"Dragons' Mountains"). The new university does not have a name yet, but speculation is that it could either be the University of KwaZulu-Natal or the University of eThekwini (the Zulu name for Durban). People are invited to submit their choice of name for the new university. The two universities have agreed that the merged institution should not be named after a person, although particular schools may be. The medical school of the present UN has the name The Nelson Mandela Medical School, and the postgraduate research centre of UDW is know as the Govan Mbeki Centre. Both persons were icons of the anti-apartheid struggle, and the late Govan Mbeki was the father of the present SA president, Thabo Mbeki. ************************* Roscoe
