25 years of training doctors at WSU: how - Walter Sisulu University

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(Kwizera, 1977,1980)
More importantly, Mr VC, Sir, some relatively more recent improvisations have been in
the roles I have played in the development, implementation, and evaluation of the Problembased,
and Community-based MB ChB curriculum at the then UNITRA (and now WSU) from
1989 to date 4-33 ; particularly my successful introduction of ‘one tutor per tutorial group’ in
our programme 8,10,12,14 . As I will elaborate in due course, one of the secrets of our success as a
medical school has been the adaptation of ideas and practices from diverse parts of the world
to make them fit in our settings; and needless to say, this has involved a lot of improvisation.
Today we live in a different world to the one I grew up in, and the one in which I made the
laboratory improvisations in the late 1970s. But like my parents, I have made every effort to
pass to my children the same virtues that I acquired from my parents, and it is my hope -or
rather my FAITH- that they, and their children, and grandchildren -ad infinitum, will keep the
Nshakira ‘Torch of Faith’ burning.
There are of course other people who have made and left big and positive imprints on my life
and career, and I think it proper to include them early in this Dedication, rather than merely
acknowledging their input at the end of this presentation. Which this reminds me of a colleague
in medical education circles, the late Miriam Ben David (RIP) who famously used to say: “Life
is unpredictable. Eat your dessert first”. But I digress.
The first such group is, naturally, my teachers, going way back to the mid 1950s when I used
to follow my older sisters to school and got ‘free’ education from the likes of the late John
Murwani (RIP) who taught me my first rudimentary English vocabulary long before I could,
write, read, or spell anything. Needless to stress here, I did not have any privilege of ‘preschool;
or the nursery rhymes that go with that; but thanks to my children, I learned all of them
rhymes in my middle age when the same kids would come home and recite them endlessly