Cape Town - Veteran Cape Town teacher Hesham Neamatollah Effendi has received an honorary doctorate from a Turkish university in appreciation of his educational services in South Africa for more than 40 years.
Istanbul’s Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakif University accorded Effendi, 78, the honour citing his and his family’s efforts “to act as a unifying bridge between the republics of Türkiye and South Africa”.
The citation from the university president Dr Muhammed Fatih Andi said in part: “Your services to the Al-Haqq Jalla Jalalahu, our ancestors, humanity and science from the Ottoman period to the present day in South Africa have drawn our attention as a university.”
They said all his past efforts and studies had been evaluated by the 22-member university senate who had deemed it appropriate to present him with the honorary doctorate.
In an interview, Effendi said: “I am truly grateful for the honorary doctorate that was given to me by the university.”
Effendi taught Grade 8 to 12 at Athlone’s Spes Bona Secondary School between 1969 and 2009 where, as well as heading three different departments, he was hailed for playing an active role in the school’s extra-curricular activities. Effendi was one of a few non-white UCT students during apartheid and majored in comparative religion, Afrikaans and English ,but ended up teaching maths, science, geography, life science, biology and life orientation as well as religious studies and history.
Before he came to Cape Town, he taught first in Gqeberha’s South End district which he recalls being very much like Cape Town’s District Six in the 1950s and 1960s.
“It was a colourful neighbourhood that, because of its prime location right near the centre of town, was the site of enforced relocation of its residents during apartheid, after which the suburb was flattened.”
After his retirement, Effendi taught in Türkiye, where he and his wife Fatima taught English.
Effendi is the great-grandson of the Ottoman scholar Shaykh Abu Bakr Effendi. The Shaykh was sent from what was then the Ottoman Empire to South Africa as a “teacher and professor” in 1862.