411pp., illus., paperback, UKZN Press, Pietermaritzburg, 2026

ISBN: 9781869145958

Forewords by Mamphela Ramphele and Waseem Mahmood.

In his memoir Dr Saleem Badat weaves together the personal, the professional and the political as he reflects on his association with South African universities and political and social movements before, during and beyond the post-1994 political and social transition.

The book begins with his years as an anti-apartheid student militant and covers his time as Director of the Education Policy Unit at the University of the Western Cape; his years as the first CEO of the Council on Higher Education; his tenure at Rhodes University as the first black Vice-Chancellor, and his move to New York to work as the first Programme Director of International Higher Education and Strategic Projects at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

"What I admire most is that this is not simply a memoir; it is a book of ideas. Saleem weaves his personal journey into the wider political and institutional evolution of South Africa with remarkable clarity and restraint. His life becomes a mirror of the country's own trajectory: from the segregated spaces of his Durban childhood, through the fervour and defiance of activism, to the moral complexities of leadership in the democratic era. It is autobiography and national history in dialogue with one another ... By tracing his journey through UDW, UCT, UWC, Rhodes and beyond, Saleem shows how these institutions, for all their contradictions, have been battlegrounds for the nation's moral and intellectual future. In his hands, institutional history becomes moral history." Waseem Mahmood, OBE, from his foreword

Saleem Badat was born in 1957 in Durban. He is currently Research Professor in the Department of History at the University of the Free State. His recent publications include Black Student Politics: Higher Education and Apartheid from SASO to SANSCO, 1968-1990 (2016), Research and Activism: Ruth First and Activist Research (2025) and University of Durban-Westville, 1961–2003: Undoing Apartheid, Building a Non-Racial Culture (2025).

ROADS TO RHODES UNIVERSITY AND BEYOND, adventures in knowledge and activism

: Badat (S.)

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