SMU 10 Year Magazine

When Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University was established on 16 May 2014, everyone asked ‘Sefako who?’. Ignorance about Sefako Makgatho’s
contribution to black education – and an inability to identify with the new name – was one of the reasons for the resistance to the new university in its early
days. Yet, as an educator, Makgatho held promise for the past and, as our namesake, holds promise for the future.

Makgatho left South Africa in 1882 to study education and theology at Ealing in Middlesex, England. At the time of the Scramble for Africa in 1885, he returned
to Pretoria and started his career as a teacher at the Kilnerton Training Institution, a Methodist School for African children. Kilnerton Training Institution is known
for some of its illustrious students, including Miriam Makeba, Lilian Ngoyi and Dr Mary Malahlela, the first black woman doctor in South Africa.