Hendrick Rasebopye, a professional engineer, started his career with the South African Navy after high school. He left after completing his basic military training, but it sparked off a chain of experiences that has seen him work in Qatar in the Middle East and in towns throughout South Africa such as Ermelo, Secunda and Richards Bay. Rasebopye has even run his own engineering services company for three years.

After this varied work experience, which has included the nuclear industry, power generation, petrochemical, pulp and paper, and refineries, he has found his happy place. Although he joined the University of Pretoria (UP) at a turbulent time in September 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he feels very settled.  “I have worked in many companies. But finally, I have found my happiness here at UP,” he said.

As the Engineering Manager for Services Infrastructure, he has been described as being the municipality of the University. That’s how Rasebopye said his line manager, Ludolf van der Merwe, Deputy Director of Technical Services at UP, referred to the position.

“I deal with all the major services that a municipality, like the city of Joburg, or the city of Tshwane, give you – sewerage and stormwater systems, medium voltage electricity and bulk water. My role is also to bill the residences and the departments, monthly for these services and then we pay the City of Tshwane on their behalf as a university joint account,” said Rasebopye.

Providing municipal services includes the major infrastructure upgrades. These often involve a lot of digging on campuses, which can inconvenience people – until they get the bigger picture.

“I get complaints,” he said. “But when there is no water or electricity, I have to provide answers as to why, and when I say, ‘I’m digging up the campus to put in water for you’ they say ‘now we understand’.”

The major water upgrade UP is tackling includes replacing the steel pipes on all campuses with high-density polyethylene (HDPE) ones. These are far more durable and don’t corrode or rust and so, the water doesn’t get contaminate. This will also improve the fire water system pressure to meet the regulatory standard. Another upgrade is the installation of back-up water tanks at residences in order to meet the City of Tshwane’s bylaw requirement of having reserve water for two days in case of supply interruptions.    

“We’re also going to start installing new cables for electricity supply, so that we make it a ring feed. Then if one section fails, the section that failed will be fed from the other side of the ring,” he explained.

Rasebopye finds his job exhilarating.

“I don’t come into work and do the same thing every day,” he said. He loves the problem-solving aspect of his work as well as the project management, which sees him working with different contractors and consultants.

After work comes the routine part of his day, but he loves it too. Every day when he gets home, he changes into shorts and a t-shirt and runs 10 to 15 km, upping it to 21 or 25km on Saturdays. And this is not casual running; it is training for ultra-marathons. He has done the 56km Two Oceans in the Cape Peninsula twice, the 50km Om Die Dam in Hartbeespoort, and is prepping for the 89km Comrades between Durban and Pietermaritzburg for next year.

He is married to fellow mechanical engineer, Keitumetse, who works as a Senior Asset Management Consultant for an Australian mining company. The couple met when they were both studying at North-West University (NWU) in Potchefstroom.

A keen book collector, Rasebopye enjoys reading with their three children; their daughter Rethabile (13) and sons, Junior, 11, and Kagisano who is four years old. His own reading preference is non-fiction, such as Marin Katusa’s The Colder War, which was published in 2014 yet predicts the present Ukraine-Russia conflict, he said.

Another reason he is so happy at UP, he said, is the opportunities the University has opened up for him. Rasebopye already has a Programme in Management Development from UP’s business school, the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). He wants to explore management studies further, and UP has agreed to pay for him to study an MBL, Master of Business Leadership, through the University of South Africa (UNISA) next year.

He is also in discussion with UP to be credited for the coursework he did for his Master’s in Nuclear Engineering at NWU in 2011. In order to graduate, he needs to write a dissertation, which he was unable to do at the time because the company he was working for then declined to give him study leave to do so.

Rasebopye said he has always been attracted to engineering. He grew up in a home in Hammanskraal, Pretoria, where there was a keen interest in mechanics. His father was a building artisan and one of his uncles was a mechanic and Rasebopye wanted to study Heavy Current Electrical Engineering. Nobody could have imagined how that passion has progressed to see him play such a key role at the African global university near his childhood home.