‘I’m prepared to serve’ – UP Law Deputy Dean Prof Charles Maimela

Posted on June 02, 2023

The Faculty of Law’s Prof Charles Maimela places the greater good at the centre of his many commitments. It’s an approach that has taken him all the way to the high seat of Deputy Dean of UP Law.

Professor Charles Maimela is almost a classic case of an overachiever. He made history when he took up the position of Deputy Dean at the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Faculty of Law a day before he turned 32.

And he hasn’t stopped there. Besides his teaching and postgraduate supervisory workload, he is committed to serving UP through his involvement in one university committee after another. All this while still “a youth” – according to South Africa’s National Youth Policy, he holds that status until he turns 35 in August.

But what makes Prof Maimela truly inspirational and impressive is his personal trajectory. He knows only too well the value of never giving up.

When he matriculated, he wasn’t accepted at his institution of choice, UP, where his grandmother had worked for 42 years, because he did not have a matric exemption. Neither did any of his classmates. Their school in Mamelodi had not offered any higher-grade subjects, apart from languages. So Prof Maimela had to opt for distance education – and not the technologically advanced digital learning that the pandemic had enhanced.

Prof Maimela doesn’t need to voice platitudes to inspire young people. He simply explains how privileged they are to have a lecturer in front of them, “which is a wake-up call to most of them”, he says.

But Prof Maimela does have one overarching message: “Have a dream. And the dream must always walk with you, always be with you. Have the zeal to reach your dream.”

He certainly did. Unhindered by not getting into UP, Prof Maimela set off for the University of South Africa (Unisa), where the length of the registration queues almost determined his career choice. “Almost”, because while a university official advised him to join the shorter queue for law rather than his first choice of teaching, fate has seen him combine both those disciplines into one career.

Prof Maimela tackled his studies with determination. He did the one-year bridging course required to start his actual studies, treating Unisa as if it were a full-time university.

“I set my own timetable,” he says. He left home in Mamelodi at 6:30am, walked the five to six kilometres to the train station and arrived at Unisa at 7:30am – five days a week, upping it to six at exam time. There, he created his “spot” in the study hall, a habit he believes helped him focus. “I passed all my modules in my LLB at the first sitting,” he recalls.

“One thing Unisa inculcated in me is the spirit of humility, of being down to earth so you are able to connect. Unisa gave me that by letting me meet different people from different walks of life, exposing me to different outlooks.”

One day he got a call that made such an impact on his life that he remembers it was “a chilly afternoon”. Prof Irma Kroeze, then Head of the Department of Jurisprudence at Unisa, said she wanted to meet to him. Every detail of their encounter the following day is imprinted on his mind, leading up to her words: “I’ve seen your excellent academic record; I’d like to hire you as a student assistant.”

“And that was the start of my journey in the academy, when the calling that I want to be teacher revisited,” he says.

He blossomed in the role. After stints as a lecturer at Unisa and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, when he joined UP in 2016, he won Lecturer of the Year awards for four consecutive years.

He sees teaching as “a spirit of equilibrium, a dual process”, of both imparting skills and learning from students. “Let us learn together,” he says.

Now he is not only a teacher but has also contributed research that has covered new ground. His PhD on cancer and the law interrogated access to healthcare and how the workplace accommodates cancer patients. “I also looked at the socio-economic aspects of people living with cancer, and how the law can assist them, because it's not only medical matters that affect them,” he explains.

His PhD became a tribute to his late sister, Ingrid, who died of breast cancer, turning his personal tragedy into something of value.

Prof Maimela is all about making a contribution. “What really motivates me is to ensure that the community I come from, the people I interact with, and my students, are able to brighten the corners where they find themselves and still have humility. Education should not be an ivory tower but should be a mechanism that we can all use for the betterment of humanity.”

At UP, he is a champion of involvement. As the Deputy Dean of UP Law, he is responsible for quality assurance in terms of teaching and learning in the faculty and to ensure his colleagues and students have the necessary support to flourish.

Working with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic, Prof Loretta Feris, he coordinates UP’s curriculum transformation drive. His other commitments are extensive and include chairing the faculty’s bursary committee, which raised R10 million last year.

In his spare time, he walks for about an hour every evening, and dedicates most of his time to his church activities in Mamelodi. He belongs to the Young Men’s Guild, a prayer group dedicated to making a difference in families and communities. “We fellowship together as a collective, and we try to be inspirational leaders in society as well as in the church, trying to redress some of the injustices and social ills that men are perpetrators of on a daily basis.”

“I don't know where destiny will take me,” he says. “I'm deeply committed to my religious convictions. I'm prepared to serve. But I will always strive, with the opportunities at UP and beyond, to do my best and to continue to work with people from different backgrounds and different places to ensure that we make the University and our country a better space for all who live in it.”

 

- Author Gillian Anstey

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