Wits90 Convocation Panellists

Rosemary Hunter, director, Bowman Gilfillan Inc.

BA, LLB, LLM (Wits))

Rosemary has been an attorney and pensions law specialist since 1993. In 2005 she and two colleagues left their firm Edward Nathan to start Hunter Employee Benefits Law (Pty) Ltd and attorneys Thyne Hunter Esterhuizen Inc. Both organisations thrived. However, in 2011 they accepted an invitation from Bowman Gilfillan Inc. to move their practices to it.

Rose has consulted to numerous retirement funds of all types, employers (including state-owned enterprises and large local authorities) and employers’ associations, bargaining councils, unions, fund administrators, actuaries, insurers and professional advisors.  She has also been consulted by the Financial Services Board and National Treasury on policy issues, has drafted legislation and is a well-known speaker and facilitator at conferences held by members of the employee benefits industry.

Rose is a senior lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand and teaches pensions law there on a part-time basis. She is also a published writer on pensions law and was the principal author of Hunter Law’s self published textbook The Pension Funds Act:  A Commentary which is a detailed commentary on the Pension Funds Act.

Linda Vilakazi

B.Prim Ed (Wits)

Linda Vilakazi is an educationist involved in numerous programs aimed at improving learner outcomes. Some of her most recently held positions include Chief Executive Officer of BRIDGE, a non-governmental organisation; member of Wits Executive Committee of Convocation; member of Wits Council; and member of the Maths Centre board. Vilakazi is a Wits BPrim Ed degree alumnus and was President of the Wits Student Representative Council in 1992/3. She has a number of achievements under her cap, including Top Graduate among five teacher colleges in 1987; and a UNIFEM Future Leaders Award which she received in 1995. She is a non-executive director of Thebe Foundation, Alex Education Council, Sacred Heart College, CEPD, chair of African Bank Trust, a visiting associate at the Wits School of Education, and has served in various Ministerial Task Teams in the last two decades.

Prof. Edward Webster

BA (Hons) (Rhodes), MA (Oxon), BPhil (York), PhD (Wits)

Edward Webster is a professor Emeritus at the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP), University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.  He is the author of Cast in a Racial Mould: Labour process and trade unionism in the foundries (Ravan, 1985). He has published Essays on Southern African Labour History (1978), Change, Reform and Economic Growth (1978) and co-edited Work and Industrialisation in South Africa (1994). In 2000 he published a book with Glen Adler on Trade Unions and Democratisation in South Africa 1985-1997. During 1995 he was a Fulbright Senior African Research Fellow at the University of Wisconsin (Madison). He also published (with Karl Von Holdt) a volume of collected essays, titled Beyond the Apartheid Workplace (UKZN Press, 2005), and more recently (with Rob Lambert and Andries Bezuidenhout) Grounding Globalization: Labour in the Age of Insecurity (Blackwells, 2008), winner of the 2009 Distinguished Scholarly Monograph Prize, awarded by the American Sociological Association Labour and Labour Movements section.. During 2009 , he was the first Ela Bhatt professor at the International Centre for Development and Decent work , Kassel, Germany. He is currently developing and applying a sector-based diagnostic tool and policy instrument to assist the government of the province of Gauteng progressively to realise the goal of decent work.

Adv Dali Mpofu

B.Proc, LLB(Wits), Certificate in Finance and Accounting (Wits Business School) 

Adv Dali Mpofu, former SABC group chief executive officer (GCEO), has had an illustrious law career and also brought a wealth of broad experience in the ICT sector.  He began his career in 1987 as a candidate attorney at Kathleen Satchwell Attorneys.  He then moved on to work for the ANC as deputy head for the Social Welfare Department for one year. In 1993 he was admitted as an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa and a member of the Johannesburg Bar. He worked in this capacity for an initial period of seven years before joining the private and public sectors for periods of five years and four years respectively. From 1996 until 1997, Advocate Mpofu was a trainee international advocacy teacher at Grays Inn in London, a prestigious admission body for legal practitioners in the United Kingdom.  In 2000 he took up the position of Acting Judge in the Labour Court of South Africa.  Shortly thereafter, Advocate Mpofu was appointed group executive director for Corporate Affairs at the Altron Group, an Information and Communications Technology Company.  He held this position until his appointment as GCEO at the SABC in 2005.  His functions at Altron Group included overseeing Group Communications; Group Human Resources Development; Black Economic Empowerment initiatives; Stakeholder relations, International relations and Contract negotiations

Advocate Mpofu’s leadership roles have included, among many others, being president of the Black Students Society at Wits University in the mid-1980s; national executive member of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers and national examiner for the Pupil Advocates Examination for the General Council of the Bar. 

In 2003 he was elected as chairperson of the ICT BEE Charter Working Group. Recently Advocate Mpofu was also awarded Businessman of the Year status from the Black Business Quarterly Magazine for 2004.  In the same year, he was named as the IT Personality of the Year by the IT Web Magazine.

His passion for rural development could also be seen by his involvement in Renewable Energy Technologies (Rentech), a company specialising in renewable energy, especially in rural areas.  In addition he has served as the first chairperson of the National Anti-Corruption Forum, which was led by the Minister for Public Service and Administration, and on the Council of Johannesburg University as a ministerial representative appointed by former Minister Kader Asmal.  He was later appointed by the Minister of Sport and Recreation to chair the board of Boxing South Africa between 2003 and 2005.

He has since returned to the Johannesburg Bar, where he has resumed his legal practice, handling a number of high profile cases since 2009 to date.  Currently, he serves as the chair of the board of the Proudly South African Job Creation Campaign under the auspices of the Department of Trade and Industry.