A discourse with the editor reveals failures and fears to take on Islamic fundamentalism.

By Lawrence Nowosenetz

The Daily Friend (DFr) is a publication of the South African Institute of Race Relations, a proud an distinguished organisation established almost 100 years ago which has always stood for promoting democracy, freedom and rule of law. In short, classical liberalism. 

In a recent text conversation with Michael Morris (MM) the editor of DFr I drew his attention to the statement of Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, head of Gift of the Givers who was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Cape Town.  This subject was the basis of an article by the writer:  University of Cape Town’s ultimate degradation – honouring Dr Sooliman (Lay of the Land 31 March 2026).

Dr Sooliman who is widely lauded as a great humanitarian expressed some extreme views which are quite irreconcilable with democracy and freedom. In a public interview on 7 October 2024, being the first anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, he said:

“I don’t follow international law or human law. I follow Koranic law. I am a Muslim. I don’t need any permission from anybody in the world to tell me what to do. I break the laws all the time. Breaking the law is laws of the West and people and governments. It’s not Islamic law. I follow Islamic law, and Islamic law overrides any other law. … I don’t have to follow any law. My law is very clear to me. Allah himself has instructed me. I don’t need men to tell me what to do. I don’t follow them.”

Islamic law is quite different to Western law in that whereas democracy separates the state and its legal authority from religion, Koranic law is theocratic and makes no such distinction. The supreme authority is a religious leader whose authority cannot be questioned or challenged by legal restraints.  Sharia, the legal framework of Koranic law does not protect individual rights as understood in liberal democracy. It is repressive and authoritarian. Women and homosexuals are oppressed and discriminated against. Apostacy is punishable by death.  Historically non-Muslims were given the status of Dhimmi in Muslim countries where they were treated as inferiors, had to pay a special tax and had to dress in a certain way to identify themselves as non-Muslims. This is where the Star of David attached to the clothing of Jews originated. These practices are no longer followed but indicate the fundamentalism of Sharia law. Today Iran and Afghanistan are examples of Islamist repressive authoritarian theocratic rule. 

Mr Morris was invited by the writer to express whether this statement of Dr Sooliman was in accordance with democracy and the rule of law in South Africa. He was not in agreement. He was not prepared to say that the statement of Dr Sooliman was a clear expression of rejection of South African law. His opposition to censuring Dr Sooliman for his adherence to a theocratic ideology and rejection of man-made law are worth examining in order to expose the serious flaws. At the outset Mr Morris endorses a dispassionate approach and in a spirit of enquiry, whether he lives up to that desirable standard is in doubt:   

MM: “The statement was short and cannot be taken on face value.  The true test of what he meant would be to interview Dr Sooliman to obtain clarity or provide further context.”

There is a profound moral principal involved being that people are accountable for their deeds. Speech is included. More so when the statement is made publicly by a public figure such as Dr Sooliman. It is perfectly proper and widely practised to comment on face value of what prominent people say.  Importantly, although he made this statement in 2024, despite countless interviews he has given since then, he has never modified or repudiated a single word.   Strangely he has never been asked what he meant. No one seems to have misunderstood his message. His statement was sufficiently comprehensive to confirm that he rejects laws of man. His language is plain and unambiguous.   Shorter statements than his such as political slogans have traction and are usually well understood without any embellishment.      

MM: “It is unfair to single out the “fervent religiosity” used by Dr Sooliman as it is much like the views by Jewish and Christian fundamentalists who declare they owe fealty only to God and no other. There have been comments to this effect made by readers of the DFr.  Are they also subversive of the very values UCT should be safeguarding?”

There is a fundamental difference between the fundamentalist readers of DFr and Dr Sooliman. He is a public figure who received a high honour for his humanitarianism. This is unique and unprecedented. No leader, whether fundamentalist or otherwise has publicly rejected the law of South Africa in the democratic era. The last time that happened was during   Apartheid.

Islamism is radically different to any Jewish or Christian “fervent religiosity”. The ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, political Islam, which Dr Sooliman supports goes much further. It promotes using violence in the form of Jihad to establish domination and power in non-Muslim countries. Dr Sooliman, through Gift of the Givers made donations to Al Aqsa Foundation, an organisation forming part of the Union of Good, a coalition of Islamic charities supporting Hamas’ infrastructure, an organisation on the US State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations.  The chairman of Union of Good was Sheik Yusef Al-Qaradawi a high-ranking member of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2011, Dr Sooliman received an award from Sheik Yusef Al- Qaradawi for his service to Palestine.   Al-Qaradawi is known as the key figure in shaping the concept of violent jihad and the one who allowed carrying out terror attacks, including suicide bombing attacks, against Israeli citizens, the US forces in Iraq, and some of the Arab regimes. He was banned from entering some Western and Arab countries. A true humanitarian would have distanced himself from Al-Qaradawi as many Muslim leaders have done. 

Certainly, no religious Jewish or Christian leader in South Africa has publicly defied democratic South African law in the name of religion. If indeed people of any faith have made similar public religious claims to Dr Sooliman, they ought to be wholly and immediately censured. Such statements violate the raison d’etre of democracy: The social contract which has underpinned liberal democracy for centuries. This is worthy of guarding by custodians of freedom such as The Daily Friend .    

MM: “Not only the Koran, but the Torah and Bible are not repositories of human rights either” 

At best a half truth. Indeed, there are parts of the Jewish and Christian Bible such as acceptance of slavery that are today abhorrent.  However, modern political notions of justice and individual liberty owe much to Jewish and Christian teachings, rather than the Koran. The US Constitution is a prime example of the influence of Christianity.  Koranic law places submission to Allah as a foundational value whereas the same cannot be said of Judaism and Christianity with regard to the relationship with God.  Judaism teaches a holy covenant and Christianity teaches love of God through Jesus Christ.  Islamic theocracy is inconsistent with the rule of the law of man.

MM: “Preserving liberty cannot be advanced by curbing liberty. Freedom of speech must be tolerated in order to counter intolerant ideas.”  

In principle, yes, subject to Popper below. There is no suggestion of curbing the freedom of speech of Dr Sooliman. His speech is however subject to censure. The  DFr  should be in the forefront of declaring Dr Sooliman’s statement inappropriate and in clear conflict with Western democracy and liberty.  Karl Popper, the renown Austrian-born British philosopher to whom I referred in our conversation, proposed the paradox of tolerance:

“We should therefore claim in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”  (My emphasis)

The Open Society and its Enemies Vol 1: K.R Popper (Routlege 1966) p 211 

Dr Sooliman’s statement has not reached the criminal level but his Islamist theocratic views are clearly on the trajectory of intolerance.  To repeat: He should be censured, not prevented from expressing himself freely.  The South African Constitution itself recognises limitations to basic rights. Section 36 provides that the Bill of Rights “for limitation to the extent that it is reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society based on human dignity equality and freedom …”  There is no room for repressive Sharia authority in South African law. 

MM: “Confronting him with semi-facts, innuendo, guilt by association and so on, only risks making him seem strong and you seem weak.” 

A somewhat vague, personal and unsubstantiated remark unworthy of dispassionate discourse. The confrontation is based on the ipse dixit (exact words) of Dr Sooliman. There is nothing semi factual or innuendo (suggestion).  His Islamist Muslim Brotherhood affiliations are on public record and indeed his own biography makes that plain. It is the duty of responsible people to call out dangers to democracy – no contest of strength is involved. Just accurate and reasonable analysis to enlighten and inform. 

MM: “The meaning given to Dr Sooliman’s statement by the writer was convenient to his preconceptions.” 

This is an ad hominem, personal and unsupported attack on the objectivity and the careful, fact-based assessment by the writer.  The ideological background of Dr Sooliman is well documented and this includes beyond any question his adherence to the Muslim Brotherhood teachings as well as his support of Hamas. These are not preconceptions or subjective opinions of the writer but well documented background history on the worldview and political stance of Dr Sooliman. No reasonable person can conclude otherwise. 

IN CONCLUSION

On 27 October 2025 Dr Sooliman declared to certain UCT interested parties:

“… to threaten your students and your university because you’re acting on the base of Israel. I think you should be stripped of your citizenship and thrown out of the country.”

An illiberal proposal which raises serious problems not merely because of its injustice and unconstitutionality, but also because it would require man-made law and enforcement to put into effect. The same legal structure Dr Sooliman says he does not need. It also is problematic because it is intrinsically anti- humanitarian and in violation of basic human rights.  It does not behove a person who is bestowed with a prestigious honour for his services to society to make such dishonourable remarks. 

Fortunately, South Africa has principled leaders prepared to speak out in upholding democracy. Recently convicted and sentenced EFF political leader Julius Malema made threatening and disparaging remarks about the prosecution and judiciary. This too cannot be tolerated.

“At a time when South Africa continues to confront significant challenges within its criminal justice system, it is important that leaders act responsibly and uphold the institutions designed to protect citizens. Accountability must be accepted with dignity, and disagreements must be addressed within the framework of the law. The rule of law is not negotiable. It is the foundation upon which our democracy stands. Undermining it, through reckless and unfounded attacks on the Judiciary, places that foundation at risk, and with it, the rights and freedoms of all South Africans.

Statement issued by Adv. Glynnis Breytenbach MP, DA Spokesperson on Justice and Constitutional Development, 17 April 2026.    

It is troubling that an editor should go such lengths to find contrived and disingenuous arguments to evade the pressing and unavoidable reality that Dr Sooliman holds very hostile views on Western democracy and the rule of law which stand uncontradicted. The Daily Friend should protect freedom of expression by publishing the comments made by the writer about the views of Dr Sooliman as they are central to protection of democracy. At the very least, freedom of speech demands a frank and open publication of the concerns raised, no matter how unreasonable or disagreeable these are to Mr Morris.  The loser in stifling this crucial examination of Dr Sooliman’s language is the hard fought South African liberal democracy itself.

About the writer:

Born in Pretoria Lawrence Nowosenetz obtained his BA at University of the Witwatersrand and LLB at the University of South Africa. He has been admitted as an Attorney in South Africa and as an advocate in South Africa. He practiced at the Pretoria and Johannesburg Bar and worked as a human rights and labour lawyer at the Legal Resources Centre a public interest law firm. Lawrence was Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and completed professional internship in the USA. He was a a labour arbitrator and mediator, part time Senior Commissioner at the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) as well as a panelist at Tokiso Dispute Settlement. He was a member of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and Pretoria Chairman. He has also served as an Acting Judge of the Hight Court, South Africa. He now lives in Tel Aviv.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Concerned directors, who are family members, have  taken three fellow directors of the Mauerberger Foundation Fund (MFF) to court for alleged serious breach of fiduciary duty, deliberate deception and mismanagement.

By Marika Sboros

(Courtesy of BizNews where article first appeared)

In the quiet, wood-panelled world of South African philanthropy, the Mauerberger Foundation Fund (MFF) has long stood as a bastion of generational legacy and social justice.

That is set to change with an explosive, urgent filing in the Western Cape High Court on April 13, 2026, against three of the MFF’s five directors, including MFF Board Chair and Managing Director Dianna Yach, granddaughter of the Fund’s industrialist-philanthropist founder Morris Mauerberger.

The applicants are two of the MFF’s directors: Yach’s cousin, Steven Levy, a businessman and the Board’s longest-serving director, and her brother, Dr Derek Yach, a US-based medical doctor, public health specialist and World Health Organisation (WHO) veteran.

The interim relief the applicants seek, pending the final determination of the court proceedings, is Dianna Yach’s immediate suspension from the MFF Board, along with fellow directors Igshaan Higgins and Prof Brian Figaji. 

Higgins is an attorney and a director of De Klerk en Van Gend Incorporated. He is also founder-curator-director of the Cape Heritage Museum (also called the Cape Muslim and Slave Heritage Museum) that receives generous MFF funding.

Figaji is an engineer and Chancellor of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), has served on the UNESCO Executive Board and chaired the South African National Commission for UNESCO. He is Chair of the fishing company, I&J, a trustee of the WWF Nedbank Green Trust and Chair of the Abe Bailey Trust. 

As CPUT Chancellor, Figaji serves an institution that receives MFF funding for the “Brian Figaji Scholarship for Women in Engineering”.

Crucially, among the final relief sought is for the court to declare Yach, Higgins and Figaji “delinquent directors“. 

Under South African law, the declaration can be a professional death sentence. A delinquent director is disqualified from holding a directorship in any company, from being the trustee of a Trust or bearing office in a non-profit organisation (NPO) for at least seven years. 

In some cases, the declaration is for life. That legal “nuclear option” is reserved for those found guilty of gross abuse of position, wilful misconduct or a total breach of fiduciary trust. It brands them as a permanent threat to the public interest.

A leading precedent is the Pretoria High Court case of Dudu Myeni, former Chair of the South African Airways Board. She was declared a delinquent director for life in 2020 after a relentless legal challenge by OUTA (Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse), a civil-action NPO dedicated to challenging the abuse of authority and misappropriation of public funds. The order led to Myeni’s personal financial ruin. OUTA successfully pursued punitive legal costs against her personally, moving for sequestration when she failed to pay. 

In the present case, Kumesh Moodley, attorney for the applicants, says that an application to have directors declared delinquent under section 162 of the Companies Act is “a step of the most serious consequence.” His clients have not taken this action lightly or prematurely.

“They have taken it now because their evidence before the Court, and the gravity of what is at stake for the MFF and its beneficiaries, dictate that it is not a step open to them to avoid,” Moodley says.

“It is a step they are obliged to take in discharging their fiduciary duties as directors.”

For Figaji, these court proceedings are not the first relating to how he carries out his fiduciary duties. In the 2020 High Court case involving Marib Holdings (the Chapman’s Peak tollgate operator), valid legal grounds were proven for shareholders to sue Figaji and two fellow directors for a potential breach of fiduciary duties.  The court record established that the directors bypassed the Companies Act by paying themselves just over R2-million in fees in the 2017 financial year, without the required shareholder approval, leading the judge to rule that their actions must face legal scrutiny. Their attempt to use the Court to block a shareholder’s quest for accountability was unsuccessful. 

At the core of their application, Levy and Derek Yach’s extensive court filing of over 1100 pages is a battle for the legacy and soul of the institution that Mauerberger created in the late 1930s.

The MFF has funded community-based and academic institutions in South Africa, Israel and the West Bank in education, health and alleviation of poverty for more than 80 years.

The applicants claim that Dianna Yach has effectively seized control of and laid “siege” to the MFF, turning it into a personal “fiefdom”. They say it is one where compliance, procedure and corporate governance have been rendered relics of the past. 

No fewer than nine formal complaints have been made against her, Higgins and Figaji for breaches of the Companies Act and conduct inconsistent with the overriding duty to act in the MFF’s best interests. 

Levy and Derek Yach allege a deliberate, systematic “governance collapse” and “methodology of financial misrepresentation” behind more than 11 years of constitutional non-compliance with the MFF MOI (Memorandum of Incorporation).

The MOI records Mauerberger’s express wishes. It imposes a mandatory distribution regime requiring 50% of annual, distributable income to be allocated to Israeli entities, 25% to South African Jewish entities and 25% to South African non-Jewish entities. 

Despite this prerequisite, from 2014 the Israeli allocations were skewed, declining as low as 4% in 2017; 6% in 2021; 7% in 2022 and 5% in 2023. In 2024, Israeli beneficiaries made up 10% of total donations, which were just under R15- million. 

The applicants argue that the MFF lost its primary “moderating influence” in a matter of days when two experienced directors walked away in early 2025.

The papers reveal that brother Jonathan Yach resigned as a director with immediate effect on December 25, 2024, after 23 years of service. He stated that “recent events” had fundamentally challenged his perspective on how to best serve the MFF.

On January 3, 2025, independent director Adv Joe van Dorsten, a renowned author and tax law and Companies Act expert, resigned in direct response to Dianna Yach’s “personal criticism” and declaration that she had “lost trust” in him after he raised reasoned governance concerns about boardroom transparency.

The applicants allege that the resignations were not just administrative exits. They were the first documented casualties of a clear pattern where independent directors who dare to challenge the Chair are not heard but are instead driven out.

With these two directors out, Higgins, who sits on the UCT Law Clinic Advisory Board with Yach, was appointed to the Board.

In this way, court papers say that Yach formed a majority “voting bloc” with Higgins and Figaji that marginalised dissenting voices and insulated her conduct from any form of meaningful oversight. 

The MFF’s departure far from the MOI’s legacy path and non-compliance deepened, the applicants claim. 

They note that Figaji conceded in August 2025 that funding allocations were non-compliant with the MOI. He proposed returning the MFF to compliant status by 2028.  Yach and Higgins promptly supported and accepted the proposal. 

The applicants refer to this roadmap of “deliberate deviation” as a “programme of continued non-compliance, dressed in the language of gradualism.”  In contrast, Levy had proposed “a path to immediate restoration of the Founder’s wishes”.

They claim further that Yach has routinely ignored MOI’s mandates through “creative accounting” designed to provide a false appearance of constitutional compliance.

One example is the “intentional” miscategorisation of a controversial R1-million MFF donation in September 2025 to Gift of the Givers charity as an allocation to an Israeli beneficiary.  

Perhaps the single most explosive evidence in the filings is what the applicants call the “Ghost Email” fabrication. It marked the transition from a messy boardroom brawl to an alleged scandal of documented instances of fabrication, fraud and fundamental dishonesty. 

It was set off, according to court papers, by a relatively large R600,000 MFF grant allocated in the 2025/2026 budget to Higgins’s Cape Heritage Museum. 

The applicants see this funding as a suspicious 500% increase in just five years, starting from R100,000 in 2021. Similarly, they see Higgins voting on his own 2025/2026 grants for his museum without disclosing his personal interest as breaching the Companies Act.

When Levy tried to act as a proper fiduciary by requesting a “Verification Register” to assess whether the grant was properly considered and to assess compliance and risk indicators, he says Yach responded dismissively. She apparently contended that non-executive directors are not entitled to that information and went so far as to invite Levy to resign and Higgins backed her up.

The message to directors appeared clear, say the applicants:

Stop asking questions or resign; either way, you are not getting the information you seek. 

Court papers present a digital forensics analysis showing that Higgins drafted a Board letter to block Levy’s attempted oversight of his own museum and sent it to Yach only, allowing her to pass it off on March 6, 2026, as her independent decision.

This effectively exposed the “Ghost Email” ruse, the applicants say, when she dispatched the complex document after a physically “improbable” 16-minute window. 

Perhaps most damning was Yach’s apparently simple oversight: in the rush, she failed to delete remnants of Higgins’s professional law-firm signature before firing the email off to the full Board.

It became a digital “smoking gun”.

By adopting the grantee’s objection as her executive decision, the applicants say Yach transformed “from the guardian of the grantor’s interests into the protector of the grantee’s interests.”

They see this as a pattern of “betrayal of office of the most extreme and gravest form.” 

They raised a separate event on March 31, 2026, supported by metadata establishing that Figaji used his personal computer to draft a resolution to appoint himself as MFF Vice-Chairperson. Yach then circulated it as her own proposal and later dismisses this misrepresentation as “procedural minutiae”.

Metadata show that this document was created just 55 seconds apart from a retaliatory disciplinary resolution against Levy. The applicants say this aimed to obstruct Levy’s attempts to access grantee funding information.

They say that Figaji officially recorded his vote in favour of his own appointment on April 1, 2026, without disclosing his authorship to the Board. On April 8, Yach announced Figaji’s “election” as Vice Chair of the MFF Board.

The applicants contend that this appointment is invalid and carries no authority as the resolution behind it was “clandestinely” engineered by the very person who stood to benefit from it. 

They see this as a “self-serving” breach of fiduciary duty designed to ensure that a “sympathetic successor” remained in power should the High Court suspend Yach as Chair. 

Levy and Derek Yach say these events involve different directors and dates but are linked by a single “modus operandi of concealment”. They say Figaji’s actions reinforced the bloc’s “retaliatory and self-serving character,” mimicking the “covert collaboration” that the “Ghost Email” exposed. 

Evidence of multiple attempts by both applicants to gain access to information on funding decisions over the years supports their contention of an incriminating “wall of silence”, which the respondents constructed.

They argue that “where three directors of a charitable foundation collectively refuse to engage with questions about the application of that foundation’s funds, the inference is that engagement would expose what silence is designed to conceal.”

Court papers note Dianna Yach’s unilateral suspension of the MFF’s decades-long commitment to funding Telfed, South African Zionist Federation (Israel) in March 2021. 

Telfed has long served as “a bridge between the Southern African Jewish diaspora and Israel, supporting immigrants (olim) and fostering the educational, cultural, and communal ties that bind (Jewish) communities across continents,” CEO Dorron Kline writes in a letter to MFF directors in March 2026.

When Kline engaged her at a donor gathering in Cape Town in March 2025 and raised the possibility of resuming Telfed’s relationship with the MFF, he recalls her conveying the following sentiment: 

“Israel’s reaction to the Hamas 7th October (2023) atrocity is outrageously disproportionate. Israel is clearly committing genocide. Therefore, Israel has lost its right to call itself a nation amongst other nations. There is no reason for Telfed to approach the Mauerberger Foundation for funding until the Israeli government ceases to kill innocents and agrees to the establishment of a Palestinian State.” 

The applicants see this as Yach’s pattern of holding the MFF hostage to her personal political beliefs with impunity. 

Initial court filings create an overwhelming impression of the respondents transforming the MFF Board into a virtuoso performance of “musical hats“. It is brimming with conflicts of interest, allowing them to rotate seamlessly at will into donors, recipients and “independent” auditors of their own self-advancement. 

Yach’s dual role as both MFF Chair and MD makes her the Foundation’s only paid employee. This allows her to control oversight of her own executive conduct, the applicants note. 

This structural conflict is mirrored in her senior governance roles at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where she sits on its Council as one of two representatives elected by donors, and chairs the HR and other committees. 

Court papers show that UCT has become a primary beneficiary of “over-allocations” while Israeli funding has been systematically slashed. In 2023, for example, UCT received R3.8-million from the MFF, while the mandatory Israeli allocation was a mere R600,000. 

Critically, Yach voted in favour of academic boycotts against Israeli institutions at UCT as part of the “Gaza resolutions”. She then deposed to a sworn affidavit in the ongoing Mendelsohn lawsuit against the university, explicitly using her title as “Chair of the Mauerberger Foundation Fund” to support this political stance without Board authorisation or notification, the applicants allege.

In this intricate web of entanglements, the applicants say that Yach has advocated for boycotting the very beneficiaries MFF is constitutionally mandated to fund, while her colleagues moonlight as clandestine ghostwriters of their own grants and vice-chair appointments. 

As the matter heads to the High Court on May 4, 2026, the question remains:

Can a foundation survive when its “proper channels” are “actively barricaded by the very individuals who would later insist, with indignation, that those channels should have been used”?

The applicants are family but their filing is clearly not the fruits of a family squabble. They see it as their duty as fiduciaries to ensure that their grandfather’s legacy is preserved and that its beneficiaries’ work in South Africa and Israel continues to thrive with MFF support.

If the court finds that Dianna Yach, Higgins and Figaji have used “ghost” channels to govern and wilfully breach their fiduciary duties, the MFF may finally be forced to course-correct. 

*Dianna Yach, Brian Figaji and Igshaan Higgins were emailed for comment.

Yach replied by return email:

“I will not respond to any of the averments that you make at this time. I will request my lawyers to respond to you in due course, and only once the matter that you have referred to has been called in open court on 4 May 2026.”

Figaji and Higgins did not reply. 

All have since filed a notice of intention to oppose the application. They have until April 30, 2026 to submit answering affidavits. 

About the writer:

Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

UCT’s Gaza resolutions have sparked a court battle, donor exodus and fresh scrutiny of council governance, funding losses and reputational damage.

By Marika Sboros

(Courtesy of BizNews where article first appeared)

There was a time not that long ago when becoming a member of the University of Cape Town (UCT) Council was considered a privilege. 

The position carried prestige as a pinnacle of civic duty. 

These days, membership of UCT’s supreme governing body looks more like a masterclass in incinerating millions, potentially billions, of endowment Rands while whistling a catchy political tune. 

That’s after allegations of serious breaches of fiduciary duties and perjury by some Council members in their impugned decision-making – decisions which caused not just major financial loss but a haemorrhage of funding from high-profile, philanthropic foundations and international government agencies. 

The litany of allegedly dodgy dealings preceding that haemorrhage is documented in an ongoing lawsuit against UCT Council in the Western Cape High Court. 

It was launched in August 2024 by one of UCT’s own – head of historical studies Prof Adam Mendelsohn – after Council voted to adopt the Senate’s proposed “Gaza Resolutions” in June 2024.

The court hearing concluded on October 30, 2025, before a three-judge bench with the promise of a ruling “early in the new year”. 

A quarter into 2026, no ruling is in sight. 

The resolutions enforce an academic boycott of Israeli academics and reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in favour of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA).

The JDA lends itself more easily to political boycott. 

The IHRA is a gold standard adopted by more than 47 national governments, including the US, Canada, the UK, Switzerland,26 of the 27 EU countries and over 13000 organisations and institutions. 

Top global universities that have adopted the IHRA definition include Harvard and Columbia in the US, and Oxford and Cambridge in the UK.

The JDA has been adopted by UCT and a few universities with a dual approach. 

In a twist of institutional irony, by adopting the JDA, UCT breached a clause specifying IHRA compliance in a funding agreement with its major philanthropic donor, the Donald Gordon Foundation (DGF) that it had itself drafted.

That makes Council’s rejection of the IHRA definition look less like a principled stand and more like a messy divorce from its own legal handiwork.

Court documents on public record paint a combustible portrait of some Council members who wouldn’t recognise a conflict of interest if it slapped them in the face with a 150-page answering affidavit.

Leading this modern-day bonfire of the vanities are Adv Norman Arendse SC, Chair of Council’s executive committee (Exco), and Dianna Yach, Exco member in June 2024. 

Mendelsohn claims that their governance skills and behaviour were so legally and financially inflammable that he is seeking costs against both personally, and similarly against Exco members Reeza Isaacs (Deputy Chair) and Malcolm Campbell. 

The move, known in legal terms as “punitive costs”, is not unusual. After all, if you play revolutionary activist with someone else’s hundreds of millions of Rands, you should be prepared to cover part of the legal fees when the revolution turns out to be an unlawful mess.

Mendelsohn’s lawsuit cites UCT Council as the first of 32 respondents, Arendse as the second, Campbell as the 6th, Isaacs as the 9th, and Yach as the 31st. He claims that all wilfully withheld from Council crucial information signalling clear and present warnings from high-profile donors. 

In particular, they appear to have ignored DGF’s loudly “barking dogs” warning of significant financial and reputational damage if the resolutions were adopted. 

When Council adopted the resolutions and the financial fallout happened precisely as DGF trustees had predicted, it was devastating. 

The largest single, overnight loss was the DGF’s withdrawal of its R200-million gift for UCT’s Neuroscience Institute. This became the “canary” for UCT’s donor gold mine. 

The DGF permanently withdrew from negotiations for a future landmark project – a new teaching hospital valued at between R400-million and R500-million. The project is now earmarked for Stellenbosch University.

The DGF also demanded a refund of the first R20-million tranche paid towards the R200-million donation for the Neuroscience Institute.

In November 2024, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation suspended its annual funding of R6.5 to R7 million per annum to UCT. The foundation’s final donation in 2024 was in support of 259 undergraduate and 29 postgraduate disadvantaged UCT students on its Dell Young Leaders Programme. 

There are no new Dell Young Leaders at UCT in 2026. 

The Harry Crossley Foundation, funder of student bursaries and research projects in 2024 to the value of R9.375-million, has stopped new funding from 2025. Their reasons? Concerns around “cancel culture” and the increase of antisemitism at UCT.  

UCT Council appeared oblivious of the fact that ideology does not pay tuition fees, as one critic put it. 

Other donors followed suit. 

UCT had already alienated the university’s biggest international funding agency even before the resolutions were adopted. 

The US State Department had adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism as far back as 2010. It began cooling its financial relationship with South Africa in early 2024.

In a direct counter-move, the UCT Senate proposed, and the Council later adopted the JDA, explicitly rejecting the IHRA standard. This placed UCT’s June 2024 resolutions in direct conflict with US policy guidelines.

The friction culminated in a February 2025 Executive Order that halted federal aid, immediately terminating grants from USAID (US Agency for International Development), amounting to roughly R31 million. 

Since the freeze began, R172-million has been explicitly halted via “’stop-work” orders on 22 active projects. An additional R265-million remains stalled due to unissued renewals. That left a R1.67-billion portfolio of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in an indefinite limbo.

In response, in May 2025 the UCT Black Alumni Association urged the university to “prioritise partnerships with Global South nations, BRICS allies and progressive global institutions that share its values.”

By early 2026, the projected risk had solidified into a structural deficit. It has forced UCT into a strategic shift away from American partnerships in favour of survival attempts through European and philanthropic lifelines. 

Facing the potential decimation of its landmark research into HIV/AIDs and TB, UCT is now trying to bridge this deficit by petitioning the South African National Treasury for emergency relief and turning toward European donors to secure its clinical trials.

In lengthy responding affidavits, Arendse and Yach have vigorously denied any and all wrongdoing. In his answering affidavits, Arendse continued to downplay the negative impact of the extensive loss of donor funding after adoption of the resolutions.  

Yet for an SC who has built his career on the precision of memory and law, Arendse appears to have developed a selective case of legal Alzheimer’s. 

Luckily, the information age has an infallible memory. 

Court papers in Mendelsohn’s case highlight Arendse’s apparently severe bouts of memory dysfunction. In particular, he claimed to be unaware of any certainty that the DGF would withdraw funding.

He appears not to have understood the contents of a lengthy letter that he and UCT interim VC at the time, Prof “Daya” Reddy, received from a DGF executive trustee on April 30, 2024. 

Arendse and Reddy were signatories of UCT’s funding contract with the foundation in September 2023.

The letter makes clear precisely what had provoked the DGF’s “barking dogs”. As the trustee wrote simply: UCT had “not upheld its side of the contractual agreement” to have a “zero tolerance attitude to antisemitism as defined by the IHRA.”

With surgical linguistic precision, the trustee proceeded to eviscerate the Senate’s resolution rejecting the IHRA as “tendentious, mendacious” and riddled with “untruths” about Israel and Jews.  

He made the DGF’s position legal clear: UCT was in breach of contract. This was not a vague threat. It did not require legal expertise to understand it. 

It was a formal notification that the DGF found itself “impaled on the horns of a dilemma.” It had “lost faith” in UCT, the trustee said, but believed in the Neuroscience Institute’s work and wanted to “find a way forward.” He also said that Arendse and Reddy had “opportunity to remedy” the breach of contract. 

The trustee relayed that sentiment to Reddy in a follow-up email requesting an urgent meeting.

In his letter, he even helpfully suggested a way forward for UCT to fulfil its contract with the DGF. That required the university to “actively demonstrate its seriousness in tackling antisemitism head on through the adoption of guidelines, the design and implementation of training programmes and educational campaigns for staff and students and the creation of reporting mechanism and metrics to measure impact.” 

All that Arendse had to do in the interim, therefore, was his legal duty: to put all relevant facts, including the DGF trustee’s letter, before Council. 

This letter was not put before Council, as Council member and High Court advocate Kessler Perumalsamy confirmed in a remarkably frank “affidavit of candour” in May 2025. 

In his legal filing, Perumalsamy bravely broke ranks with the Council’s official leadership to provide what he described as the “correct facts“. These flatly contradicted Arendse’s version of events.

In response to the ensuing exchange of court papers, the DGF trustee addressed a further lengthy letter on May 22, 2025, addressed to UCT’s Vice Chancellor, its Interim Registrar, Arendse and all Council members. 

His language was as clear and direct in intent. He carefully rebutted claims Arendse had made under oath. In particular, he rejected Arendse’s allegation of any “uncertainty” about the DGF’s intentions should UCT’s rejection of the IHRA definition become institutional “law”. 

The trustee pointed out that the DGF’s contractual agreement with UCT was “deliberately concise,” made “no excessive demands” and did not insist on the “extensive list of conditions typically associated with contracts of this kind.”   

Therefore, Arendse’s claim of “uncertainty” about DGF’s position was, to the trustee, demonstrably false.

This precipitated lengthy debate during oral arguments in court during Mendelsohn’s lawsuit. It sparked questions and quizzical reflections from the three-judge Bench, over whether or not the donors actually did warn Council of terminal breaches of funding agreements, and the seriousness of perjury claims against a senior counsel of the High Court. 

Yach appears similarly affected by selective memory recall in her responding affidavits. That’s likely the result of the myriad of conflicts of interest below the many different hats she wears.   

Yach is one of two representatives elected by donors to Council and Chair of UCT’s HR and Remuneration Committee. She claims to be a donor in her private capacity as Chair of the Mauerberger Foundation Fund (MFF). Her grandfather, Morris Mauerberger, set up the foundation in the late 1930s. 

Yach has faced a barrage of criticism over the direction MFF has taken recently. Many see these as straying from the path set by her grandfather’s legacy. 

At UCT, her job ostensibly has been to nurture and safeguard relationships that keep its academic lights on. Instead, she presided over a “Great Trek” of philanthropy that ended UCT’s relationship with at least two of the country’s most high-profile donor assets.

That relationship was strained further when Gift of the Givers founder-CEO Dr Imtiaz Sooliman made a public call on a UCT-hosted platform on October 27, 2025, blatantly directed at UCT donors: 

“The second most important point is, which worries me, when people withdraw their money from a South African university, being South African, saying that you take a tax benefit to benefit the students of your country, but now you’re withdrawing your money because you’re an agent for a foreign government, that makes it a big problem for me. And to me, if you do that, to threaten your students and your university because you’re acting on the base of Israel, I think you should be stripped of your citizenship and thrown out of the country.”

Yach was seen cosying up to Sooliman in multiple social media posts between this rhetoric and UCT Council’s consideration of Sooliman for an honorary doctorate in December 2025. 

UCT conferred the honorary doctorate on Sooliman on March 30, 2026, marking a definitive rupture in the university’s relationship with its historical benefactors. 

For Yach, who serves simultaneously as the UCT Council donor-elected representative, as a member of the UCT Alumni and Development Board and as a major philanthropist, this institutional endorsement creates a paradox. 

It signals that her donor representative’s role has transitioned from a fiduciary bridge to a symbolic observer of a Council that now views traditional philanthropy as a form of “ransom” to be broken. 

In the face of UCT’s honouring Sooliman’s rhetoric, it would be understandable for all those donors who have withdrawn funding since the June 2024 resolutions to feel ostracised.  

UCT presents as loudly celebrating its divorce from legacy patronage in favour of a new, politically aligned identity.

In his lawsuit, Mendelsohn alleges that Yach and Arendse actively disparaged donors to Council colleagues.

Arendse is accused in court papers of effectively calling donors “hostage takers”.  He claims he only reflected on what a “sad day” it would be if UCT were “sort of held hostage or to ransom” by donors. 

Court papers highlight minutes of Council Exco meetings referencing “donor power”, “donor privilege” and “manipulation by funders (with) a pro-Israel stance”. 

Yach is alleged to have used language reminiscent of a mob boss to threaten Mendelsohn and his family to persuade him to drop the lawsuit. She claims she spoke solely out of concern for his professional prospects.

Collectively, UCT Council Exco members have appeared content not just to bite some donor hands that have fed the university, but to gnaw donor arms down to the bones.

Mendelsohn’s argument remains compelling that some Council members held extraordinarily jaundiced views of UCT’s major donors whose perceived ideological views differed from theirs. 

He claims that they effectively “tricked” Council colleagues into voting for “symbolic” resolutions to further their own personal political agendas.

More proof may lie in a synchronised move Arendse and Yach made on July 15, 2025. It may have inadvertently revealed their true intention: to rewrite the narrative on the financial fallout long after the canary had stopped singing. 

Both tried to access UCT’s private donor lists but were unable to do so due to legal privacy constraints. Undeterred, Arendse later presented letters from donors as retroactive “bouquets of moral approval” of the resolutions, as Mendelsohn described it in court papers.

And when UCT’s Executive instituted an independent investigation into this creative “donor stewarding“, Arendse took to an unusual high road: he declined to “be complicit in or condone an unauthorised/unlawful investigation which is contrary to the UCT statutes.”

In other words, Arendse refused to cooperate with the inquiry into his conduct because he had not authorised it. 

Yach claimed that her “sole reason” for requesting the donor lists was to “encourage” donor support. That newfound zeal for outreach contrasted sharply with her response to 290-plus emails of concern from high-profile alumni and donors that she received between April and May 2025. 

Yach has reportedly dismissed them as “unsolicited” approaches to her private email. 

Since then, the digital world sheds further light on the darkness of UCT’s governance circus at the highest levels.

Critics have noted that Isaacs was appointed CEO of The Spar Group as of March 2026, with the ghost of the David Jones debacle during his decade-long tenure as Woolworths FD by his side. It was a R21-billion Australian misadventure that vaporised shareholder value with the efficiency of a controlled demolition.

Criticism of Woolworths Holdings following its acquisition of David Jones was generally directed at its executive leadership under CEO Ian Moir. Isaacs, as finance director at the time, would have formed part of the broader leadership cohort associated with the transaction. 

That can look like a questionable background for someone holding the keys to UCT’s University Finance Committee.

Spar’s Board has declared full confidence in its CEO. 

A question hanging in the ether is why Arendse and Yach are still on Council, not even suspended pending the court’s ruling, given the serious allegations against them? After all, UCT found the energy to act swiftly against Mendelsohn and to suspend him on spurious grounds.

UCT leadership appears impervious to criticism, unburdened by tedious constraints of good governance, financial reality and unimpeachable integrity. 

Its standard for Council members appears to be “not yet convicted of anything,” while critics say that it should be “above any suspicion at all.” 

The most telling thing hovering “above” some UCT Council members is the level of arrogance required to burn down the house and then complain about the fire damage.

UCT was approached for comment. Spokesperson Elijah Moholola replied:

“UCT notes that this query relates to litigation concerning the Gaza resolutions. The matter was heard in the Western Cape High Court in October 2025, and UCT is currently awaiting judgment. Given that judgement is pending, it is inappropriate for UCT to comment on the matter.”

About the writer:

Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).