ABSTRACT
In common with all the universities in South Africa at that time, Wits experienced a period of rapid growth in the immediate post-war years. The influx of returning ex-volunteers after demobilization saw the number of students increase dramatically from 1946, and by the end of the decade nearly three thousand former servicemen and women had been admitted to the University. Staff numbers had to increase just to cope and, in fact, the growth in the academic staff establishment during that period actually exceeded that of the student body, with a doubling in their numbers. The main impetus behind this expansion came from the Vice-Chancellor, Humphrey Raikes, who saw it as his and the University’s duty to those of South Africa’s citizens who had so willingly sacrificed their careers for war service and who now, on their return, wished to equip themselves with professional and academic qualifications. What Raikes may have lacked in dynamism he made up for in dogged determination, of which he needed much in the face of a University Council dominated by an autocratic chairman, with very narrow views of the purpose of Johannesburg’s university, and by a Senate populated by some strong-minded professors who alternately challenged and ignored him in equal measure.
