What lies behind UCT’s battlefield against ‘pesky’ Jews?: Marika Sboros
Key topics:
UCT faces controversy over Irma Stern Museum closure and Council disputes
Council member Yach accused of conflicts of interest and fiduciary breaches
Gaza resolutions spark funding losses, antisemitism, and campus tensions
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By Marika Sboros
The University of Cape Town (UCT) has an unedifying recent history of being held to ransom by students and staff pushing political and ideological agendas.
UCT’s Council is its “supreme governing body responsible for policy, strategic direction and ensuring sound governance and financial sustainability”. As such, it should be a bulwark against institutional capture.
Yet Council member Dianna Yach is embroiled in more public controversy that is chipping away at that bulwark.
Yach faces scrutiny after UCT’s abrupt announcement on October 30, 2025, that it was switching off life support after 56 years for its “most cherished cultural landmark”, the Irma Stern Museum.
The spotlight is on her role as Chair of UCT’s Irma Stern Museum Committee at the time.
As a Council member, Yach is already mired in damaging allegations, including lying under oath and serious breach of fiduciary duties, in a landmark lawsuit launched by Prof Adam Mendelsohn, head of UCT’s Department of Historical Studies.
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Mendelsohn launched the lawsuit after UCT adopted the so-called “Gaza conflict resolutions” in June 2024. A ruling is expected early next year.
Political, Ideological Expediency
UCT’s decision to sever support for the Irma Stern Museum came as a shock to supporters. Some saw it as political and ideological expediency. UCT compounded that by shrouding the decision in secrecy, ratifying it on October 18 and only announcing it after being called out publicly.
Preservation concerns have centred over structural deterioration and maintenance challenges of housing Stern's collection in The Firs, her Cape Town home since 1927. Reports of the collection now in “secure storage” pending uncertain refurbishment plans have fuelled fears of irreparable damage to the irreplaceable integrity of South Africa's only artist's house museum.
Heritage researcher Phillippa Duncan sees UCT’s decision as more “cultural bloodletting” and “a systematic lack of respect for history, older buildings and objects that require care”.
Stern’s whiteness and Jewishness made things “a little more difficult” by “not fitting in with UCT’s political conversations”, Duncan says. She does not believe, however, that race and religion were “primary triggers” for UCT’s decision.
Hive of Conflicts of Interest
I think that’s charitable. Some primary triggers more likely lie in the hive of conflicts of interest buzzing under the many different hats Yach wears.
Among others, Yach chairs UCT’s Human Resources (HR) Committee; is a member of the UCT Remuneration and Governance Committees; serves “by invitation” on UCT Law Faculty’s Law Clinic Advisory Board; and is one of Council’s two Senate-elected donor representatives.
She is also executive director of the Mauerberger Foundation Fund (MFF), one of South Africa’s oldest Jewish, philanthropic organisations and a donor to UCT and the Irma Stern Museum for decades.
That places Yach squarely in the crosshairs of overlapping donor and governance roles, with duties and loyalties to UCT and the MFF potentially pulling in different directions.
Her maternal grandfather, Morris Mauerberger, an industrialist and a committed Zionist, founded the MFF in the late 1930s. His philanthropy included regular support for Zionist organisations and projects that strengthened Israel’s infrastructure and education.
Mauerberger’s will expressly allocated half of the MFF funds in perpetuity to Israel, the other half split equally between South African Jewish and non-Jewish communities.
The MFF’s decades-long support for Israeli projects includes the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa (where there is a Mauerberger building) and direct involvement in establishing Ben Gurion University of the Negev in 1969.
Red Flags Waving
Yach took over as MFF executive director in 2013. Since then, she has appeared intent on taking the MFF down a different path from the straight and narrow one her grandfather forged – if wildly waving red flags are any indication.
One red flag is her support, well-documented in court papers on public record in Mendelsohn’s lawsuit, for the Gaza resolutions.
The resolution rejects the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The other effectively calls for an academic boycott of Israel’s entire academic establishment.
The boycott includes, by implication, all tertiary institutions in Israel that the MFF supports, as these can be interpreted, particularly by the BDS movement, to form part of the greater Israeli military establishment.
Suffice to say, blanket academic boycotts on shaky foundations are fundamentally incompatible with the core values of any university worth its academic-freedom salts.
Yach appears oblivious to conflict emanating from her support for resolutions that diametrically oppose her grandfather’s legacy – and, perhaps more importantly from the perspective of potential conflicts of interest, the MFF’s stated mission of support for Israel.
Israel and Palestine
Another red flag is few public reports since the horrific terror attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, of MFF donations to the Jewish state – apart from vague references to support for “mental health programmes”.
Yet another flag is referenced in an affidavit Yach submitted in Mendelsohn’s lawsuit to MFF donations to “Israel and Palestine”. That will resonate well with anti-Israel groups active on UCT campus, among them South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) and UCT Alumni for Palestine, with which Yach is closely allied.
This raises questions about Yach’s involvement with these entities and under which of her multiple hats it lies?
Yach is also actively involved in alumni affairs and wears a further hat as a member of UCT’s Alumni and Development Advisory Board.
Before UCT Convocation’s AGM and Elections on December 4, Yach nominated UCT law lecturer Caitlin le Roith, the public face of SAJFP and publicly backed by UCT Alumni for Palestine, to run for the Executive Council (Exco) election. Her nomination was seconded by an SAJFP member and was successful.
Convocation ended up top-heavy with a president and four of five Exco members firmly in anti-Israel camps. The elections became a battleground with the hallmarks of a hijacking, purge, even a “pogrom” against Jews.
The aims, as supporters of newly elected officials swiftly and gleefully declared on social media, were twofold: “to defeat the Zionist bloc (a mythical creation of their own making)” and ensure that UCT is “never a home for Zionists”.
If any rhetoric proves that Zionist really is the anti-Israel lobby’s code word for Jews, that was it.
Inverted Red Triangles
SAJFP leaders have distinguished themselves, if that’s quite the right word, as enthusiastic spreaders of that code word and by using inverted red triangles on social-media posts to celebrate deaths of Jewish soldiers in Gaza.
The Nazis used inverted red triangles to distinguish political groups in concentration camps. After October 7, Hamas began using the symbol as a propaganda prop to identify Israeli military targets. The symbol has spread to anti-Israel protests, especially on university campuses and social media.
The Anti-Defamation League cautions that the symbol’s ties with Hamas help to normalise terrorism and extremism under cover of “resistance”.
Yach raised eyebrows – and hackles – in September 2025 when she donated R1-million of MFF funds to Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, founder-CEO of Gift of the Givers, for medicines for children in Gaza.
Many consider Sooliman to be an incorrigibly vocal, virulent opponent of Israel and all Jews who support it. He speaks publicly under banners claiming, “We are all Hamas”. He routinely punctuates his rhetoric with antisemitic tropes.
Sooliman still faces claims (hotly denied) that Gift of the Givers has funnelled funds to Hamas and other terror groups active in the Middle East for decades.
Yach is impervious to criticism of the MFF donating to a man implacably opposed to her grandfather’s stated mission and vision for the family foundation.
Sooliman has been nominated for a UCT honorary doctorate. UCT’s Council was expected to vote to accept his nomination at its regular meeting on December 6.
Review of Public Power
In the meantime, as Mendelsohn’s legal team notes in heads of argument, the lawsuit has generated “noise” around “geopolitics, antisemitism, genocide and accusations of bad faith” that drowns out what it is really all about.
The application’s merits turn simply on a “review of public power”, his lawyers say.
That review covers allegations against Yach of lying under oath and serious breach of fiduciary duties involving her allegedly deliberately withholding crucial information on predicted loss of donor funding if UCT adopted the resolutions.
It also covers UCT’s adoption of the resolutions despite robust communication beforehand from a major funder, the Donald Gordon Foundation, clearly identifying a significant breach of a clause in their donor-funding agreement.
Breach has legal consequences. It culminated in termination of DGF’s funding relationship with UCT.
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In her affidavit, Yach appears to believe that the DGF had no evidentiary “dogs” barking loudly enough to alert Council members to the serious possibility of funding withdrawal.
DGF trustees have confirmed that its dogs were present throughout, barking loudly and clearly.
Funding haemorrhage
And when the predicted donor withdrawal materialised, the bite was devastating.
UCT instantly haemorrhaged R220-million DGF funding for its Neuroscience Institute and lost the opportunity of a more than R500-million DGF donation for a new private hospital.
The Dell Foundation withdrew R7-million in student support, agreeing only to continue support for current students but not to admit any new ones to its programme. Other funders followed suit.
Another question the review raises is why Yach and other Council members decided that “expressing indignation at Israel’s conduct (in Gaza) outweighs the futures of hundreds of prospective students at UCT who have lost funding”? They appear not to have thought through all practical implications of the boycott resolution for donors to UCT with strong Israeli ties in future.
Yet another question is why they decided that rejecting the IHRA definition of antisemitism was more important than R750-million for both the Neuroscience Institute and a brand-new, state-of-the-art hospital, “without even knowing that such donations were at stake”?
Yach strenuously denies any wrongdoing. I wouldn’t have expected otherwise.
As Mendelsohn’s lawyers contend, she and certain other fellow Council members may be exposed to damages claims from UCT for non-disclosure of pertinent financial information.
UCT as “an organ of state controlling public funds earmarked for educational purposes” is, therefore, under “obligation to investigate whether it has such a claim, and if advised that it does, to pursue it”.
Yach and fellow Council members can take comfort knowing they have UCT’s full backing – for now. Despite the serious allegations against her, Yach remains in her multiple positions of power and influence.
That raises the question of whether her position as UCT’s HR Committee Chair has insulated her from the consequences of alleged non-disclosure of pertinent information, or at the very least, an inquiry into her behaviour?
Independent investigation
Another question is why UCT chose to act only against Mendelsohn.
UCT suspended him for lodging the lawsuit, citing colleagues’ complaints that he was unfit to head UCT’s Department of Historical Studies. An independent investigation exonerated him and found that complained stemmed from colleagues’ dislike of his views on the resolutions.
Despite the exoneration, UCT has yet to reinstate Mendelsohn. One could reasonably expect Yach, as HR Committee Chair, to have nudged UCT to remedy that. One would be routinely disappointed.
UCT’s Council has fresh faces and voices after last year’s elections that offer hope of new vision, perspective and direction.
The same cannot be said for UCT’s Convocation. It may be ready, willing and well-placed to accede to growing demands effectively to “cleanse” UCT of troublesome, pesky Jews.
A media report notes that “Jews have lived this pattern (of blatant Jew hatred) many times before in many countries…, the world recognises it only in hindsight” but “South Africa is watching it unfold in real time” on UCT campus.
Unfolding alongside is a dystopian irony of ironies: the fact that Jews are among those contributing to that pattern on and off UCT campus.
UCT urgently needs Council members who prioritise education, ethics and human rights over politics and ideology. It requires leaders prepared to put personal ideology aside and work together to stem the rising tsunami of antisemitism (under the guise of anti-Zionism) currently engulfing the campus.
If not, UCT will never reclaim its once glittering, global reputation as a bastion of higher learning and academic freedom.