By KAREN MILLER

Hard questions are what occupy much of Rebecca Gore’s search for solutions to humanity’s pressing predicaments. 

They are questions about prisons and rehabilitation, about women whose lives have been shaped by violence and poverty, and about what happens when societies stop seeing the humanity of the people on the margins. These questions have found expression in the recently launched Behind Prison Walls: Unlocking a Safer South Africa, the book she co-authored with Justice Edwin Cameron and Sohela Surajpal. They have appeared as well as in her academic writing on subjects ranging from abortion rights in prison, and women who kill their abusers, to the menstruation needs of women behind bars. They have also set her on the path to becoming an advocate: she was admitted to the Cape Bar earlier this year.

“Chutzpah” is the word she uses when speaking about these hard questions and “not being comfortable with the status quo”, especially when it deprives people of human dignity. For her it is one of the values Judaism has given her: not simply audacity, but the willingness to challenge accepted assumptions. It is also a phrase that captures much of the work she has chosen to do.

Rebecca considers this particularly Jewish quality as central to who she is and the values she follows. She speaks of being inspired by strong Jewish women throughout history and of being raised with the importance of making a positive impact in the world. Her grandparents have been a strong influence, especially her paternal grandmother, whose commitment to lifelong learning, embracing eccentricities and taking ownership of one’s life continues to inspire her.

Law itself was not however Rebecca’s first choice. She began by studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at UCT, and being interested in social impact and justice long before she contemplated a legal career. An internship at the Legal Resources Centre and studying Transitional Justice drew her increasingly towards the law and the possibilities it offered. Her arrival as an advocate is the culmination of years of public interest work and academic research, including a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School. 

Her greatest inspiration in the law is Justice Edwin Cameron, who has consistently taken on seemingly insurmountable social challenges. Rebecca had the opportunity to clerk for Justice Cameron at the Constitutional Court and then was his legal researcher at the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS), the national prison oversight body.

Working in prison oversight during the height of the Covid pandemic took Rebecca into both men’s and women’s prisons throughout South Africa. Here she encountered overcrowded cells built for thirty, accommodating sixty inmates; inmates in prolonged solitary confinement, unsanitary conditions and neglect. She continued to reflect on the humanity and context of the range of people she encountered.

One memory has remained particularly vivid. Observing long queues of dejected people waiting to be processed before entering prison, dressed in their everyday clothes, she was reminded of the dehumanisation Jews have suffered over a long arc of history. She acknowledges the markedly different context, but the power of the image remains significant for her. It raises questions about how societies treat collective groups of people and what oppressive actions become possible when people are labelled and treated as less than human.

Her work has increasingly focused on women in prison. “What women experience in prison is a microcosm of what they experience in life”. Women inmates have lives shaped by violence, poverty and abuse. Some have engaged in sex work; some have acted as drug mules; and others have stolen food for their children. Women’s prisons have too often been designed around men’s experiences and fail to recognise women’s particular needs. A prison nurse once told her that women simply “become numb” with incarceration.

Alongside these stories are others that resist easy categorisation. She recalls meeting a thoughtful and ambitious woman imprisoned for murdering her abuser who was studying law through Unisa while serving her sentence. Women’s rights remain at the forefront of much of her thinking about prison reform.

The law that attracts Rebecca is not confined to the courtroom though she is drawn to the role of the advocate, to argumentation, the challenge of difficult cases and the necessary research that follows. She is equally committed to creating spaces in which difficult issues can be discussed openly. While many more women are entering the profession, she believes obstacles remain and that mentorship remains key. 

Rebecca enjoys long-distance running and, as a personal challenge, takes part in a marathon each year. Running is an opportunity to switch off, to explore her surroundings, and to think about perplexing issues. She loves books and films and describes herself, in a family of ‘numbers’ people, as the ‘word’ person. There is something wonderfully apt about that description. Words matter to lawyers, but so too do the questions that sit behind them.

Perhaps that is what most distinguishes this young advocate. In a profession often associated with certainty, Rebecca Gore remains interested in uncertainty, in asking the hard questions and accepting the ambivalence of many of the answers. She reminds us that justice is not merely about winning arguments or applying legal principles. It is about willingness to see the essential humanity in all people.  

Rebecca Gore’s papers and articles:

• Behind Prison Walls: Unlocking A Safer South Africa – click here.
• Rethinking Crime and Punishment – click here.
• Abortion behind bars women in prison have extra obstacle to overcome – click here.
• Carceral period poverty in South African prisons – click here.

By KAREN MILLER

Valerie (Val) Mizrahi is busier than ever, even though she was required by university regulations to retire at 65.

She is now Professor Emerita at UCT; a Senior Scholar at the Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine, the major postgraduate research institute she once led at UCT; and remains deeply involved in research development, both here and internationally.

Her latest honour is election as an international member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific institutions. It joins election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of the UK in 2023 and membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2025. They are remarkable distinctions, although one suspects Val Mizrahi herself is more interested in the next scientific question than the last honour.

Science is her driving force: she was the chemistry student inspired by an exceptional teacher who developed into the chemist who has spent more than three decades pursuing tuberculosis (TB), and the internationally acclaimed researcher flying around the world building scientific networks.

For more than thirty years tuberculosis has been the great scientific question of her life. In South Africa, where TB remains one of our leading causes of death, her research has helped transform our understanding of the bacterium that causes this disease and contributed to the development of new approaches to treatment. She has been instrumental in advancing our understanding of drug-resistant tuberculosis, one of the most pressing public health challenges of our time.

After working in the United States, Val returned to South Africa in 1989, excited by the groundbreaking work being done in HIV/AIDS and infectious diseases and by the opportunities opening up in tuberculosis research. Given the freedom to follow her scientific curiosity, she worked at the SA Institute of Medical Research and built a world-class TB research programme at Wits University and the National Health Laboratory Service before moving to UCT in 2011 to lead the Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine. 

Science, for Val Mizrahi, has never been a solitary pursuit. It is about individual curiosity, certainly, but it is equally about collaboration. She speaks often of “social capital”, the networks of relationships that make good science possible. Scientific excellence, she believes, depends upon bringing talented people together, building capacity and creating opportunities for younger scientists to flourish.

Colleagues at Wits affectionately gave her the nickname, ’the Rottweiler’. This perfectly captures both her determination and her refusal to let go of scientific problems. She cheerfully admits to being hyper-competitive and that she cannot switch off completely from her work. Retirement, therefore, was probably doomed from the outset.

She proudly proclaims that her background is “100% Sephardi”. Three of her grandparents came from the island of Rhodes and one from Izmir in Turkey. Economic circumstances brought them to Rhodesia in the 1920s to begin their lives again, while other members of the family who remained behind were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. Her admiration of their courage and tenacity to persevere against the odds is behind her own drive to face the insurmountable health issues that South Africa faces. 

She grew up with the privilege of knowing all four grandparents, listening to them speaking Ladino, and having remarkable parents, who taught her the importance of family and community. Today there is a heartfelt regret that she didn’t ask more questions about her family’s history and lived experiences. “I wish I had found out more,” she says. Curiosity, she reflects, has shaped both her personal and scientific life.

She speaks warmly of the mentors who have guided her, particularly Professors Solly Benatar and Siamon Gordon. Her greatest mentor, however, is her mother, whose own battle with tuberculosis proved a defining moment for the family. It is therefore no surprise that mentorship occupies such an important place in Val’s own life. Helping younger scientists build the networks and collaborations that will sustain their careers matters deeply to her. 

She is also a passionate advocate for women in science. Although she describes herself as “an aberration in my time”, she never saw herself primarily as a woman scientist, simply as a scientist. Family, she insists, comes first. When her two daughters were young, she left work early in the afternoons to be with them and has enabled younger women in her group to do likewise.

Although she is not a medical doctor and does not treat patients herself, her work extends far beyond the laboratory. She mentors young scientists, and promotes organisations such as the Khayelitsha-based Eh!woza, which brings together biomedical researchers and young people from communities affected by HIV and tuberculosis. “The bacterium does not carry a passport,” she says. Science and health, for her, transcend borders and ideology.

She reads “voraciously”, treasures quiet time alone and walks to recharge. She draws inspiration from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “There is a difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is the belief that things will get better. Hope is the belief that if we work hard enough together we can make things better.” It is difficult to imagine a motivation more perfectly aligned with both her science and her worldview. 

Asked what legacy she hopes to leave, Val Mizrahi’s answer is immediate. It is “not science but people”. For someone newly elected to one of the world’s most distinguished scientific academies, that may be the most revealing answer of all.