Beyond the Title
The Child
Prof Abram Madiehe grew up near Potchefstroom, where he attended school and completed his matric during a particularly difficult year marked by social and political unrest.
The Dream
Before research and academia, Madiehe wanted to become a doctor, ultimately aspiring to become a surgeon.
The Turning Point
In 1986, while travelling by train to Pretoria to pursue his medical studies, Madiehe noticed people he believed were following him. He got off at Amanskraal and went to the police station. After spending the night there, a police officer warned him not to continue to Pretoria, telling him that they knew he wanted to go to medical school and referring to a “record” he had. He instead travelled to Pietersburg, where he began a different academic journey.
The Journey
That unexpected turn eventually led him to three degrees, postgraduate research in the United States, research leadership roles at the South African Medical Research Council and CSIR, and ultimately to the University of the Western Cape. He is now a full professor in UWC’s Department of Biotechnology and leads the Nanobiotechnology Research Group.
The Research
Prof Madiehe’s research focuses on using nanotechnology to develop more targeted approaches to treating conditions such as obesity and cancer. His current work explores “nanoliposuction”, a developing therapeutic strategy that targets white adipose tissue via nanotechnology-based drug delivery, potentially reducing fat locally without invasive surgery.
The Research
Prof Madiehe’s research focuses on using nanotechnology to develop more targeted approaches to treating conditions such as obesity and cancer. His current work explores “nanoliposuction”, a developing therapeutic strategy that targets white adipose tissue via nanotechnology-based drug delivery, potentially reducing fat locally without invasive surgery.
The R1 Billion Question
If he were given R1 billion to solve one problem related to his research, Madiehe says he would use it to establish clinical trials to move his nanoliposuction research from animal models, through non-human primate studies and ultimately into human trials.For Prof Madiehe, the goal would be to determine whether a treatment targeting diseased fat cells at the molecular level could eventually become a viable option for obesity. He believes African researchers have the capacity to contribute solutions to global health challenges, but that a lack of funding can make it difficult to compete with better-resourced international research teams.
The Person
Away from the laboratory and lecture hall, Prof Madiehe describes a career he never expected to have. He once wanted to be a surgeon and says he “hated teaching”, yet he has gone on to become a professor, researcher and mentor to the next generation of scientists.
Professor Abram Madiehe leading the academic procession at his inaugural lecture at the UWC in September 2026. Image: Shelley Christians/UWCIn 1987, Abram Madiehe was on a train to Pretoria, on his way to pursue his dream of becoming a doctor. Then he noticed he was being followed.
Something did not feel right.
Abram Madiehe was on a train heading towards Pretoria in 1987. He was a young man with a plan: get to medical school, become a doctor, and, one day, become a surgeon.
But somewhere along the journey, he noticed people he believed were following him.
So he got off the train.
Not at Pretoria, where he was supposed to be going.
But he disembarked at Hammanskraal.
“I went to the police station, and I said, ‘People are following me.’” The officer hid him nearby.
It sounds like the beginning of a story that could have ended very differently.
Instead, it became the beginning of a journey Professor Madiehe could never have planned.
The people he believed were following him eventually walked into the police station. They spoke to the police officers in Afrikaans, apparently assuming he could not understand them.
After he told them that no one matching that description had come to the station, he turned to him.
“No, you’re not going anywhere. Just sit here overnight,” the officer told him. “There’s something wrong that’s going to happen if you go.”
So he stayed.
The next morning, the officer gave him an even more unsettling warning.
“Don’t go back there. They are following you because they know you want to go to medical school. And with the record that you have, don’t.”
Professor Madiehe remembers asking a simple question.
“What record?”
He never got the full answer.
For a young man who had worked towards medical school, the warning was devastating. He had not imagined that his journey to becoming a doctor could be stopped before it had even begun.
But looking back now, decades later, Prof Madiehe sees that moment as one of those unexpected turns that can change the course of a life.
There had been earlier incidents.
Earlier in 1985, he was almost arrested for boycotting the tricameral parliament.
Later that year, he won the Western Transvaal Award for the Best Standard 8 (Grade 10) student, a competition with a prize that was a trip to Europe for top students. During the trip to the United Kingdom, the group was taken to the South African embassy.
Prof Madiehe and another student refused to go inside, in solidarity with the riots at home.
“They are responsible for what is happening in our country.”
The two were interrogated at the airport upon their return home for embarrassing the government and were released about three hours after the rest of the group left.
At the time, he could not have known what consequences the incident might have for his future. Later, he realised that it had left what he describes as a “blotch on my record”.
Then came the train journey.
It was already a difficult year. He had grown up near Potchefstroom, and his matric year was disrupted by riots. School only properly began halfway through the year, leaving pupils with roughly three months to complete their matric work.
Of a class of about 60, only two passed.
He was one of them.
He was determined to continue with his plans.
But after the warning, Hammanskraal and Pretoria were no longer part of the immediate picture, and medical school was no longer part of it.
Instead, he made his way to Pietersburg to register at university, despite not having followed the conventional application process.
He told his story and someone listened. He hiked back home to get the rest of his luggage, a blue trunk. But due to financial constraints at home, he could not raise the required money. Fortunately for him, while in despair and not knowing what to do, he was offered a ride back to Turfloop.
After completing the first semester, he went back home and couldn’t return due to a lack of money. The Department of Education and Training offered him a temporary replacement job, and he raised money to go back in the second semester of the following year. The community also came together and paid his wages to continue teaching at a school because he transformed a non-performing school into one that produced good results, by simply enforcing discipline and hard work.
Professor Abram Madiehe leading the academic procession at his inaugural lecture at the UWC in September 2026. Image: Shelley Christians/UWCHe returned to Turfloop. Eight years later, he had three degrees and was on his way to the United States on a Fulbright scholarship.
The young man who had wanted to become a surgeon was becoming a scientist.
There is another irony in that journey.
Prof Madiehe said he never imagined himself ever becoming a teacher.
“I hated teaching, I never wanted to see myself teaching.”
He had wanted to work with his hands, to become a surgeon and to do practical things. That’s why he worked at science councils, the SAMRC and CSIR, away from academia.
Yet today, he is a full professor at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), where he leads the Nanobiotechnology Research Group in the Department of Biotechnology. His research includes nanotechnology-based targeted drug delivery systems for obesity and cancer, as well as work on diagnostics and nanomaterials with potential health applications.
“And yet, look at me now teaching the next generation, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels,” he said
“That’s how, again, destinies are mapped out, I think, for one’s life. How did I know I’ll end up here?”
Perhaps that unexpected journey is part of what makes his current work so compelling.
Prof Madiehe is now rethinking how to treat obesity - one of the world's biggest health challenges.
His research explores whether nanotechnology can be used to target fat tissue more precisely. His team is developing nanoparticles designed to recognise particular characteristics of white adipose tissue, or the body's fat tissue, and deliver therapeutic agents directly to targeted fat deposits.
He calls the developing approach “nano-liposuction”. He delivered an engaging lecture that showed how the idea works. He professed that precision medicine was his purpose, and impact was his responsibility. Furthermore, African science must not only participate in the future but must help create it. He became emotional when he received a rousing standing ovation for the lecture.
