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Mr Meko Ernest Magida was appointed as Executive Director: Human Resources at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in September 2018.

He is a registered Master HR Professional Generalist with the South African Board for People Practices. Mr Magida is also an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa. He holds a Baccalaureus Procurationis degree from UWC, and Bachelor of Laws and Master of Laws degrees from Unisa. He also completed a Legal Practice Management training course with the Law Society of South Africa’s legal education division, LEAD. The course is mandatory for legal practitioners who want to establish and run their own legal practices. Mr Magida completed his articles as a candidate attorney at one of the prominent Black law firms in South Africa, Ngcuka and Matana Attorneys. Here he was trained by the principal, Mr Bulelani Ngcuka. Upon leaving the law firm, he was employed by the Western Cape Provincial office of the Department of Labour as Deputy Director and Head of Labour Relations. He was later promoted to the position of Director of Equal Opportunities at the national department’s Pretoria head office.

While serving as Director of Equal Opportunities, he set up the Commission for Employment Equity and also facilitated the training of the department’s labour inspectors to equip them to monitor and enforce the Employment Equity (EE) Act. During this time, he was also appointed by the Cabinet as one of the first members of the Employment Equity Commission (EEC) to represent the State along with Adv Thuli Madonsela. He also played a key role in managing and championing the promulgation and implementation of the EE Act, Act 55 of 1998. Following his time at the department, he worked for five years as a Senior Manager at Woolworths (Pty) Ltd. where he was responsible for the company’s transformation project, which focused on EE, diversity and broad-based black economic empowerment.

He was later appointed as the first Director for Support Services at the Western Cape Provincial Legislature overseeing Human Resources; Information, Communication and Technology; and General Support to the House of the Provincial Parliament. He subsequently became HR Executive at Golden Arrow Bus Services (Pty) where he spent eight years before joining UWC Mr Magida has served on several boards as a Non-Executive Director and as a member of Council of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology for two terms.

He is currently the Deputy Chairperson of the Board of the South African Board for Sheriffs, a regulatory institute for the sheriffs’ profession which is accountable to the Minister of Justice, Constitutional Development and Correctional Services.