David Kaplan
David Kaplan
This memorial site is dedicated to David, his life, his work, and the lasting impact he has had on all of us.
For those who have had the privilege of knowing him - as friend, family member, colleague, or teacher - we invite you to gather and share your thoughts, memories, and photos. David was a lifelong gatherer of people and ideas, connecting across continents, generations and interests. Your contributions are a tribute to what he has brought into our lives.
Life
David was born in Bulawayo on the 25th March 1948. He passed away in Paris on the 26th December 2025 after a year-long illness which he endured with extraordinary courage.
Dave was schooled in Bulawayo. When his parents divorced and his mother and young brother Mark moved to Cape Town, Dave stayed with his father but had to go to boarding school in Bulawayo. Boarding school was dominated by rural white Rhodesians and a culture of bullying which he found traumatic but where he learnt survival skills. His father’s voluble and public opposition to Ian Smith’s UDI government gave him a foundation in the importance of the politics of non-racism. His time in Habonim introduced him to left wing ideas which he carried through his entire life.
Following pursuit of his education at the Universities of Cape Town, Kent, and Sussex, David took up his first full time academic position at the University of Massachusetts. He returned from Boston to take up a position at UCT in 1980. Jennifer agreed to pick him up at the airport (his brother Mark was out of town and his friend Mike in detention) and this first meeting matured into a long and loving marriage of 46 years. Within a few years they had two children, Daniel in 1984 and Julia in 1988. Cape Town became firmly entrenched in his heart, as a place where he lived, and where he made deep friendships. He was committed to UCT and used it as a base for his contributions to policy development in post-Transformation South Africa. Even when he moved to Johannesburg in 2010 and to Paris in 2015 (giving Jenny the space to follow her own career), his heart remained in Cape Town and in his deep and fond memories of Zimbabwe.
Dave was known to some of his closer friends as ‘Kappie’ (although Jenny always called him David). Dave stood out. He was a wise loving son, sibling, husband, father and grandfather. He was warm and supportive, nurturing, humouring and mentoring a wide range of friends, students and acquaintances. Friendships were very important to Dave. This was especially so as his illness took hold of him. He kept in contact with people across the globe who mattered to him. When he returned to Cape Town in late 2025, he constructed manic itineraries to try and see everyone that he felt deeply about.
Dave was an academic who not only made a contribution to the world of ideas, but also had a significant impact on political processes. He was a great raconteur, with a fund of jokes and anecdotes which lit up his conversations. He was a mental gymnast with numbers and, especially in his later years, would recite an astonishing number of poems he had memorised in his childhood.
Dave had an abiding interest in history, not just in his professional life as an economic historian, but as a way of understanding the world in which he lived. Highly adaptable, after moving to Paris in 2015 he studied French and immersed himself in French history and culture. He always read widely – art, literature, politics, economics and more – and could be relied on to recount the entire tome he had just read in the most vivid detail, including whilst walking on the mountain with friends. Dave exemplified what has now come to be referred to as ‘an engaged academic’.
We miss Dave in all of these respects. He profoundly influenced so many of our lives and contributed to making the world a better place. Like all of us he was increasingly concerned that his generation had left the world in a mess. However, until the end he believed that by working together, we can build a more sustainable and equitable future for the generations to come.
Amongst all these wide attributes, Dave was at heart a family man. In the months before he died he said that his abiding wish was to become the best grandfather in the world. His granddaughter Sofia was a treasure in his life - together they were exuberant, imaginative, inquisitive, and playful.
Thank you Dave for all you have given us. You have made us all better people and the world a better place. You will live on.
Articles
. As featured in BusinessDay:
"Prof David Kaplan - a lifelong engaged academic", published on January 15, 2026
by Raphael Kaplinsky and Mike Morris
. As featured in FinancialMail
"Farewell to a warm and witty intellectual" , published on January 22, 2026
EDITORIAL by the Financial Mail editorial team
Engaged Academic
Trained initially as an economist and economic historian Dave spent most of his professional career as an economist, primarily basing himself at the University of Cape Town, with sabbaticals at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, the Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto. After graduating from the IDS, he spent two years as a teaching assistant in the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts. After moving residence to Paris in 2015, he maintained his association with the Economics Department at UCT, and was linked with the International Science Council in Paris.
Throughout his professional career Dave maintained an abiding interest in innovation, in the roles played by states and markets in economic growth and in the distributional outcomes of growth. He addressed these issues through a multidisciplinary lens, combining insights from economic history, economic theory, political economy and innovation studies. But most of all, he was an ‘engaged academic’, making a significant contribution to the development and implementation of policy in relation to industrial development, international trade, labour markets, science and technology and innovation, primarily but not exclusively in South Africa.
Completing his BA/BCom degree at the University of Cape Town in 1970, Dave graduated with an MA from the University of Kent in 1792 and a D Phil at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex in 1978. He was immensely proud of his role as a research assistant to Professors Hans Singer and Scarlett Epstein during his graduate studies at the IDS. He returned to South Africa in 1980 and was employed in the Faculty of Economic History at UCT, becoming the Head in 1989. In 1990 he moved to the Economics Department with a joint professorial position in the Graduate School of Business. Dave remained an active member of the Economics department at UCT until his passing. He regarded this as his academic home. Dave was a devoted and rigorous teacher. His lectures were eagerly attended by students at UCT, including those who were not studying economics, and he was a dedicated and rigorous supervisor of many postgraduate dissertations and young researchers.
The role played by states and markets was a central thread during Dave’s professional career. His voluminous D Phil dissertation Class Conflict, Capital Accumulation and the State in 20th Century South Africa, focused primarily on the positive role played by the state in the development of South Africa’s considerable industrial development. But as the Apartheid state became increasingly predatory and obstructionist to economic growth, Dave shifted to a more critical analysis of the state. His growing interest in innovation from the mid-1980s, evidenced in his book The Crossed Lines (which focused on South Africa’s telecoms sector) led him to argue that the key to productivity led growth lay in a dynamic private sector, working together with state, business services, educational and research institutions in an efficient National System of Innovation (NSI). His many publications analysed the way in which the considerable strengths of South Africa’s NSI were disabled in the post-Transition era by a predatory and often incompetent state. His underlying hope was that, in time, the South African state would provide the framing environment for a productivity enhancing private sector.
Notwithstanding this focus on innovation and productivity, Dave recognised the crucial role which employment played in the distribution of the fruits of growth. Perhaps surprisingly given his secondment as the Chief Economist at the Department of Trade and Industry between 2000 and 2003, and later (2004 - 10) as part time Chief Economist to the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism (DEDAT), his independence of thought led him to argue that South Africa’s employment challenge could not be met only through industrial development. It also necessarily required substantial public-private sector collaboration.
Dave increasingly felt that his professional contribution to economic development lay less in producing academic publications and more in the design and execution of policy. He came to argue that top down state directed economic policy was at best ineffective and at worst damaging; the primary driver of growth was the private sector working in a collaborative partnership with government and institutions in the NSI; the role of the state and public policy was to provide the framing conditions which enabled growth; and this depended on having suitably capacitated, independent institutions comprised of private and public representatives to enable effective implementation. This required efficient markets, appropriate human resources, independent institutions, and incentives to promote investment in productivity enhancing technological progress.
This focus on the institutional determinants of growth arose from Dave’s extensive experience in working with stakeholders across society. He was a member of the Economic Trends group established in early 1987 to advise COSATU on development policy. In 1990, he co-founded the Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU) at UCT which addressed a range of economic policy agendas, particularly with regard to the labour market and policies to strengthen science and technology capabilities and to enhance innovation and productivity. Dave was also one of the first Corresponding Editors of the journal Transformation founded in the mid 1980s to provide an intellectual forum for left wing critique of South Africa.
In the early 1990s, Dave co-directed the Industrial Strategy Project (the ISP). Working in concert with COSATU, this large multi-year programme produced a policy blueprint designed to deliver a more dynamic and inclusive post-Apartheid industrial sector (Improving Manufacturing Performance in South Africa). Perhaps more significantly, the ISP provided the training for a number of young academics and policy practitioners who subsequently came to play an important role in post-Transformation South Africa. Soon after the ISP project was completed, Dave participated as a prominent member of the Presidential Labour Market Commission, established in 1995 with the objective of developing the human resources and policies required to promote a more employment intensive growth path.
After his stint at the DTI, frustrated by policy failures at the national level, Dave then turned his attention to policy design and implementation at the regional level. In his role as Chief Economist within the Western Cape’s DEDAT he was tasked with developing industrial policy for the Western Cape government primarily through developing and implementing a provincial industrial strategy. This resulted in the Western Cape Micro Economic Development Strategy (MEDS), which involved substantial engagement with a multiplicity of private sector actors, and the establishment of relatively effective independent public/private institutions across a variety of sectors.
In 2006 Dave assisted in founding the Policy Research in International Services and Manufacturing (PRISM) unit within the School of Economics which was committed to using academic research to engage with governments and industry on various policy frontiers across Africa. Dave remained an active member of PRISM until 2026.
Dave had a long-term interest in science, technology and innovation, sparked by his book on telecoms which was published in 1990. During the mid-1990s he coordinated the Task Team producing the Green Paper on Science and Technology for the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. He was also a senior Advisor in the writing of the Green Paper on Telecommunications Policy. Over the past decade, he played an active and senior role in the National Council on Innovation (NACI) and was a founding Board Member of the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) and devoted considerable energy in steering it through choppy waters. In the immediate period before his death, Dave became increasingly involved in the development of policies facilitating the growth of venture capital backed innovative enterprises. Whilst in Paris he extended this focus on science and technology beyond South Africa, working as a consultant and advisor to the International Science Council. On the international stage he played an important role as a member of the Scientific Committee and a mentor in the global consortium of researchers (GLOBELICS), and particularly in its African sub-division (AFRICALICS).
Gallery
Videos
Memories and Tributes
Post a message or share your memories and photos.
February 13, 2026
This is an adjunct to my wife, Suanne Kelman's posting. After I came into Suanne's picture in 1995, stories about David and Jennifer were part of a whole new life experience for me. Suanne's description of her visit to South Africa in the 1980s and her then meeting with David and Jen's friends gave me an indelible picture of who they were and how they lived.
We finally gelled with Jen's year of fellowship at the University of Toronto. While Suanne and I had married in 1998, we still lived apart, me in London, Ontario (two hours away from Toronto). Jen even brought the kids for a weekend visit on the train, while David was off much of the time, in Switzerland, I believe, serving South Africa's interests. My best memory was of David, back in Toronto, with leisure time on his hands, telling of his delights to find treasures in Toronto's Kensington Market, actually a neighbourhood of old, run-down shops where the language on the streets had changed from Yiddish in the mid-20th century to a multitude of mainly Asian languages. He was delighted with a hat (that I wouldn't wear) and other memorable pieces. David, the senior Cape Town professor and government envoy to Switzerland, is enjoying bargain-hunting at Toronto's Old Market.
We met David and Jen again in Prague in 2004, and then again in Jo'bourg in 2012. See photos from Prague.
Allan Fox, Toronto
We finally gelled with Jen's year of fellowship at the University of Toronto. While Suanne and I had married in 1998, we still lived apart, me in London, Ontario (two hours away from Toronto). Jen even brought the kids for a weekend visit on the train, while David was off much of the time, in Switzerland, I believe, serving South Africa's interests. My best memory was of David, back in Toronto, with leisure time on his hands, telling of his delights to find treasures in Toronto's Kensington Market, actually a neighbourhood of old, run-down shops where the language on the streets had changed from Yiddish in the mid-20th century to a multitude of mainly Asian languages. He was delighted with a hat (that I wouldn't wear) and other memorable pieces. David, the senior Cape Town professor and government envoy to Switzerland, is enjoying bargain-hunting at Toronto's Old Market.
We met David and Jen again in Prague in 2004, and then again in Jo'bourg in 2012. See photos from Prague.
Allan Fox, Toronto
February 13, 2026
I can never think of David without seeing him conducting an orchestra – imaginary, or the one on the record or CD he was playing. He led a life set to music.
I met David in 1971 at the University of Kent at Canterbury. We had our first of many arguments immediately, some at the nursery-school level. My father was a furrier at that time. When I said that at least my father didn’t make his living exploiting African workers, David countered with, ‘At least my father doesn’t make his living by selling tiny, murdered animals.” Yet somehow, we became fast friends.
David loathed Canterbury and took the first opportunity to move to the University of Sussex. Visits there were like entering a 24/7 politics seminar. One memory stands out: Reeling from intellectual overload, I asked one of David’s friends, a Turkish Ph.D. candidate, about his thesis topic. With a straight face, he told me he was writing about Trotsky’s Bar Mitzvah.
I visited Jennifer and David in Capetown in the late 80s. I’ve never forgotten a party at their place. At home, it’s normal to introduce people by stating their profession. At their place, the introductions went like this: “This is Diana. She’s been in prison twice. This is Harold – he’s banned. Alice was under house arrest for three years.”
By the way, the South African apartheid government was nervous about letting me enter the country because an election was looming and I was a journalist. I offered David as a reference, and he promised them solemnly that I was a friend of the Republic. It gave me an extremely low opinion of the old regime’s security forces.
Our friendship has been life-long, and only strengthened with our marriages. Our foursome was cemented by the year Jennifer, David, Daniel and Julia spent in Toronto in the late 1990s. We had a wonderful time years later when Daniel and his wife visited Toronto to revive his memories.
David could sometimes be a brat. I remember him telling an American tourist in London that the new Tube line was for the Queen’s private use. Once, when we were trying to buy some treat at Fortnum’s – an unusual indulgence – he became frustrated by the number of shoppers in front of us and remarked loudly, “You know, it’s strange, but when I see one maggot on a cheese, it really puts me off.” The line of shoppers evaporated.
Through all of this, we talked: politics, music, books, theatre, people. I miss him terribly. No one enjoyed life more than David, and I feel very lucky to have known him.
I met David in 1971 at the University of Kent at Canterbury. We had our first of many arguments immediately, some at the nursery-school level. My father was a furrier at that time. When I said that at least my father didn’t make his living exploiting African workers, David countered with, ‘At least my father doesn’t make his living by selling tiny, murdered animals.” Yet somehow, we became fast friends.
David loathed Canterbury and took the first opportunity to move to the University of Sussex. Visits there were like entering a 24/7 politics seminar. One memory stands out: Reeling from intellectual overload, I asked one of David’s friends, a Turkish Ph.D. candidate, about his thesis topic. With a straight face, he told me he was writing about Trotsky’s Bar Mitzvah.
I visited Jennifer and David in Capetown in the late 80s. I’ve never forgotten a party at their place. At home, it’s normal to introduce people by stating their profession. At their place, the introductions went like this: “This is Diana. She’s been in prison twice. This is Harold – he’s banned. Alice was under house arrest for three years.”
By the way, the South African apartheid government was nervous about letting me enter the country because an election was looming and I was a journalist. I offered David as a reference, and he promised them solemnly that I was a friend of the Republic. It gave me an extremely low opinion of the old regime’s security forces.
Our friendship has been life-long, and only strengthened with our marriages. Our foursome was cemented by the year Jennifer, David, Daniel and Julia spent in Toronto in the late 1990s. We had a wonderful time years later when Daniel and his wife visited Toronto to revive his memories.
David could sometimes be a brat. I remember him telling an American tourist in London that the new Tube line was for the Queen’s private use. Once, when we were trying to buy some treat at Fortnum’s – an unusual indulgence – he became frustrated by the number of shoppers in front of us and remarked loudly, “You know, it’s strange, but when I see one maggot on a cheese, it really puts me off.” The line of shoppers evaporated.
Through all of this, we talked: politics, music, books, theatre, people. I miss him terribly. No one enjoyed life more than David, and I feel very lucky to have known him.
February 13, 2026
David was such a constant presence in my life from when I joined the Sociology Department in 1981 in Cape Town when he welcomed my younger self into the seemingly impenetrable cliques of Cape Town and included me in reading groups, discussions and social gatherings, never ever leaving me feeling an intruder or outsider or too young! His friendship knew no bounds – I recall being back in Joburg the following year when my then boyfriend Clive was released from detention and slapped with a banning order. He traced me to Clive’s parents’ home (pre cell-phones) and expressed such joy for me. He then added – ‘it’s the last week of term, don’t rush back, spend some time there and I will teach your classes’. Then without arrogance or presumption he added – ‘by the way what are you teaching at the moment’. He was in the Economic History department and was willing to find my course outlines and teach exactly what my course outline suggested. This quiet, unassuming intellectual confidence and deep ability to really see and feel for the other is how I will always remember David. I was so very pleased to be able to work more closely with him during the Industrial Strategy Project, learning from him, witnessing his intellectual generosity with so many of the group including myself, always encouraging and expecting us to be more than we thought possible. Staying with him and Jensi and their younger kids in Cape Town was always such a treat. Many other tributes here speak of his empathy and ability to listen. He had that ability to make you feel special, like the only person he is thinking about, generously caring about you, your work, your feelings about all that matters in your live from work, to marriage, to kids, parents, to politics, to Israel and Palestine. We spend what felt like many hours discussing kids, moms, spouses, marriage, work, life, politics and desires, but now I feel they were far too few. I will miss him often in many different scenarios. As I wrote to Guy (who, with Jeanne I feel so thrilled to have suggested a connection for Dave and Jensi when they went to Paris): “His vivacity, insightfulness, understated intelligence, deep listening ability and genuine profound interest in the person sitting opposite him” will be my abiding memory of this magnificent human being. When he finally sent a goodbye message I sat with it for a bit and realised time was running out (the next day Jensi posted that he was no longer looking at the phone) and as hard as that was, I sent him a goodbye message too. I wanted him to know how much he meant to me, how much the phone calls and deep conversations in Paris were valued, that my friendship with him was profound and a source of joy, and that I’m especially pleased to have written: “I love only a few people - you are one of them”.
Deepest sympathies to Jennifer, Daniel, Julia, and spouses and of course his pride and joy, Sofia. Rest in peace, dear David. You will always be treasured.
Deepest sympathies to Jennifer, Daniel, Julia, and spouses and of course his pride and joy, Sofia. Rest in peace, dear David. You will always be treasured.
February 11, 2026
In Loving Memory of Prof David Kaplan (Dave)
Dave was very special to me.
He served as my part-time Chief Economist when I was at the Department, and I valued not only his sharp intellect and unwavering integrity, but also his quiet generosity of spirit. He carried his brilliance lightly — never needing to dominate a room, yet always elevating it.
One of my most treasured memories was entirely unexpected. After I left the Department and found myself working in France at the Delville Wood Heritage Site in the Somme, David emailed to say he had moved to France — completely unaware that I was there too. I surprised him with a visit.
I can still see him standing in the museum, studying every detail of the reconfigured exhibits with intense focus and curiosity. He observed attentively, meticulously (as seen in photo), and then followed up with a myriad of thoughtful questions. That was Dave — deeply engaged, intellectually alive, and genuinely interested.
We later spent an entire day in Paris doing everything we possibly could — cheese tasting, wandering through backstreets, visiting museums, strolling through parks, sitting among locals, walking and talking for hours. We walked so much I was surprised we didn’t end up in Nice. It was a day of laughter, exploration, and rich conversation. I will treasure it forever.
What strikes me most, especially now, is how true he remained to his nature — thoughtful, engaged, curious, and deeply human.
David touched my life in ways he probably never fully realised. I am profoundly grateful for the privilege of knowing him.
Warmly,
Ivan
Dave was very special to me.
He served as my part-time Chief Economist when I was at the Department, and I valued not only his sharp intellect and unwavering integrity, but also his quiet generosity of spirit. He carried his brilliance lightly — never needing to dominate a room, yet always elevating it.
One of my most treasured memories was entirely unexpected. After I left the Department and found myself working in France at the Delville Wood Heritage Site in the Somme, David emailed to say he had moved to France — completely unaware that I was there too. I surprised him with a visit.
I can still see him standing in the museum, studying every detail of the reconfigured exhibits with intense focus and curiosity. He observed attentively, meticulously (as seen in photo), and then followed up with a myriad of thoughtful questions. That was Dave — deeply engaged, intellectually alive, and genuinely interested.
We later spent an entire day in Paris doing everything we possibly could — cheese tasting, wandering through backstreets, visiting museums, strolling through parks, sitting among locals, walking and talking for hours. We walked so much I was surprised we didn’t end up in Nice. It was a day of laughter, exploration, and rich conversation. I will treasure it forever.
What strikes me most, especially now, is how true he remained to his nature — thoughtful, engaged, curious, and deeply human.
David touched my life in ways he probably never fully realised. I am profoundly grateful for the privilege of knowing him.
Warmly,
Ivan
February 11, 2026
First met David some time ago in one of the Africalics/GLOBELICS Conferences, can't remember which one exactly. However, we had the opportunity of having a close discussion on the role of the state in entrepreneurship, especially through innovations from universities, at an AOSTI/ECOWAS meeting in Abidjan in early 2017, i think. His passion about equitable development of the African continent was infectious. He had a concern about the proliferation of private universities in Nigeria, especially the potential to create a class system in the country. He shared the experience of the reforms in higher education in South Africa, which led to the merger of universities. We discussed at length. Since that time, we interacted whenever there is an opportunity at any LICS engagement.
It is so sad you have passed but your legacy lives on. Will definitely miss your mentorship, passion, and ability to engage.
God keep your family and the loved ones left behind!
It is so sad you have passed but your legacy lives on. Will definitely miss your mentorship, passion, and ability to engage.
God keep your family and the loved ones left behind!
February 10, 2026
Heartbreaking to learn of your passing, dear Dave. May your loved ones be consoled and comforted!
I am picturing the still vivid memories I have of the workshops on the African commodities programme in Cape Town in 2009 and 2010. You, Mike and Raphie took me (a rookie student) and other colleagues under your wings. I grew and learned immeasurably from those workshops, one of the best academic experiences I have ever had. They made the PhD path a lot less daunting for me, which I was able to complete in 2 years and 9 months.
You left an indelible impression on me, the generosity of your spirit. While blunt and direct in your critique of my work, you did so with tact and kindness. You did not put me down, you lifted me up. So, I felt much indebted to you also when I completed the PhD.
Since then, I have been making some positive contributions to policy making in the commodities sector, and I would have very much liked to share it all with you. I know now that this will no longer happen because you have taken your leave. But I am confident you can now see it even better from where you are.
You live on, through your work and in the hearts of your loved ones and of those whom you have impacted. Thank you!
I am picturing the still vivid memories I have of the workshops on the African commodities programme in Cape Town in 2009 and 2010. You, Mike and Raphie took me (a rookie student) and other colleagues under your wings. I grew and learned immeasurably from those workshops, one of the best academic experiences I have ever had. They made the PhD path a lot less daunting for me, which I was able to complete in 2 years and 9 months.
You left an indelible impression on me, the generosity of your spirit. While blunt and direct in your critique of my work, you did so with tact and kindness. You did not put me down, you lifted me up. So, I felt much indebted to you also when I completed the PhD.
Since then, I have been making some positive contributions to policy making in the commodities sector, and I would have very much liked to share it all with you. I know now that this will no longer happen because you have taken your leave. But I am confident you can now see it even better from where you are.
You live on, through your work and in the hearts of your loved ones and of those whom you have impacted. Thank you!
February 9, 2026
Dave was a fine scholar and a generous colleague. May his memory be a blessing,
February 9, 2026
I remember your statement in Tanzania that for developing countries to grow/develop they need to devalue their currency...
I really wanted to engage you further on that but we just joked over it...
Rest in Peace Prof. Dave Kaplan...
I really wanted to engage you further on that but we just joked over it...
Rest in Peace Prof. Dave Kaplan...
February 6, 2026
David was one of the most thoughtful people I have ever come across - not only intellectually, where he excelled, but in terms of his empathy and understanding for his friends and family. He had a huge heart and a small ego - he was ready to give, to listen, to engage always. In his last few years in Paris, he was committed to keeping his SA ties and friendships alive. He texted me on a regular basis, called sometimes, and every time he was in town we saw each other. When he was diagnosed, he called me himself to tell me - I had just seen him in Cape Town on a recent trip. It was typical, caring, empathetic Dave, wanting me to hear the news from him. And then when I saw him again in Cape Town, nine months later, it was to say goodbye, although neither of us said so. He had the freshest mind, the warmest heart, the sharpest laugh. He loved Jennifer, his children, and his new granddaughter beyond measure and had profound affection and respect for his friends. I was lucky enough to be one of them. Deepest sympathies to Jennifer, Daniel, Julia, Sofia. Rest in peace, dear David. You will always be treasured.
February 5, 2026
Tribute from the RCS Team
The RCS Team joins the AfricaLics Secretariat and global research community in mourning the passing of Professor David Kaplan. Dave was more than an outstanding scholar,he was a mentor, a builder, and a deeply generous human being whose commitment to strengthening African research ecosystems left a lasting mark on all of us who worked alongside him.
As a founding pillar of the AfricaLics Secretariat, his dedication to intellectual rigor, mentorship, and inclusive knowledge-building helped shape generations of innovation scholars across the continent. His presence brought both depth and warmth to our work, reminding us that excellence and humanity can and should go hand in hand.
As shared by colleagues and friends:
“We have lost a wonderful soul. His commitment to AfricaLics was exemplary. He always contributed to a cheerful atmosphere in our meetings even as he insisted on intellectual rigor. May his soul rest in perfect peace.” George Essegbey
“What a great loss!Africalics owes a great deal to this man, a profound scholar and a humble and generous human being. Great loss indeed.” Rajesh GK
“Dear Friends, It is with deep respect and heartfelt sorrow that I extend my condolences to the family of Professor David Kaplan. His passing is a profound loss to the academic community and to all of us in the GlobeLics and AfricaLics networks, who had the privilege of learning from his wisdom.Professor Kaplan was more than a distinguished scholar; he was a generous mentor whose guidance shaped my own intellectual journey. At a time when I struggled to connect mainstream economic theories with innovation-driven heterodox development studies, his insights illuminated the path forward. His unique perspective and generosity instilled in me the values of critical thinking and perseverance – qualities that continue to guide my research and academic careers. As one of the founders of the AfricaLics Secretariat, Professor Kaplan played a pivotal role in building the research capacity of hundreds of African Ph.D. students in the field of innovation. His contributions stand among the most enduring legacies of senior scholars whose influence will inspire generations of African innovation researchers to come.I affirm my commitment to honor his memory by striving to follow in his footsteps, scaling his good deeds to new heights. His legacy will remain alive not only in the scholarship he advanced but also in the lives of those he mentored and inspired.May his soul rest in peace, and may his family find comfort in knowing that his impact will continue to resonate across Africa and beyond.” Abdi Ahmad
A short tribute montage link appears below, celebrating his life at AfricaLics and Globelics and enduring impact:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M_dhpkMD6OAhN7SXjl-_tC4ETvC-3Lpz/view?usp=share_link
The RCS Team joins the AfricaLics Secretariat and global research community in mourning the passing of Professor David Kaplan. Dave was more than an outstanding scholar,he was a mentor, a builder, and a deeply generous human being whose commitment to strengthening African research ecosystems left a lasting mark on all of us who worked alongside him.
As a founding pillar of the AfricaLics Secretariat, his dedication to intellectual rigor, mentorship, and inclusive knowledge-building helped shape generations of innovation scholars across the continent. His presence brought both depth and warmth to our work, reminding us that excellence and humanity can and should go hand in hand.
As shared by colleagues and friends:
“We have lost a wonderful soul. His commitment to AfricaLics was exemplary. He always contributed to a cheerful atmosphere in our meetings even as he insisted on intellectual rigor. May his soul rest in perfect peace.” George Essegbey
“What a great loss!Africalics owes a great deal to this man, a profound scholar and a humble and generous human being. Great loss indeed.” Rajesh GK
“Dear Friends, It is with deep respect and heartfelt sorrow that I extend my condolences to the family of Professor David Kaplan. His passing is a profound loss to the academic community and to all of us in the GlobeLics and AfricaLics networks, who had the privilege of learning from his wisdom.Professor Kaplan was more than a distinguished scholar; he was a generous mentor whose guidance shaped my own intellectual journey. At a time when I struggled to connect mainstream economic theories with innovation-driven heterodox development studies, his insights illuminated the path forward. His unique perspective and generosity instilled in me the values of critical thinking and perseverance – qualities that continue to guide my research and academic careers. As one of the founders of the AfricaLics Secretariat, Professor Kaplan played a pivotal role in building the research capacity of hundreds of African Ph.D. students in the field of innovation. His contributions stand among the most enduring legacies of senior scholars whose influence will inspire generations of African innovation researchers to come.I affirm my commitment to honor his memory by striving to follow in his footsteps, scaling his good deeds to new heights. His legacy will remain alive not only in the scholarship he advanced but also in the lives of those he mentored and inspired.May his soul rest in peace, and may his family find comfort in knowing that his impact will continue to resonate across Africa and beyond.” Abdi Ahmad
A short tribute montage link appears below, celebrating his life at AfricaLics and Globelics and enduring impact:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M_dhpkMD6OAhN7SXjl-_tC4ETvC-3Lpz/view?usp=share_link
February 4, 2026
Ah, Dave, sad to see you go. We met briefly during your IDS days and then had to wait for the regime to crumble, before encountering one another at the UCT science policy colloquium that you organised early 90s. That took some courage, to say the least. For me the way the event was structured served to highlight the role of interests across the science system of the day, interests that persist to the present. Subsequently the main story was the formulation of the Green and White Papers on S&T (see attached). The bold, beautiful and optimistic are captured at the Norwich oval, Claremont, Cape Town. Jim Mullin, Dave Kaplan, Khotso Mokhele, George Ellis, Rob Adam, Ma;a Singh et al. After that it was DTI time, and then NACI, TIA and so on. In between we did some World Bank projects and offered our contributions to NACI . This engagement allowed Dave to teach me how to be calm in the face of dogmatism and ideological posturing. Few appreciate the role that Dave played in promoting Canada-SA S&T policy engagement; naturally the 2024 Dufour-Kahn review of the engagement benefitted from Dave's inputs. Fortune allowed us to wander the Latin Quarter last July, in which Dave's appreciation of cultural history shone through (see Dave). A special time; a life well lived.
February 4, 2026
Professor David Kaplan’s passing represents a profound loss to the African innovation community. I remember him as a deeply influential scholar and a generous mentor whose contributions helped shape both the intellectual direction and collaborative spirit of AfricaLics. He played a pivotal role in the AfricaLics Conferences with his intellectual contribution and rigorous dialogue while also nurturing emerging scholars through various AfricaLics programmes. Beyond his scholarship, Professor Kaplan was committed to building people and institutions, inspiring generations of researchers with his humility, critical insight, and unwavering belief in Africa’s innovation potential. His legacy will continue to live on in the vibrant community he helped build and in the many scholars whose journeys he shaped.
February 2, 2026
For those of you who have looked through even just a handful of these tributes, you will know that David read, memorized, and loved to recite poetry at every opportunity. What you probably do not know is that David also wrote poetry – or rather, little ditties. Rhyming, humorous, silly, yet perceptive, usually for a family occasion.
I found this in the back of a scruffy book of “writing” left by David in amongst a pile on his bedside table:
As I lie in my hospital bed
And think on what I done and said
I worry - not about the promises broken
But only about the words unspoken
Not the dreams that left undone
But the songs that remain unsung
I wish I could decipher the second, unfinished verse……
I found this in the back of a scruffy book of “writing” left by David in amongst a pile on his bedside table:
As I lie in my hospital bed
And think on what I done and said
I worry - not about the promises broken
But only about the words unspoken
Not the dreams that left undone
But the songs that remain unsung
I wish I could decipher the second, unfinished verse……
February 1, 2026
With great sadness - and great appreciation for the friendship that Dave and Jennifer have shown to my wife, Lo Dagerman and me - condolences to the entire family on Dave's sad passing. Lo and I remember warmly the dinner we had together in Paris.
I remember vividly my conversation with Dave the next day in Jardin de Luxemburg, where we discussed the challenge of finding our way in a new place. Dave had very much found his own way of plunging in! I remember vividly the warm intensity with which Dave shared with me his new-found passion for Ancient Egypt, ignited by the antiquities in the Louvre.
I also remember vividly long, fulfilling conversations with Dave when I sometimes stayed overnight with Dave and Jennifer in their Rondebosch home, as I began [part-time] returning to Cape Town. (And, of course, over subsequent decades, many more intense conversations.....Dave and I didn't always agree..........but even in the more intense disagreements, never lost touch of a shared sense of friendship and mutual respect......).
And.........
I remember also the astonishing way in which we first met. It was the (US) fall of 1977. I'd just arrived in Cambridge, and was in the basement of Harvard's Widener library. To my astonishment, I looked across the basement and saw "Mark Kaplan" - who I knew from Cape Town - photocopying across the hall.
"Are you Mark Kaplan?" I asked him, disbelieving my own eyes........
"No", he replied, with a South African accent, "I'm his brother, Dave"!!!!!!!!
Astonishing.........
With warmth, love and heartfelt appreciation for Dave's special gift of warmth and friendship.
I remember vividly my conversation with Dave the next day in Jardin de Luxemburg, where we discussed the challenge of finding our way in a new place. Dave had very much found his own way of plunging in! I remember vividly the warm intensity with which Dave shared with me his new-found passion for Ancient Egypt, ignited by the antiquities in the Louvre.
I also remember vividly long, fulfilling conversations with Dave when I sometimes stayed overnight with Dave and Jennifer in their Rondebosch home, as I began [part-time] returning to Cape Town. (And, of course, over subsequent decades, many more intense conversations.....Dave and I didn't always agree..........but even in the more intense disagreements, never lost touch of a shared sense of friendship and mutual respect......).
And.........
I remember also the astonishing way in which we first met. It was the (US) fall of 1977. I'd just arrived in Cambridge, and was in the basement of Harvard's Widener library. To my astonishment, I looked across the basement and saw "Mark Kaplan" - who I knew from Cape Town - photocopying across the hall.
"Are you Mark Kaplan?" I asked him, disbelieving my own eyes........
"No", he replied, with a South African accent, "I'm his brother, Dave"!!!!!!!!
Astonishing.........
With warmth, love and heartfelt appreciation for Dave's special gift of warmth and friendship.
February 1, 2026
Dearest Jennifer, Daniel & Julz,
I am so deeply sorry for your loss, I’ve actually struggled to process it all the last few weeks, as still feels so surreal. So grateful to have seen you all so recently in Cape Town.
Julia and I met and an instant friendship was formed in grade 8, 21 years ago, we spent many hours in each others homes.
I will always remember the warmth of the Kaplan’s home. Abby always greeting us at the kitchen door, and getting cuddles on her bed. From the lovingly made school lunchboxes for Julia by David ( often including a biscuit from the airport lounge), and the endearing way David called Julz “foefy.” Spelling ?! He also made her a “shrine” we called it- I think on her 16th birthday which consisted of coloured in toilet paper ( with highlighters) wrapped all the way down the staircase! A labour of love 🥰
David and Jen were truly a formidable team, complementing each other so beautifully. He was an incredible father, partner, and friend, always welcoming and kind and always hilarious. He lit up whenever he spoke of his family and always how proud he was of them all, Jen, Daniel and Julz.
From school days, I will forever remember bones being buried and dug up, in the garden for Julz’ matric art project, and hand picked flowers stuck around the garden for Julia’s 21st. Always dedicated to the cause. He was the kind of Dad that was always quietly rooting everyone on, always supportive and always willing to listen and chat and genuinely interested in how we were all doing.
In more recent years the light of his life was his granddaughter, Sophia. I am so grateful that they shared such a special bond, and he simply lit up speaking about her. He would tell us of all the things she was able to do & would proudly show us videos and pics. So special. I knew he would be the most brilliant grandpa even just seeing him interact with my kiddies. He reminded me on his most recent CT trip, that he was the first to get giggles from Stella.
He will be dearly missed and remembered with so much love and fond memories.🩷
All my love
Mathi
I am so deeply sorry for your loss, I’ve actually struggled to process it all the last few weeks, as still feels so surreal. So grateful to have seen you all so recently in Cape Town.
Julia and I met and an instant friendship was formed in grade 8, 21 years ago, we spent many hours in each others homes.
I will always remember the warmth of the Kaplan’s home. Abby always greeting us at the kitchen door, and getting cuddles on her bed. From the lovingly made school lunchboxes for Julia by David ( often including a biscuit from the airport lounge), and the endearing way David called Julz “foefy.” Spelling ?! He also made her a “shrine” we called it- I think on her 16th birthday which consisted of coloured in toilet paper ( with highlighters) wrapped all the way down the staircase! A labour of love 🥰
David and Jen were truly a formidable team, complementing each other so beautifully. He was an incredible father, partner, and friend, always welcoming and kind and always hilarious. He lit up whenever he spoke of his family and always how proud he was of them all, Jen, Daniel and Julz.
From school days, I will forever remember bones being buried and dug up, in the garden for Julz’ matric art project, and hand picked flowers stuck around the garden for Julia’s 21st. Always dedicated to the cause. He was the kind of Dad that was always quietly rooting everyone on, always supportive and always willing to listen and chat and genuinely interested in how we were all doing.
In more recent years the light of his life was his granddaughter, Sophia. I am so grateful that they shared such a special bond, and he simply lit up speaking about her. He would tell us of all the things she was able to do & would proudly show us videos and pics. So special. I knew he would be the most brilliant grandpa even just seeing him interact with my kiddies. He reminded me on his most recent CT trip, that he was the first to get giggles from Stella.
He will be dearly missed and remembered with so much love and fond memories.🩷
All my love
Mathi
February 1, 2026
I met Jennifer when she spent a year in London in the late ‘70s. It was a few more years before I met David, on a visit to Cape Town when Jennifer was pregnant with Daniel - 1983 or thereabouts. I was a little apprehensive – who was this guy chosen by my dear friend as her life partner? Would I like him? Would we get on? Would he ‘invade’ my friendship with Jennifer? Answers – yes hugely, yes humorously, and no never.
David was friendly. welcoming, funny and a great conversationalist. He was an ‘options’ man. Deciding where to go or what to do on my visits to Paris took a long time and a decision made was soon overturned by a better idea. Jennifer, as you’ll remember, getting to Monet’s garden was touch and go.
He wore his intellect and knowledge lightly, expressing no surprise (only last year) that I had never heard of the great economist, David Ricardo, let alone Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage. We had a running joke, never resolved, about which of us was younger than the other. He was of course and I now concede, David, you can be younger.
This past year, my best memory is of David dancing in a square in Paris. Facing full-on what life had dealt him and being joyful still. He was a great man. My privilege to have known him and laughed a lot with him.
David was friendly. welcoming, funny and a great conversationalist. He was an ‘options’ man. Deciding where to go or what to do on my visits to Paris took a long time and a decision made was soon overturned by a better idea. Jennifer, as you’ll remember, getting to Monet’s garden was touch and go.
He wore his intellect and knowledge lightly, expressing no surprise (only last year) that I had never heard of the great economist, David Ricardo, let alone Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage. We had a running joke, never resolved, about which of us was younger than the other. He was of course and I now concede, David, you can be younger.
This past year, my best memory is of David dancing in a square in Paris. Facing full-on what life had dealt him and being joyful still. He was a great man. My privilege to have known him and laughed a lot with him.
February 1, 2026
I was introduced to David and Jennifer by David Goldblatt in the early eighties and remained friends ever after. I only once worked with him at UCT, on a colloquium on industrial policy, largely generated by him and David Lewis. But my friendship with him of a different order. It centred on discussions of art, poetry, novels, children, grandchildren, masculinity and the nature of friendship itself.
He was a unique man, interested in the inner life as well as in public life, open, intense, generous, forgiving. I loved hearing his news and views from Paris and from wherever else he travelled, and felt lucky to see him whenever he visited Cape Town. He was especially kind to me when my husband, Tony Morphet, and my brother died within a month of each other.
When I last saw David in Cape Town, the day before he and Jennifer flew back to Paris, I was very moved by how valiant and direct he was, how he combined realism with optimism about his condition. It was a model, a life lesson about illness and the approach of death.
He once told me he liked this poem of mine. I attach it here for that reason. How I shall miss him.
Unleaving
"Margaraet, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?"
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Spring and Fall."
It is grey, I used to like
The shadow of weather across sea
The brief sharp illimination
Of pink Easter lilies
When sun scissored clouds.
Rain and brown leaves
Autumn tears
On my windscreen
Only made me tender.
I could wipe them away.
This time, greyer, graver
The season turns on us
Aggrieved, We ache for want of light,
Miss lost ones, are not brave,
"It is Margaret we mourn for."
Ingrid de Kok
He was a unique man, interested in the inner life as well as in public life, open, intense, generous, forgiving. I loved hearing his news and views from Paris and from wherever else he travelled, and felt lucky to see him whenever he visited Cape Town. He was especially kind to me when my husband, Tony Morphet, and my brother died within a month of each other.
When I last saw David in Cape Town, the day before he and Jennifer flew back to Paris, I was very moved by how valiant and direct he was, how he combined realism with optimism about his condition. It was a model, a life lesson about illness and the approach of death.
He once told me he liked this poem of mine. I attach it here for that reason. How I shall miss him.
Unleaving
"Margaraet, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?"
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Spring and Fall."
It is grey, I used to like
The shadow of weather across sea
The brief sharp illimination
Of pink Easter lilies
When sun scissored clouds.
Rain and brown leaves
Autumn tears
On my windscreen
Only made me tender.
I could wipe them away.
This time, greyer, graver
The season turns on us
Aggrieved, We ache for want of light,
Miss lost ones, are not brave,
"It is Margaret we mourn for."
Ingrid de Kok
January 30, 2026
It is just over a month since David’s passing and yet somehow, the time period feels longer. His swift illness and passing, and the finality of it all, lingers with me, adjacent to a sadness at the huge loss to all who knew him, and in particular to Jennifer, Daniel and Julia.
I met David and Jennifer during my time as a parent of children at Westerford High School; times of glancing greetings and conversations while lifting children, and more of the same in the delays that always come with this task. This time of life is busy with full feelings and big memories. Later, independent of Westerford, there were social connections and more relaxed discussions. Later still, were visits in Cape Town, Paris and Stockholm, always ending mid-sentence with a wish that we could continue the next day, as we discussed matters big and small. I can easily step into the memories of walking into the summer night in Paris with David, en route to the Metro, as he spoke of all that he was drinking in of life in France, what he missed about Cape Town … and that we would keep in touch.
Which we did.
He looked so much better than I had imagined he would when I visited him in November in hospital. So alive in his small frame, alert to what was happening, engaged, curious about what I was doing and how my children were. He was comfortable talking about what he was facing. So utterly himself.
My life is richer for having met him.
I met David and Jennifer during my time as a parent of children at Westerford High School; times of glancing greetings and conversations while lifting children, and more of the same in the delays that always come with this task. This time of life is busy with full feelings and big memories. Later, independent of Westerford, there were social connections and more relaxed discussions. Later still, were visits in Cape Town, Paris and Stockholm, always ending mid-sentence with a wish that we could continue the next day, as we discussed matters big and small. I can easily step into the memories of walking into the summer night in Paris with David, en route to the Metro, as he spoke of all that he was drinking in of life in France, what he missed about Cape Town … and that we would keep in touch.
Which we did.
He looked so much better than I had imagined he would when I visited him in November in hospital. So alive in his small frame, alert to what was happening, engaged, curious about what I was doing and how my children were. He was comfortable talking about what he was facing. So utterly himself.
My life is richer for having met him.
January 26, 2026
Dave has been the most clear minded person I have met. From the time we made contact in 1993 until our last project together in 2020, we have worked on -and in- Colombia, South Africa, and Algeria. Whichever was the case study or the issues under scrutiny (diaspora, innovation, policy, …) the questions he raised were always extremely relevant, and his analytical view exceptionnally sharp.
For me, coming from the social sciences in France - imaginative though sometimes quite speculative – his approaches were invaluably useful. Our teams could touch ground firmly and elaborate on the perspectives he gave. I quickly respected this extraodrinary quality and relied on it in many occasions, including personal ones.
I remember his advices/lessons when I consulted him about such different issues as the expatriation with a disabled daughter, a professional conflict resolution or the treatment of a global academic matter. He would stare at me with his blue eyes and after a few clear cut questions, make a diagnosis with the most appropriate way to deal with the problem.
Beside this systematic, rational, cold-minded attitudes when necessary, Dave was warm, supportive and committed in the relationship. I particularly enjoyed the free and personal discussions we had when he retired and we met from time to time in Paris, talking about everything from high politics to grandparents’ feelings through to sunrise in Stokholm, Cape Town or Algiers…
When he got ill, he himself declared it to me by mail and I am extremely grateful to him for this, since we could thus share an intense moment while I made a stop over in Paris. This is typically Dave : to face the problem –regardless of its severity- and discuss it instead of hiding it, with whom you feel is able to understand and approach it. Thereby, perhaps with only partial awareness, he expressed his most powerful lesson of all : courage and clarity as the finest way to share human intelligence with emotion.
Thanks Dave. I will never forget.
For me, coming from the social sciences in France - imaginative though sometimes quite speculative – his approaches were invaluably useful. Our teams could touch ground firmly and elaborate on the perspectives he gave. I quickly respected this extraodrinary quality and relied on it in many occasions, including personal ones.
I remember his advices/lessons when I consulted him about such different issues as the expatriation with a disabled daughter, a professional conflict resolution or the treatment of a global academic matter. He would stare at me with his blue eyes and after a few clear cut questions, make a diagnosis with the most appropriate way to deal with the problem.
Beside this systematic, rational, cold-minded attitudes when necessary, Dave was warm, supportive and committed in the relationship. I particularly enjoyed the free and personal discussions we had when he retired and we met from time to time in Paris, talking about everything from high politics to grandparents’ feelings through to sunrise in Stokholm, Cape Town or Algiers…
When he got ill, he himself declared it to me by mail and I am extremely grateful to him for this, since we could thus share an intense moment while I made a stop over in Paris. This is typically Dave : to face the problem –regardless of its severity- and discuss it instead of hiding it, with whom you feel is able to understand and approach it. Thereby, perhaps with only partial awareness, he expressed his most powerful lesson of all : courage and clarity as the finest way to share human intelligence with emotion.
Thanks Dave. I will never forget.
January 26, 2026
In memory of David, sparked by Ingrid Jonker’s poetry
Groenfontein Valley, Calitzdorp, 2 January 2026
Unleaving, unleavening
1. The leaving...
Dave has not left us. It is we who took our leave, we who continued living…
So, how to unleave? How to return to the different points where each of us left him?
How to get back glimpses we believed! Retrieved! Now bereaved.
How to get back weaved some fibres of a feel that has never left?
Here, below, is one way of unleaving,
A thought for easing the heaving.
In a post-Dave epoch,
Emptied of his exhilaration.
2. Unleavening
Preparing a hard bake for the lonelier road ahead. Devoided of Dave. Without yeast. No new zest.
An involuntary reminder of whom we left; one no longer to rise.
The hard and dry crack of matzo memories.
But while so much less, unleavening is not nothing.
It is a substitute sustenance.
For the evening.
For conserving crumbs over deepening distance.
3. Mergence
For David’s life, I will cleave the unleaving and the unleavening.
I know that I, in turn, will also be leaving. Leaving it for others to come back...
To do their unleavening as they proceed past the place thus stopped.
But for me, to unleave the maw today, to grieve, I will try unleavening.
Way less, yes. But nourishment nevertheless.
A morsel to push onwards, to push back in his esprit.
Groenfontein Valley, Calitzdorp, 2 January 2026
Unleaving, unleavening
1. The leaving...
Dave has not left us. It is we who took our leave, we who continued living…
So, how to unleave? How to return to the different points where each of us left him?
How to get back glimpses we believed! Retrieved! Now bereaved.
How to get back weaved some fibres of a feel that has never left?
Here, below, is one way of unleaving,
A thought for easing the heaving.
In a post-Dave epoch,
Emptied of his exhilaration.
2. Unleavening
Preparing a hard bake for the lonelier road ahead. Devoided of Dave. Without yeast. No new zest.
An involuntary reminder of whom we left; one no longer to rise.
The hard and dry crack of matzo memories.
But while so much less, unleavening is not nothing.
It is a substitute sustenance.
For the evening.
For conserving crumbs over deepening distance.
3. Mergence
For David’s life, I will cleave the unleaving and the unleavening.
I know that I, in turn, will also be leaving. Leaving it for others to come back...
To do their unleavening as they proceed past the place thus stopped.
But for me, to unleave the maw today, to grieve, I will try unleavening.
Way less, yes. But nourishment nevertheless.
A morsel to push onwards, to push back in his esprit.
January 26, 2026
Today is exactly a month since David died, and I have been thinking about him with love, and with focus, and really feeling his absence. I am trying to imagine where he might be now, what he might be reading, and thinking about the tiny part of his great and generous self that I am lucky enough to have been gifted.
Also today, my own David is writing an article of the nature that only David Kaplan was ever equal to the task of refining, of improving and commenting upon. They would have spent hours talking it through. It would have been better for it. We two have just a few minutes ago discussed (again) their irreplaceable friendship and rich intellectual exchange, and how much we miss David still being in this world.
For myself, I always loved about David K the manner in which his keen mind and deep, loving heart always fired on all cylinders, without holding anything back. I loved talking to him about what we were reading and noticing in the cultural sphere, about our children, our partners, and our work.
I felt seen, admired and appreciated during our many exchanges over the years. David was that rare kind of man whose thoughts and feelings are held close to the surface and easily shared. I loved that about him. There was always an intimacy and openness to our exchanges, which doesn’t always come (in my experience!) that easily to men.
My love and hugs to Jennifer, and Daniel and Julia and their families. I am so sorry for your profound loss. I will always miss David Kaplan very much, and I will deeply miss hearing his voice on speakerphone in conversation with the other David as I walk into our house. Xxxxxxxxx
Also today, my own David is writing an article of the nature that only David Kaplan was ever equal to the task of refining, of improving and commenting upon. They would have spent hours talking it through. It would have been better for it. We two have just a few minutes ago discussed (again) their irreplaceable friendship and rich intellectual exchange, and how much we miss David still being in this world.
For myself, I always loved about David K the manner in which his keen mind and deep, loving heart always fired on all cylinders, without holding anything back. I loved talking to him about what we were reading and noticing in the cultural sphere, about our children, our partners, and our work.
I felt seen, admired and appreciated during our many exchanges over the years. David was that rare kind of man whose thoughts and feelings are held close to the surface and easily shared. I loved that about him. There was always an intimacy and openness to our exchanges, which doesn’t always come (in my experience!) that easily to men.
My love and hugs to Jennifer, and Daniel and Julia and their families. I am so sorry for your profound loss. I will always miss David Kaplan very much, and I will deeply miss hearing his voice on speakerphone in conversation with the other David as I walk into our house. Xxxxxxxxx
January 26, 2026
I just returned from a long trip to hear the sad news of Dave’s passing, and apologise that I was not present to pay tribute to his contribution to our field and to me personally.
Dave and I often ended up travelling together to Africalics and Globelics conferences, and that’s how I got to know how important each person in his family was to him - during our long discussions over breakfast (he always brought his own muesli, no matter where!) or in the bus on the way to venues or airports. These were also opportunities for long and complex discussions on the state of innovation policy in South Africa and the global South.
Dave was a mentor and support to me in the field of South African innovation studies, and I learned so much from him over the years. I valued his rigorous and systematic approach and critical questioning of the data until it made sense. We worked closely each year in preparing and validating data for the NACI annual review of STI in South Africa, and his incisive queries often sparked new research and analytical avenues for our young researchers to pursue.
I will really miss his wisdom, humanity and dry sense of humour.
I wish you as his family strength and comfort at this difficult time, and to us in the academic and policy field, may we continue to work in the spirit of critical enquiry and engagement he promoted..
Dave and I often ended up travelling together to Africalics and Globelics conferences, and that’s how I got to know how important each person in his family was to him - during our long discussions over breakfast (he always brought his own muesli, no matter where!) or in the bus on the way to venues or airports. These were also opportunities for long and complex discussions on the state of innovation policy in South Africa and the global South.
Dave was a mentor and support to me in the field of South African innovation studies, and I learned so much from him over the years. I valued his rigorous and systematic approach and critical questioning of the data until it made sense. We worked closely each year in preparing and validating data for the NACI annual review of STI in South Africa, and his incisive queries often sparked new research and analytical avenues for our young researchers to pursue.
I will really miss his wisdom, humanity and dry sense of humour.
I wish you as his family strength and comfort at this difficult time, and to us in the academic and policy field, may we continue to work in the spirit of critical enquiry and engagement he promoted..
January 26, 2026
I think I first met Dave back in the late 1980s when I was a researcher in Durban and was invited to join the Economic Trends group of economists and other social scientists working on analysing South Africa’s economic crisis. I remember his incredibly clear analysis of issues during unnumberable workshops in these exciting transition times. He was also a brilliant teacher and winner of UCT’s Distinguished Teacher’s Award.
Later when I moved to UCT, I joined the Industrial Strategy Project, which Dave set up together with Avril Joffe, Raphie Kaplinsky and Dave Lewis. This led me into research and policy work on the automotive industry from which I have never quite escaped.
Dave was a friend but also a mentor. He was above all a very kind and considerate person. He was my PhD supervisor – which turned out to be a much longer process than it should have been – my fault entirely! And then we worked together in the School of Economics research unit, PRISM, which he helped establish. Since his passing I have been reflecting on how our work overlapped in many ways over a span of decades.
After Dave and Jennifer moved to Paris, I was fortunate to visit on a number of work trips. I fondly remember meeting up with Dave and being guided around the historical parts of the beautiful city, about which he had become quite an expert.
Dave, you will be deeply missed.
Later when I moved to UCT, I joined the Industrial Strategy Project, which Dave set up together with Avril Joffe, Raphie Kaplinsky and Dave Lewis. This led me into research and policy work on the automotive industry from which I have never quite escaped.
Dave was a friend but also a mentor. He was above all a very kind and considerate person. He was my PhD supervisor – which turned out to be a much longer process than it should have been – my fault entirely! And then we worked together in the School of Economics research unit, PRISM, which he helped establish. Since his passing I have been reflecting on how our work overlapped in many ways over a span of decades.
After Dave and Jennifer moved to Paris, I was fortunate to visit on a number of work trips. I fondly remember meeting up with Dave and being guided around the historical parts of the beautiful city, about which he had become quite an expert.
Dave, you will be deeply missed.
January 25, 2026
I’ve known Dave since my early childhood days when Julia and I were close friends. Although I was then too young to understand all the intellectual stuff, I clearly remember his warmth and good humour. He loved children and was a wonderful father to Daniel and Julia.
Later, perhaps in my teenage years, Dave quickly perceived that I was interested in intellectual pursuits and proceeded to educate me about philosophy, politics and history. I confess however that I still don’t fully understand economics!
I especially remember a walk on Table Mountain in which Dave told me all about Sigmund Freud’s last book, Moses and Monotheism, which I later tried to read, but the book itself was no match for Dave’s explanation of the contents. He was an engaging storyteller and had an encyclopaedic memory. He also cut out all of the weirder psychoanalytic stuff.
When Dave went up Mount Kilimanjaro (which inspired me a few years later to do the same), he experienced altitude sickness and returned with a fascinating account of what that was like. He said he was doing sums in his head to make sure that his mind was still sharp, and was pleased to find out that he could do these without any difficulty. Later, however, he realised that the sums were wrong! This sort of problem has always fascinated philosophers: can you rely on your own mind to evaluate itself? At one time something can seem right and later you realise it is wrong. In mathematics, at least, you can always check with a calculator, but in other areas, being right is much more difficult.
And yet somewhat frustratingly for those who argued with him, Dave was almost always right! In recent years he and I often discussed and debated European politics. He spent the last decade in France, and I spent it in Romania, so neither of us was a disinterested observer. In 2024, in a national election for president, an unknown candidate with some extreme nationalist and Trumpian views won the first round. The election was cancelled and re-run. Then last year Marine le Pen was disqualified from participating in the next French election based on what seemed like petty financial mismanagement. I told Dave this looks to me like brazen interference in the political process, and that the far right in France Donna-Lee Rollins could only be strengthened by such a move. But he said something to the effect of: no, she broke the law, she has to pay the penalty. Later when I saw Dave during his last visit to Cape Town and had just read the news that former French president Nikolas Sarkozy had done jail time, I had to admit to him that he was right: in France they just prosecute everybody!
Finally, I am deeply grateful to Dave for his words of comfort and support during a very difficult period in my life: my ongoing divorce. When I went to visit him in hospital in Paris in October 2025, he listened attentively to my whole story and offered sage advice as always. I only wish I had spoken to him before I got married! Jokes aside, Dave encouraged me to resist my tendency to regret the entire marriage, and rather to view it in a more detached way as something that had run its course. And of course, one thing to come out of it that I cannot possibly regret is my four-year-old son Rafael, whom I was able to introduce to Dave in November 2025 in Cape Town, albeit briefly.
Later, perhaps in my teenage years, Dave quickly perceived that I was interested in intellectual pursuits and proceeded to educate me about philosophy, politics and history. I confess however that I still don’t fully understand economics!
I especially remember a walk on Table Mountain in which Dave told me all about Sigmund Freud’s last book, Moses and Monotheism, which I later tried to read, but the book itself was no match for Dave’s explanation of the contents. He was an engaging storyteller and had an encyclopaedic memory. He also cut out all of the weirder psychoanalytic stuff.
When Dave went up Mount Kilimanjaro (which inspired me a few years later to do the same), he experienced altitude sickness and returned with a fascinating account of what that was like. He said he was doing sums in his head to make sure that his mind was still sharp, and was pleased to find out that he could do these without any difficulty. Later, however, he realised that the sums were wrong! This sort of problem has always fascinated philosophers: can you rely on your own mind to evaluate itself? At one time something can seem right and later you realise it is wrong. In mathematics, at least, you can always check with a calculator, but in other areas, being right is much more difficult.
And yet somewhat frustratingly for those who argued with him, Dave was almost always right! In recent years he and I often discussed and debated European politics. He spent the last decade in France, and I spent it in Romania, so neither of us was a disinterested observer. In 2024, in a national election for president, an unknown candidate with some extreme nationalist and Trumpian views won the first round. The election was cancelled and re-run. Then last year Marine le Pen was disqualified from participating in the next French election based on what seemed like petty financial mismanagement. I told Dave this looks to me like brazen interference in the political process, and that the far right in France Donna-Lee Rollins could only be strengthened by such a move. But he said something to the effect of: no, she broke the law, she has to pay the penalty. Later when I saw Dave during his last visit to Cape Town and had just read the news that former French president Nikolas Sarkozy had done jail time, I had to admit to him that he was right: in France they just prosecute everybody!
Finally, I am deeply grateful to Dave for his words of comfort and support during a very difficult period in my life: my ongoing divorce. When I went to visit him in hospital in Paris in October 2025, he listened attentively to my whole story and offered sage advice as always. I only wish I had spoken to him before I got married! Jokes aside, Dave encouraged me to resist my tendency to regret the entire marriage, and rather to view it in a more detached way as something that had run its course. And of course, one thing to come out of it that I cannot possibly regret is my four-year-old son Rafael, whom I was able to introduce to Dave in November 2025 in Cape Town, albeit briefly.
January 25, 2026
I have known David for a long time – since 1968 and my early adulthood when my first girlfriend invited me to an evening's political discussion at the house of Raphie Kaplinsky, which is where I first laid eyes on him. I recall him standing up and raising his hand in the air and stating emphatically that “anyone who does not accept the labour theory of value should leave right now”. Of course I couldn’t admit that I had no idea what this was and hence could not take a rational decision as to whether or not to vacate or stay. Later I had to labour to understand this, but at the time this was quite intimidating. David then left for the USA and became a shape shifter as I clearly recall that before leaving SA he was fairly chubby with a wild afro hairstyle. He was later to re-emerge in SA as a skinny person with less hair.
My next memory of David was when I left South Africa on a long cycling trip to the Hardanger glacier in Norway. My first stop after arriving in the UK by ship with bicycle in a box, was Brighton where Dave lived with a group of other South Africans. I recall him avidly watching “Match of the Day” a daily soccer game with incredulity. I wondered how anyone so serious about politics could spend hours at a time watching soccer.
We moved in similar circles and intersected frequently over the ensuing years in Cape Town to which we had all returned. I returned from the UK in 1980 and shortly afterwards met Sue who appeared at a weekend away at Onrus at my relatives’ holiday house (see image). He and Jennifer where already an item by then and we commented on how they would address each other in the vein of an old married couple. Notwithstanding all his brilliant qualities which have been well enumerated here by others, there is a constant memory of him for me: David had a knack of making me incredibly anxious. It usually took some time for my anxiety to abate after these social encounters. The butt of the anxiety was truly catholic, ranging from job prospects to the likelihood of the SA economy crashing, to the difficulties of obtaining non-SA citizenship. Some individuals he was critical of (both academic and political) were always saying “ridiculous” things, and many situations were “unsustainable” and bound to collapse. The target issues, people and situations morphed over time, but were always present in the content of our discussions.
In retrospect I miss those encounters and even the accompanying anxiety, as the latter is the engine of personal development. Perhaps my anti-social tendency needed some goading which was always implicit in his engagement with issues and other people.
My family and I, particularly Sue and our son Alex , to whom his intergenerational sociability was generously and reciprocally extended, were fortunate to remain connected to Dave after he left SA, and we (me of course anxiously) enjoyed his assiduous, sometimes acerbic, and regular engagement on his trips to his beloved Cape Town.
In recent years we shared experiences of being diagnosed and treated with fearsome malignancies and were thankfully able to show mutual support in difficult times.
He will be sadly missed, and frequently remembered, triggered by many familiar cues, and his ability to show interest, offer advice and share his methods and solutions for living. This includes his ability to engender anxiety which is a necessary element for everyone in life’s continuous process of reanalysis and reconstitution of balance and of course forward movement in time for all of us.
My next memory of David was when I left South Africa on a long cycling trip to the Hardanger glacier in Norway. My first stop after arriving in the UK by ship with bicycle in a box, was Brighton where Dave lived with a group of other South Africans. I recall him avidly watching “Match of the Day” a daily soccer game with incredulity. I wondered how anyone so serious about politics could spend hours at a time watching soccer.
We moved in similar circles and intersected frequently over the ensuing years in Cape Town to which we had all returned. I returned from the UK in 1980 and shortly afterwards met Sue who appeared at a weekend away at Onrus at my relatives’ holiday house (see image). He and Jennifer where already an item by then and we commented on how they would address each other in the vein of an old married couple. Notwithstanding all his brilliant qualities which have been well enumerated here by others, there is a constant memory of him for me: David had a knack of making me incredibly anxious. It usually took some time for my anxiety to abate after these social encounters. The butt of the anxiety was truly catholic, ranging from job prospects to the likelihood of the SA economy crashing, to the difficulties of obtaining non-SA citizenship. Some individuals he was critical of (both academic and political) were always saying “ridiculous” things, and many situations were “unsustainable” and bound to collapse. The target issues, people and situations morphed over time, but were always present in the content of our discussions.
In retrospect I miss those encounters and even the accompanying anxiety, as the latter is the engine of personal development. Perhaps my anti-social tendency needed some goading which was always implicit in his engagement with issues and other people.
My family and I, particularly Sue and our son Alex , to whom his intergenerational sociability was generously and reciprocally extended, were fortunate to remain connected to Dave after he left SA, and we (me of course anxiously) enjoyed his assiduous, sometimes acerbic, and regular engagement on his trips to his beloved Cape Town.
In recent years we shared experiences of being diagnosed and treated with fearsome malignancies and were thankfully able to show mutual support in difficult times.
He will be sadly missed, and frequently remembered, triggered by many familiar cues, and his ability to show interest, offer advice and share his methods and solutions for living. This includes his ability to engender anxiety which is a necessary element for everyone in life’s continuous process of reanalysis and reconstitution of balance and of course forward movement in time for all of us.
January 25, 2026
Dave was an incredible friend. He gave his friends his full, generous attention, whether you were an important person or not. He had vast knowledge, lore and poetry to share, so hanging out with him was always broadening and entertaining. But it was not a one way street. He really wanted to know what you were thinking and feeling, about the world at large and about your own smaller canvass. His warm responsive manner meant that interacting with him was easy and fun. He liked to share in your successes but did not shy away from sharing in your hard times and heartaches as well. He was a constant supporter.
At the end of an evening, as goodbyes were being said, at the lintel of the doorway, Dave would launch into a new topic: “So what do you think about so and so, or such and such?” It was as if he didn’t want to break the social mood, to keep it going a little longer, even when everyone else was tired and ready to wash the dishes and go to bed. That life force, that pressure of connection, was such an attractive aspect of his personality.
Dave put effort and energy into keeping up his many, many friendships. This nurturing of friendships is a profound lesson I learned from him, which I can only hope to begin to emulate.
I will miss him greatly.
At the end of an evening, as goodbyes were being said, at the lintel of the doorway, Dave would launch into a new topic: “So what do you think about so and so, or such and such?” It was as if he didn’t want to break the social mood, to keep it going a little longer, even when everyone else was tired and ready to wash the dishes and go to bed. That life force, that pressure of connection, was such an attractive aspect of his personality.
Dave put effort and energy into keeping up his many, many friendships. This nurturing of friendships is a profound lesson I learned from him, which I can only hope to begin to emulate.
I will miss him greatly.
January 24, 2026
An indelible memory of Dave reciting Ozymandius in Egypt
https://youtube.com/shorts/EvTTubB9by0?si=hk705SEcF-n_-g0F
https://youtube.com/shorts/EvTTubB9by0?si=hk705SEcF-n_-g0F
January 24, 2026
Dear David,
It is hard to find words that do justice to the mark you have left on me, both professionally and personally.
When I began my work on innovation policy in Africa at the World Bank, David Kaplan was already a towering figure in the field, especially in South Africa. It was a privilege—and a joy—to work with him on innovation and technology adoption in Southern Africa. As a young professional in 2009, I was struck by how effortlessly he translated rigorous research into compelling insights for policymakers. Given his time at the DTI and at the center of policymaking, this was perhaps expected—but what distinguished him was his humility.
Despite being an intellectual giant, David met everyone with warmth, humor, and genuine openness. He could engage anyone, light up any room, and do so without pretense. That rare blend of brilliance and humanity made him unforgettable.
After many wonderful years of working closely in the Africa region, I reconnected with David twelve years later in 2023, when I returned to the region—this time based in South Africa. He welcomed my family and me with extraordinary generosity, helping us settle into life here. Even from Paris, his passion for shaping better policy for South Africa never dimmed. In our recent meetings, his charisma and energy remained undiminished—and he spoke with particular joy about becoming a grandfather, a joy that carried even through a screen.
David, you will be deeply missed. You have left an indelible mark on South Africa’s policy landscape. Personally, you have left an enduring impression on me—not only as a professional mentor, but also as a friend.
Warm Regards
Smita Kuriakose
It is hard to find words that do justice to the mark you have left on me, both professionally and personally.
When I began my work on innovation policy in Africa at the World Bank, David Kaplan was already a towering figure in the field, especially in South Africa. It was a privilege—and a joy—to work with him on innovation and technology adoption in Southern Africa. As a young professional in 2009, I was struck by how effortlessly he translated rigorous research into compelling insights for policymakers. Given his time at the DTI and at the center of policymaking, this was perhaps expected—but what distinguished him was his humility.
Despite being an intellectual giant, David met everyone with warmth, humor, and genuine openness. He could engage anyone, light up any room, and do so without pretense. That rare blend of brilliance and humanity made him unforgettable.
After many wonderful years of working closely in the Africa region, I reconnected with David twelve years later in 2023, when I returned to the region—this time based in South Africa. He welcomed my family and me with extraordinary generosity, helping us settle into life here. Even from Paris, his passion for shaping better policy for South Africa never dimmed. In our recent meetings, his charisma and energy remained undiminished—and he spoke with particular joy about becoming a grandfather, a joy that carried even through a screen.
David, you will be deeply missed. You have left an indelible mark on South Africa’s policy landscape. Personally, you have left an enduring impression on me—not only as a professional mentor, but also as a friend.
Warm Regards
Smita Kuriakose
January 24, 2026
A very few people have a life-changing influence on you. For me, Dave Kaplan was one.
He was my supervisor while I was writing up my thesis (on the labour legislation of the Pact government) and he encouraged me to finish it, as I stumbled between temporary teaching jobs at UCT, university registration saving me from military call up. So I got a PhD through Dave—a major advantage in many of my future employments, and decisive in landing jobs at NUM, the DTI and Parliament. This was also due to Dave’s attentive and only mildly cruel supervision. He returned draft chapters to me with comments within weeks, a practice unknown today. And he came for lunch with me and my mother at the Rosebank Hotel when graduation was done.
Then, in 2001, when I had a plumb job in London at the SA High Commission (with an office view over Trafalgar Square and a house next to a blue Cecil Beaton plaque in Hampstead), Dave persuaded me to return to South Africa. This was to work in his unusual Office of the DTI Chief Economist. The office was unusual because it was located in Cape Town. It also came with a four-grade increase in salary, from assistant director to chief director. I have been living in Cape Town ever since—a great move I would never have made but for Dave.
My years as a high-flyer in the DTI were not a success. Dave’s emphasis was on boosting “the real economy”, but the elvish-marked, abortive, rooting cogs in the DTI were laser-focused on strategy without implementation, compliance without purpose, and travel with executive valet parking. Dave’s staff were “taken back” and his function as a Chief Economist diminished as, we will call her “Wendy”, captured the organisation and employed her friends as consultants to do her bidding. Dave was a ‘deputy director general’ but he was paid less than me because he was seconded from UCT, who kept most of what he earned from government. One day we were in the veld of Gauteng for one of the innumerable bos-beraads. The road was narrow and as we came to a rise we saw beneath us a slow procession of sparkling Mercedes and BMW’s which edged over the gravel driveway to the venue like a scene from The Travelling Players. We gasped.
Dave was a fun friend – dining, hiking, gossiping, in Toronto (where he Jensy, Daniel and Julia visited for a year) and back in Cape Town. Mrs Stevens of Special Collections retired and the Economic History Department (this was before The Fall) took her out for a fancy farewell dinner at a seafood restaurant in Woodstock. No Dave. Then we saw him. Seated in a corner barely disguised as a basque fisherman in that navy cap.
Otter Trail, 1988
He was my supervisor while I was writing up my thesis (on the labour legislation of the Pact government) and he encouraged me to finish it, as I stumbled between temporary teaching jobs at UCT, university registration saving me from military call up. So I got a PhD through Dave—a major advantage in many of my future employments, and decisive in landing jobs at NUM, the DTI and Parliament. This was also due to Dave’s attentive and only mildly cruel supervision. He returned draft chapters to me with comments within weeks, a practice unknown today. And he came for lunch with me and my mother at the Rosebank Hotel when graduation was done.
Then, in 2001, when I had a plumb job in London at the SA High Commission (with an office view over Trafalgar Square and a house next to a blue Cecil Beaton plaque in Hampstead), Dave persuaded me to return to South Africa. This was to work in his unusual Office of the DTI Chief Economist. The office was unusual because it was located in Cape Town. It also came with a four-grade increase in salary, from assistant director to chief director. I have been living in Cape Town ever since—a great move I would never have made but for Dave.
My years as a high-flyer in the DTI were not a success. Dave’s emphasis was on boosting “the real economy”, but the elvish-marked, abortive, rooting cogs in the DTI were laser-focused on strategy without implementation, compliance without purpose, and travel with executive valet parking. Dave’s staff were “taken back” and his function as a Chief Economist diminished as, we will call her “Wendy”, captured the organisation and employed her friends as consultants to do her bidding. Dave was a ‘deputy director general’ but he was paid less than me because he was seconded from UCT, who kept most of what he earned from government. One day we were in the veld of Gauteng for one of the innumerable bos-beraads. The road was narrow and as we came to a rise we saw beneath us a slow procession of sparkling Mercedes and BMW’s which edged over the gravel driveway to the venue like a scene from The Travelling Players. We gasped.
Dave was a fun friend – dining, hiking, gossiping, in Toronto (where he Jensy, Daniel and Julia visited for a year) and back in Cape Town. Mrs Stevens of Special Collections retired and the Economic History Department (this was before The Fall) took her out for a fancy farewell dinner at a seafood restaurant in Woodstock. No Dave. Then we saw him. Seated in a corner barely disguised as a basque fisherman in that navy cap.
Otter Trail, 1988
January 23, 2026
David's initials could stand for Delightful and Knowledgeable. When we introduced David to our friends they would offer where they came from and what they did. David, charming and friendly, would inevitably reveal that he knew of that place and had some experience of the nature of their work. Within minutes they were chatting away and afterwards they'd say how interesting and charming he was.
I recall a junior school sports day where David entered the Fathers and Sons 100m sprint since he had been a runner at school and fancied his chances. Another parent whom they both knew also entered. At the starting line David appeared in his tackies; the other father was in spiked track shoes and beat David by 5 metres. Always competitive, David came off the track muttering how excessive and unnecessary the wearing of spikes had been, but within minutes the two of them were chatting happily and recounting their past sporting stories.
I recall a junior school sports day where David entered the Fathers and Sons 100m sprint since he had been a runner at school and fancied his chances. Another parent whom they both knew also entered. At the starting line David appeared in his tackies; the other father was in spiked track shoes and beat David by 5 metres. Always competitive, David came off the track muttering how excessive and unnecessary the wearing of spikes had been, but within minutes the two of them were chatting happily and recounting their past sporting stories.
January 22, 2026
We first met Dave and Jennifer 30 years ago through our children when we were spending a sabbatical in Cape Town and became close through a series of meaningful encounters. Thereafter visiting the Kaplans became an important stop anytime our family was visiting Cape Town. Regular contact became much easier once we all moved to Johannesburg. It was during this period that we became beneficiaries of Dave’s impressive talent for making and keeping friends, his intellectual curiosity and the breadth and depth of his knowledge on all sorts of topics. Conversations with Dave were always interesting and enjoyable and ranged across many topics ranging from thoughts on life to current affairs, movies, books and, of course, were punctuated by his spontaneous interjection of highly relevant quotes from his seemingly infinite supply of memorized poetry.
We will always smile at the memory of Dave at Dan and Cauvery’s wedding joyfully donning his turban and then infectiously ensuring that all the men followed suit. We will also treasure the memories of our holidays with Dave and Jennifer in Egypt and touring the First World War battlefields in France and Belgium. Even though Dave had visited both places, his delight in revisiting both places was infectious and his passion for researching the history of ancient Egypt and his knowledge of French history immeasurably enriched both these trips. They also helped stimulate wonderfully interesting and thought-provoking conversations on life, politics, development, current affairs and culture.
We are delighted that the friendship between our two families has grown into a multi-generational affair. It will hopefully stretch unto the third generation now that Dan has become the godfather of Lev, our grandson.
Friendship with Dave and Jennifer has always been an important part of our lives. Dave’s passing has left a hole but we will always treasure his memory. May he rest in peace.
We will always smile at the memory of Dave at Dan and Cauvery’s wedding joyfully donning his turban and then infectiously ensuring that all the men followed suit. We will also treasure the memories of our holidays with Dave and Jennifer in Egypt and touring the First World War battlefields in France and Belgium. Even though Dave had visited both places, his delight in revisiting both places was infectious and his passion for researching the history of ancient Egypt and his knowledge of French history immeasurably enriched both these trips. They also helped stimulate wonderfully interesting and thought-provoking conversations on life, politics, development, current affairs and culture.
We are delighted that the friendship between our two families has grown into a multi-generational affair. It will hopefully stretch unto the third generation now that Dan has become the godfather of Lev, our grandson.
Friendship with Dave and Jennifer has always been an important part of our lives. Dave’s passing has left a hole but we will always treasure his memory. May he rest in peace.
January 21, 2026
David – you were the friend who made me laugh when I wanted to cry, who saw humour when I saw none. You touched my heart with your warmth, you compassion, your ability to connect across so many different landscapes. I met you when our children were at Hadar together (almost 40 years ago!) and then Herzlia and have such wonderful memories of Arniston and being together in the Pink Palace with our little ones. You were my moral compass, I always knew if I had a dilemma and didn’t know which way to turn, you would show the humanity, the wisdom, the humour and help to make the right decisions or to make it right. You laughed out loud right until the end, you saw that silver cloud even when there were storms. I miss you already and will continue to miss you always – no-one can replace you as the most amazing friend I have had. Thank you for your beautiful friendship and may your dearest soul rest in peace
January 21, 2026
Jen and David have been friends for more years than I can count, and the memories and occasional tears come unbidden at the oddest moments; thinking of one of the endless poems David had miraculously committed to memory; finding a photograph of tiny Julia; recalling how both Julia and Daniel resembled both parents so uncannily. A very happy recollection is something my David and I shared after a holiday in the Pilanesberg with Jen and David. We needed to get to a small airport and experienced what resembled Mr Toad's Wild Ride as David K sped through bumpy country roads, overtaking on the shoulder of the road and striking terror into local vendors and pedestrians, all the wild singing and laughing. He was always such fun to be with, along with all the other virtues listed by friends and colleagues. The old Reader's Digest had a column called My Most Unforgettable Character. Mine is David Kaplan who we loved and valued deeply.
January 20, 2026
We only knew David for a couple of years and only met about six times in Stickholm, though we whatsapped quite often.
Despite our sadly limited contact, his friendliness, interest in and kindness to others, insatiable search for knowledge and joy in communicating it, zest for life, and love for his family were always evident.
Despite our sadly limited contact, his friendliness, interest in and kindness to others, insatiable search for knowledge and joy in communicating it, zest for life, and love for his family were always evident.
January 20, 2026
I met David about 45 years ago. Our connection was Jenny. She and I had a friendship throughout high school and also during our overlapping years at UCT. After living in UK for a couple of years, my husband and I returned to South Africa during 1980. We then met David as the significant person in Jennifer's life.
From the beginning I noticed a calmness and mutual respect in their relationship. It felt reliable and solid. I observed those attributes as constant throughout their marriage.
When our children were young, our families once went on a weekend trip to Onrus together. We witnessed the extent to which David could parent single-handedly in order for Jenny to catch up on some sleep which was very scarce during her medical course.
Julia and our same-aged daughter Anna were tiny when they met. They were in the same circle of friends in their high school years at Westerford together. Jenny and David's Hiddingh Avenue home felt like a safe haven at which teenage friends could congregate, have conversations, swim and eat. David was ever-present but unobtrusive. And there was generous lifting of teenagers to or from events, sometimes late at night.
David took an interest in our family and he was such a softy with our black labrador Ben.
There was a sense of loss for us and our community when David and Jenny relocated to Johannesburg. Our daughter Jess was living there. She remembers with gratitude drawing on David's support and wisdom in that time.
Then there was further relocation to Paris. We felt very grateful when David managed to make contact with us during his trips to Cape Town. And all the more so, during his recent and last visit ever. What a precious time here, with Jenny. We felt in awe of her courage and strength in caring for David. We feel privileged to have witnessed the tenderness and mutual care and concern for each other in the face of adversity. I often think of Jenny's description that the experience in those final weeks felt "sacred". Being able to see them both in the weeks they were here, was a gift to us. David was open-heartened and unguarded. He seemed luminescent with insight and interest and meaningful engagement. What a special person and friend. We will always remember him with fondness and admiration.
His brave spirit lives on in the hearts of his beloved family.
From the beginning I noticed a calmness and mutual respect in their relationship. It felt reliable and solid. I observed those attributes as constant throughout their marriage.
When our children were young, our families once went on a weekend trip to Onrus together. We witnessed the extent to which David could parent single-handedly in order for Jenny to catch up on some sleep which was very scarce during her medical course.
Julia and our same-aged daughter Anna were tiny when they met. They were in the same circle of friends in their high school years at Westerford together. Jenny and David's Hiddingh Avenue home felt like a safe haven at which teenage friends could congregate, have conversations, swim and eat. David was ever-present but unobtrusive. And there was generous lifting of teenagers to or from events, sometimes late at night.
David took an interest in our family and he was such a softy with our black labrador Ben.
There was a sense of loss for us and our community when David and Jenny relocated to Johannesburg. Our daughter Jess was living there. She remembers with gratitude drawing on David's support and wisdom in that time.
Then there was further relocation to Paris. We felt very grateful when David managed to make contact with us during his trips to Cape Town. And all the more so, during his recent and last visit ever. What a precious time here, with Jenny. We felt in awe of her courage and strength in caring for David. We feel privileged to have witnessed the tenderness and mutual care and concern for each other in the face of adversity. I often think of Jenny's description that the experience in those final weeks felt "sacred". Being able to see them both in the weeks they were here, was a gift to us. David was open-heartened and unguarded. He seemed luminescent with insight and interest and meaningful engagement. What a special person and friend. We will always remember him with fondness and admiration.
His brave spirit lives on in the hearts of his beloved family.
January 20, 2026
Our friendship began on Saturday afternoons in a park in Tamboerskloof, Cape Town. Our respective wives were studying, and Dave and I needed to entertain our 3-year-old daughters – Jenni and Julia – on the swings and jungle gym. This grew into a wonderful and warm connection between our families as our children grew into adulthood.
Dave’s love for dogs was passionate. He always greeted our Labrador effusively for quite a few minutes before acknowledging us. We were so amused by the contrast in the way Dave played with the dog versus his gravitas as an academic and consultant - such was his humility and authenticity as a demonstrative and loving man.
We remember him as a tender and devoted husband and Dad, a kind friend, and a mensch of the highest order.
We will miss him greatly.
Dave’s love for dogs was passionate. He always greeted our Labrador effusively for quite a few minutes before acknowledging us. We were so amused by the contrast in the way Dave played with the dog versus his gravitas as an academic and consultant - such was his humility and authenticity as a demonstrative and loving man.
We remember him as a tender and devoted husband and Dad, a kind friend, and a mensch of the highest order.
We will miss him greatly.
January 20, 2026
I knew of Dave long before I met him and Jen in Paris. Through my work, Dave was already a legend to me — one of South Africa’s STI gurus, highly respected and much admired. So when Mike Morris told me that the Kaplans were moving to Paris and connected us, I thought I’d better be on my best behaviour, try to help them settle in, make them feel at home. I had no idea then what I was about to gain.
From Friday, 13 November 2015 — the night of the Bataclan attacks, when we found ourselves locked inside a 1st arrondissement wine bar together— to our last WhatsApp exchange on Sunday, 21 December 2025, Dave was there. Truly there. Together with Jen (and Jean and Guy) he was my Paris family, always kind, a steady source of laughter, wisdom (and poetry), and inspiration, ridiculously smart and wholesomely cool.
Thank you, Dave. I only had the privilege of knowing you for ten years, but in that time, you made a difference to my life that is far bigger than the measure of years. Your absence now leaves a space that feels impossibly large. You meant more to me than I can properly put into words.
From Friday, 13 November 2015 — the night of the Bataclan attacks, when we found ourselves locked inside a 1st arrondissement wine bar together— to our last WhatsApp exchange on Sunday, 21 December 2025, Dave was there. Truly there. Together with Jen (and Jean and Guy) he was my Paris family, always kind, a steady source of laughter, wisdom (and poetry), and inspiration, ridiculously smart and wholesomely cool.
Thank you, Dave. I only had the privilege of knowing you for ten years, but in that time, you made a difference to my life that is far bigger than the measure of years. Your absence now leaves a space that feels impossibly large. You meant more to me than I can properly put into words.
January 19, 2026
I was one of Dave's students in the early 2010s in Cape Town, working with Mike and Raphie on the commodities programme. Since then Dave and I kept in touch from time to time, and I spoke to him last July.
I just wanted to share my deepest condolences with Jennifer, Dan, Julia and the rest of the family. I am so so sorry about his passing. Dave was a wonderful person, deeply intelligent and kind, one of the best human beings I have ever met. He was never afraid to say what he thought, even when it was not easy, and he did it with such calm and pose. He really taught me a few things about how to work and live. I will remember him forever and I feel lucky we crossed paths.
Last July, when I spoke to him, he told me that one of the biggest lessons he learnt through his illness was how important it is to have a special person in life to go through these difficult times. That he felt immensely lucky to have Jennifer and didn't know how he could have lived without her. And he told me to look for the same, more than anything else. I have kept this message with me.
You are all in my thoughts.
Judith
January 18, 2026
I knew David (I always called him David and not Dave) as both a friend and a colleague. We first met in 1995 when we worked together on the Green Paper for Science and Technology (see picture below!). It was a great experience. David was strategic and highly structured in his approach to innovation policy, not afraid of asking difficult or even unpopular questions, and unwavering on standards. With a sharp intelligence and acuity of mind, he could find the gaps in any theoretical argument and then propose ways in which the narrative could be strengthened.
For an engineer like me, it was a refreshing and novel experience! I was accustomed to the 80/20 principle – 80% was good enough. But for David, the target, especially when it came to our underlying assumptions and the accuracy of our language, the target was 99%. He taught me to be more self-critical, more conscious of my normative framing, and more disciplined as an academic in innovation studies.
David made multiple contributions to both the debates about policy and the policies themselves. His view of science, technology and innovation (STI) policy in South Africa reflected his emphasis on firm-level innovation as a means of driving inclusive growth. The role of the state, in his view, was not to be the innovator, but rather to provide the necessary support through framework conditions such as education, legal frameworks, and encouraging inward investment. He was intensely practical in his outlook, preferring to focus on what can be implemented rather than the ideological or academic.
A distinctive feature of his academic legacy is the way he connected STI policy to industrial policy and firm-level capability building. Across papers and applied studies, he emphasised the importance of technology absorption, skills and organisational capability inside firms, and the establishment of institutions needed to support learning, localisation, and export competitiveness, often using sectoral lenses such as his knowledge of technology-intensive manufacturing, and mining equipment/value-chain dynamics, to show what works in practice and why.
This practical side to his work led him into many advisory roles in government and public bodies, including involvement with national innovation institutions such as the Technology Innovation Agency, and sustained policy-facing work that helped translate research into strategy and implementation. He worked with me on many consulting assignments and provided both content and detailed critical review, invaluable in the final reports and analyses.
Project members can drift apart but, following the Green Paper collaboration, I was fortunate to be able to continue my relationship with David, getting to know the delightful and social person that he was. He was always interesting, enthusiastic, engaged and empathetic to the needs of his friends. In the last years of his life, there were many moments of intense happiness, which he willingly shared with us. While he may no longer be walking the streets of Paris, or Cape Town, I can still see him in these streets, smiling at his friends and engaging in earnest conversation with his academic colleagues.
(The picture of David with long hair ... I will leave it up to you to guess when and where. No clues :) )
For an engineer like me, it was a refreshing and novel experience! I was accustomed to the 80/20 principle – 80% was good enough. But for David, the target, especially when it came to our underlying assumptions and the accuracy of our language, the target was 99%. He taught me to be more self-critical, more conscious of my normative framing, and more disciplined as an academic in innovation studies.
David made multiple contributions to both the debates about policy and the policies themselves. His view of science, technology and innovation (STI) policy in South Africa reflected his emphasis on firm-level innovation as a means of driving inclusive growth. The role of the state, in his view, was not to be the innovator, but rather to provide the necessary support through framework conditions such as education, legal frameworks, and encouraging inward investment. He was intensely practical in his outlook, preferring to focus on what can be implemented rather than the ideological or academic.
A distinctive feature of his academic legacy is the way he connected STI policy to industrial policy and firm-level capability building. Across papers and applied studies, he emphasised the importance of technology absorption, skills and organisational capability inside firms, and the establishment of institutions needed to support learning, localisation, and export competitiveness, often using sectoral lenses such as his knowledge of technology-intensive manufacturing, and mining equipment/value-chain dynamics, to show what works in practice and why.
This practical side to his work led him into many advisory roles in government and public bodies, including involvement with national innovation institutions such as the Technology Innovation Agency, and sustained policy-facing work that helped translate research into strategy and implementation. He worked with me on many consulting assignments and provided both content and detailed critical review, invaluable in the final reports and analyses.
Project members can drift apart but, following the Green Paper collaboration, I was fortunate to be able to continue my relationship with David, getting to know the delightful and social person that he was. He was always interesting, enthusiastic, engaged and empathetic to the needs of his friends. In the last years of his life, there were many moments of intense happiness, which he willingly shared with us. While he may no longer be walking the streets of Paris, or Cape Town, I can still see him in these streets, smiling at his friends and engaging in earnest conversation with his academic colleagues.
(The picture of David with long hair ... I will leave it up to you to guess when and where. No clues :) )
January 18, 2026
Oh Dave, I don’t even know where to begin.
But I’ll start by saying Thank you Dave - for being the wonderful man you were. I’m so grateful I got to know you so many years ago at just 16 when I became friends with my dear friend Dan and I truly cherish all the moments we shared.
From economics help, to degree advice, to career advice, to life advice I always appreciated your wisdom and point of view as it was always grounded in genuine care and kindness. I also always loved your fun spirit ! I remember you really enjoying being at my 21st… because you loved celebrating and celebrating others joys and as some others have shared you loved people and connecting (Side note- I have loved seeing you dancing in Paris in the videos shared that’s just how I’ll remember you with that joie de vivre☺️)… and I always appreciated how you always cheered me on with such sincerity. You took such an interest in my career and development and it meant so much to me.
I loved our more recent meet ups too in Paris, I was always amazed how integrated you were in Parisian life and how you had learnt and knew so much. Our chats were often my work trip highlights and most recently I loved hearing how much you loved spending time with your granddaughter and watching her develop and progress and I knew how excited you were to spend more time with her and be nearby to be of support to Julia whom you always told me “was doing a tremendous job” raising her gorgeous daughter. You loved sharing her latest pics of her too with me- you were such a proud grandfather and father of both your kids.
I truly treasured your thoughts you so generously shared with me Dave- you were such a kind, wise, wholesome, fun, joyful, consistent, interesting and principled man who has left such a huge mark on many.
Thank you for being such an example to all of us- you truly have left an impression on the next generation - I always admired the wonderful life and family you created, the incredible father you were to your children and devoted and loyal husband to Jennifer. You two were the most incredible duo - I loved watching you grow together and joke together and I still reference you both as an “example” to friends regularly.
I wish you would have written Dave’s book of wisdom on life we discussed 😉 but it’s been wonderful to read all these messages from friends - your wisdom will live on.
Your last message to me was “Thanks Aimee. My birthday is March 25. If I am present, will you organise a good bottle of champagne! Lots love - and to your family”
I do wish we could enjoy that bottle together in March, but I’ll be sure to share it with Jennifer and to toast to your honour. 🥂🥹❤️
But I’ll start by saying Thank you Dave - for being the wonderful man you were. I’m so grateful I got to know you so many years ago at just 16 when I became friends with my dear friend Dan and I truly cherish all the moments we shared.
From economics help, to degree advice, to career advice, to life advice I always appreciated your wisdom and point of view as it was always grounded in genuine care and kindness. I also always loved your fun spirit ! I remember you really enjoying being at my 21st… because you loved celebrating and celebrating others joys and as some others have shared you loved people and connecting (Side note- I have loved seeing you dancing in Paris in the videos shared that’s just how I’ll remember you with that joie de vivre☺️)… and I always appreciated how you always cheered me on with such sincerity. You took such an interest in my career and development and it meant so much to me.
I loved our more recent meet ups too in Paris, I was always amazed how integrated you were in Parisian life and how you had learnt and knew so much. Our chats were often my work trip highlights and most recently I loved hearing how much you loved spending time with your granddaughter and watching her develop and progress and I knew how excited you were to spend more time with her and be nearby to be of support to Julia whom you always told me “was doing a tremendous job” raising her gorgeous daughter. You loved sharing her latest pics of her too with me- you were such a proud grandfather and father of both your kids.
I truly treasured your thoughts you so generously shared with me Dave- you were such a kind, wise, wholesome, fun, joyful, consistent, interesting and principled man who has left such a huge mark on many.
Thank you for being such an example to all of us- you truly have left an impression on the next generation - I always admired the wonderful life and family you created, the incredible father you were to your children and devoted and loyal husband to Jennifer. You two were the most incredible duo - I loved watching you grow together and joke together and I still reference you both as an “example” to friends regularly.
I wish you would have written Dave’s book of wisdom on life we discussed 😉 but it’s been wonderful to read all these messages from friends - your wisdom will live on.
Your last message to me was “Thanks Aimee. My birthday is March 25. If I am present, will you organise a good bottle of champagne! Lots love - and to your family”
I do wish we could enjoy that bottle together in March, but I’ll be sure to share it with Jennifer and to toast to your honour. 🥂🥹❤️
January 18, 2026
Knew Kappie well
Possibly through Habo
RIP
Possibly through Habo
RIP
January 17, 2026
I had an email exchange with Dave a few weeks ago. The exchange was, no great surprise, a discussion of politics and Trumpism. He, again no surprise, was smart and funny. He relayed that he had leukemia and perhaps we should have a proper phone conversation. I did not realize how ill he was, and the conversation got put off. I regret that.
Dave, with Dave Lewis and Mike Morris, took care of me and my family when I got involved in the reform of the South African telecommunications sector in the 1990s. He even arranged for us to meet his crusty dad Arthur when we went on an excursion to Zimbabwe.
Fiercely intelligent and erudite, Dave was also funny and a bit of a raconteur. I will miss him.
Dave, with Dave Lewis and Mike Morris, took care of me and my family when I got involved in the reform of the South African telecommunications sector in the 1990s. He even arranged for us to meet his crusty dad Arthur when we went on an excursion to Zimbabwe.
Fiercely intelligent and erudite, Dave was also funny and a bit of a raconteur. I will miss him.
January 17, 2026
Dave was a real mensch: kind, thoughtful, insightful - and with a wonderful sense of humour. And one of the most erudite people I have known - a mantle that he wore generously and unpretentiously. Always a delight to be with.
January 17, 2026
The definition of a gentleman, David set a a happy standard for me. My admiration and friendship with David started when he approached me on his home street in Paris as I was giving a tour. He chipped in some local knowledge and we stayed in touch including more fun run-ins on the street.
David's consistent good nature through the ups and downs of modern life is why I admire him so much. Unfailingly upbeat and positive, his personality rubbed off on me (I hope.) Even when predicting the turmoil that has sadly come about in world politics, David was upbeat. Not gleeful but determined. Despite the aches and pains he went through, the most he could muster was a half-hearted complaint that sleeping was occasionally difficult. May we all have his strength and strength of spirit.
Along with his humour, David offered expertise and insight and genuine caring. He reached out to help in big and small ways, but most enjoyable was hearing him hold forth on topics from Ancient Egypt to macroeconomics. Unlike many experts, David was the exact opposite of pompous or long-winded. He was the perfect drinking buddy and I wish we had done that more.
Kasia and I hold wonderful memories of a wonderful man who will be missed in so many ways by so many people as well as on the streets of Paris.
David's consistent good nature through the ups and downs of modern life is why I admire him so much. Unfailingly upbeat and positive, his personality rubbed off on me (I hope.) Even when predicting the turmoil that has sadly come about in world politics, David was upbeat. Not gleeful but determined. Despite the aches and pains he went through, the most he could muster was a half-hearted complaint that sleeping was occasionally difficult. May we all have his strength and strength of spirit.
Along with his humour, David offered expertise and insight and genuine caring. He reached out to help in big and small ways, but most enjoyable was hearing him hold forth on topics from Ancient Egypt to macroeconomics. Unlike many experts, David was the exact opposite of pompous or long-winded. He was the perfect drinking buddy and I wish we had done that more.
Kasia and I hold wonderful memories of a wonderful man who will be missed in so many ways by so many people as well as on the streets of Paris.
January 17, 2026
About David
In late 1977, circumstance placed me as chair of our economics department at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and I needed to hire someone to fill in for a one-semester position. By pure chance, through correspondence with a friend at Sussex, I found David, who had just completed his degree. So, sight unseen (I was desperate!), I offered him the position.
It will not surprise you to learn that I don’t think I ever made a better hire! David was a marvelous, devoted teacher, a responsible colleague, and a very capable economist. It was our good luck that the one-semester appointment lasted two and a half years. This was not only good for our students and the other members of our department, but it was also great for Margery and me, as David became a close friend.
I want to tell one story about David that illustrates his unusual, delightful character. One day at the university, he and I got into an argument. I don’t recall what we were arguing about—it was fifty years ago! And it was unusual because David and I agreed about most things—in economics and politics—of importance. In any case, David was vehement in making his case. Nonetheless, we didn’t resolve the dispute, and we picked it up the next day. But David had changed his position 180 degrees. Nonetheless, he was just as vehement as he had been the day before!
I said, “David, this is ridiculous. Yesterday, you forcefully argued one position, but now, just as forcefully, you’re on the other side. It’s a 180-degree turn around!” He responded, “No, its only a small change in my position. Yesterday, I was 51% on one side, and I believe that when you have a position you should support it strongly. Today, I have changed, but only about 2%. So, I am now 51% on the other side. And, as yesterday, I believe I should strongly support my new position.”
There was silence between us for a moment. Then we both laughed!
But I need to tell another thing, something I learned from David. When his parents divorced, David was a young teenager. He told me how difficult this situation was for him, particularly because his parents asked him to make important decisions about whom he would live with. It was a heavy burden. The mother of my oldest daughter and I had divorced when my daughter was quite young, but, at the time David was here, she was about to become a teenager. David’s story helped me a great deal in avoiding placing my daughter in a similar position. It was a helpful story that I thought of often.
After his two-and-a-half years in our department, David and I saw each other only now and then over the years. A few times back here in the states, in Cambridge or New York. Once in Cape Town and once in Paris. But we were able to keep in touch over the years, with letters and then email, and with a phone call now and then. I always felt close to him. He was a special person. I will miss him greatly.
Arthur MacEwan
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 17, 2026
In late 1977, circumstance placed me as chair of our economics department at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and I needed to hire someone to fill in for a one-semester position. By pure chance, through correspondence with a friend at Sussex, I found David, who had just completed his degree. So, sight unseen (I was desperate!), I offered him the position.
It will not surprise you to learn that I don’t think I ever made a better hire! David was a marvelous, devoted teacher, a responsible colleague, and a very capable economist. It was our good luck that the one-semester appointment lasted two and a half years. This was not only good for our students and the other members of our department, but it was also great for Margery and me, as David became a close friend.
I want to tell one story about David that illustrates his unusual, delightful character. One day at the university, he and I got into an argument. I don’t recall what we were arguing about—it was fifty years ago! And it was unusual because David and I agreed about most things—in economics and politics—of importance. In any case, David was vehement in making his case. Nonetheless, we didn’t resolve the dispute, and we picked it up the next day. But David had changed his position 180 degrees. Nonetheless, he was just as vehement as he had been the day before!
I said, “David, this is ridiculous. Yesterday, you forcefully argued one position, but now, just as forcefully, you’re on the other side. It’s a 180-degree turn around!” He responded, “No, its only a small change in my position. Yesterday, I was 51% on one side, and I believe that when you have a position you should support it strongly. Today, I have changed, but only about 2%. So, I am now 51% on the other side. And, as yesterday, I believe I should strongly support my new position.”
There was silence between us for a moment. Then we both laughed!
But I need to tell another thing, something I learned from David. When his parents divorced, David was a young teenager. He told me how difficult this situation was for him, particularly because his parents asked him to make important decisions about whom he would live with. It was a heavy burden. The mother of my oldest daughter and I had divorced when my daughter was quite young, but, at the time David was here, she was about to become a teenager. David’s story helped me a great deal in avoiding placing my daughter in a similar position. It was a helpful story that I thought of often.
After his two-and-a-half years in our department, David and I saw each other only now and then over the years. A few times back here in the states, in Cambridge or New York. Once in Cape Town and once in Paris. But we were able to keep in touch over the years, with letters and then email, and with a phone call now and then. I always felt close to him. He was a special person. I will miss him greatly.
Arthur MacEwan
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 17, 2026
January 17, 2026
Down memory lane…
January 17, 2026
Dave Kaplan was one of the co-founders of the DPRU, along with David Lewis and Alan Hirsch in the early 1990s. Established as a unit explicitly designed to deliver policy advice to the new
government- Dave was by then already a respected voice in both academia and national government. Dave was key to the early success of the DPRU and served for many years as the unit ‘s Deputy Director. Dave was always an insightful, articulate and thoughtful academic leader at the DPRU. His stint at the DTI as an advisor to the Minister - an oft forgotten part of his career - was also a key factor in redesigning trade and industrial policy for the country.
I think many of us - and certainly I was one of these individuals - who learned a great from Dave in terms of his uncanny ability to extract incisive insights from a thicket of data and information. But perhaps most importantly for me personally was that Dave was a modest and caring individual- always willing to assist and guide us young firebrand economists he was surrounded by in those early post-apartheid years. Dave Kaplan will be sorely missed in the South African Economics community.
The DPRU will certainly be putting together a more formal obituary for wider distribution.
Haroon Bhorat
government- Dave was by then already a respected voice in both academia and national government. Dave was key to the early success of the DPRU and served for many years as the unit ‘s Deputy Director. Dave was always an insightful, articulate and thoughtful academic leader at the DPRU. His stint at the DTI as an advisor to the Minister - an oft forgotten part of his career - was also a key factor in redesigning trade and industrial policy for the country.
I think many of us - and certainly I was one of these individuals - who learned a great from Dave in terms of his uncanny ability to extract incisive insights from a thicket of data and information. But perhaps most importantly for me personally was that Dave was a modest and caring individual- always willing to assist and guide us young firebrand economists he was surrounded by in those early post-apartheid years. Dave Kaplan will be sorely missed in the South African Economics community.
The DPRU will certainly be putting together a more formal obituary for wider distribution.
Haroon Bhorat
January 17, 2026
À velo
January 17, 2026
More glorious memories
January 17, 2026
Clowning around
January 16, 2026
I met David and Jennifer on 31.10.2024, at a presentation in Shakespeare & Company. Among all the people that evening, David and Jennifer were clearly outstanding: radiating warmth and wisdom, sending graceful smiles to people around. I was so charmed by them that even took a photo, the photo that you can see now. I felt honoured when we started talking and they suggested to meet sometime for coffee. Indeed we met, and we'd meet regularly afterwards. Our conversation were always filled with David's energy and enthusiasm and flaming curiosity, and of course photos of his adorable granddaughter. David knew a way to cheer up every waiter, find a common favourite jazz pianist with people sitting next to him, and always lift up my spirits when I was feeling down. I still can't believe someone so strong was not immortal. I will always look up to him - and miss his wonderful stories.
January 16, 2026
A forever friend
Dave was my forever friend
One of a tiny few in a lifetime
Dave was my forever friend
I was seventeen when we met
A forever friend stays the course
Keeps connected
Opens their heart
Shares ups and downs
A forever friend is part of the fabric
A safe space. Home
A forever friend loves your children
Wishes only good things for you and them.
When a forever friend dies your map changes
It has a forever empty place
Full of loss
Dave was my forever friend
Brenda Cooper
PHOTO 1 DAVE MAKING A BEAUTIFUL SPEECH AT MY 60TH
PHOTO 2 DAVE AND JENSI VISITING MARTIN AND I IN SALFORD.
Dave was my forever friend
One of a tiny few in a lifetime
Dave was my forever friend
I was seventeen when we met
A forever friend stays the course
Keeps connected
Opens their heart
Shares ups and downs
A forever friend is part of the fabric
A safe space. Home
A forever friend loves your children
Wishes only good things for you and them.
When a forever friend dies your map changes
It has a forever empty place
Full of loss
Dave was my forever friend
Brenda Cooper
PHOTO 1 DAVE MAKING A BEAUTIFUL SPEECH AT MY 60TH
PHOTO 2 DAVE AND JENSI VISITING MARTIN AND I IN SALFORD.
January 16, 2026
Oh, Dave what will I do without you? You are buried and entwined in my DNA.
Sixty years of friendship can’t just be spirited away. Not even by death. I talked to you in the dark hours of last night, wondering what to write here. In those silent hours while others sleep around us, when we are truly alone, you and I traversed the hills and dales of our friendship, remembering and recounting countless stories, our stories of laughter, of love, and sometimes pain, tales that seemed to go on forever. These long decades of our lives that were inseparably intertwined, rooted in the bonds of a committed friendship don’t just disappear. As long as I am still breathing you remain alive with me, your face etched into my mind in a veritable portrait gallery of memories.
We met the first time on Clifton beach in late December when you came down with a bunch of Rhodesian ‘boys’ for the holidays, and we quickly became steadfast friends. Over the years we depended on each other – at least I did. There are friends who one can always rely on, who just appear with their hands open, arms outstretched, even before one asks for help. You did that for me countless times, sometimes with big gestures, other times with small ones that meant just as much. When I was lost in the pains of a sudden, failed long distance relationship during my Masters in Sussex out of the blue you knocked on my door and handed me plane ticket to fly back to Cape Town during the holidays. When I was struggling with chemo 36 years later, you unfailingly knocked on my door every couple of days, ostensibly with a piece of fish in your hand to cook, but really to let me know you were there for me. The symbolism was not lost on me. You loved fish and the gesture of bringing it to me was Jesus-like reassuring me that this would pass and I would have many more shoals to eat.
We knew each other so well. Over the sixty years we must have appeared to those closest to us as an old married couple, leaning on each other, even when we became frustrated by each other’s irritating foibles. Yet you seldom got openly angry with me, and we definitely gave each other cause sometimes. I wonder now if I was as tolerant as you were of me.
Our lives were intertwined and impacted critical decisions we made even when we didn’t know we were making life changing ones. You finished your Masters in Canterbury and were uncertain what to do next, so you came to visit me Sussex, slept on the floor of my post graduate residence room for a few weeks. Little did we know what that would mean as suddenly your life trajectory shifted dramatically. You got a research assistant job at IDS, followed by a study award to do a D.Phil, a residence room in the adjacent block, we ate all our meals together, watched football and movies, argued about our theses, Poulantzas and Marxist theory, South African politics, travelled to London working out how to scam the train ticket system, went on holidays together, did our fieldwork together in Johannesburg living in the same house and travelling together around Joburg and Pretoria on that 90cc moped we borrowed with you on the back. And in a few years you had a doctorate, and your career path was clear.
And some years later when I twisted your arm with political guilt and persuaded you to leave your first academic job in Boston, your girlfriend, and join me in the economic history department at UCT, who knew what would come out of that choice. I couldn’t meet you at Cape Town airport when you finally arrived for reasons well beyond my control so I asked Jensy if she would fetch you. When I came out of Pollsmoor I found the two of you were a couple and look where that led.
I intended to recount a host of stories we laughed about last night, about some of the escapades we got up to when we were younger, but I realise they belong to us and it is not necessary to parade them now for others to read. Maybe another time. For now I want you to know what always perturbed me.
We shared an intellectual world as well as a friendship. We had as students a routine of going to the library on a Friday afternoon and reading journals and magazines … but you knew so much more than me. You were veritably a ‘19th century man of letters’. Your intellectual world encompassed such a breadth of poetry, literature, culture, art, music, and history – oh you loved delving into and recounting the detailed intricacies of this revolution or that set of circumstances – politics, and social commentary. Did I forget to mention economics? I did, but for a reason. You loved floating in all this vast array of knowledge, a never ending world of ideas and instead allowing yourself to fly in it, as you got older you chose rather to constrict yourself, squeezing yourself into the academic gown of a dry economist. There were always two intellectuals living side by side, and I so wish you had found a way of integrating them.
I have to end now but I want to do so on a note for others to remember. As you got older I remember fondly laughing at your increasing pessimism, quoting a version of Schopenhauer’s dictum as your mantra – ‘It is best to expect the worst because that way you will never be disappointed’. But as you grappled with this illness and as its tentacles spread through your body twisting you in pain you exhibited the opposite. You were so brave, so optimistic in the face of certain impending doom. Belynda and I marveled at you, and when I wrote to you saying this, you quietly quoted me back a line from Hamlet: ‘Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it’. That is true but it is also true there was plenty in the way you lived your life that became you.
When you left Cape Town to fly back to Paris we both hoped to see each other again, but in our bones we doubted it. One of your last texts to me rings in my ears: “we go back such a long way. I will so miss having you nearby”….
Dave what am I going to do not having you nearby ….
Sixty years of friendship can’t just be spirited away. Not even by death. I talked to you in the dark hours of last night, wondering what to write here. In those silent hours while others sleep around us, when we are truly alone, you and I traversed the hills and dales of our friendship, remembering and recounting countless stories, our stories of laughter, of love, and sometimes pain, tales that seemed to go on forever. These long decades of our lives that were inseparably intertwined, rooted in the bonds of a committed friendship don’t just disappear. As long as I am still breathing you remain alive with me, your face etched into my mind in a veritable portrait gallery of memories.
We met the first time on Clifton beach in late December when you came down with a bunch of Rhodesian ‘boys’ for the holidays, and we quickly became steadfast friends. Over the years we depended on each other – at least I did. There are friends who one can always rely on, who just appear with their hands open, arms outstretched, even before one asks for help. You did that for me countless times, sometimes with big gestures, other times with small ones that meant just as much. When I was lost in the pains of a sudden, failed long distance relationship during my Masters in Sussex out of the blue you knocked on my door and handed me plane ticket to fly back to Cape Town during the holidays. When I was struggling with chemo 36 years later, you unfailingly knocked on my door every couple of days, ostensibly with a piece of fish in your hand to cook, but really to let me know you were there for me. The symbolism was not lost on me. You loved fish and the gesture of bringing it to me was Jesus-like reassuring me that this would pass and I would have many more shoals to eat.
We knew each other so well. Over the sixty years we must have appeared to those closest to us as an old married couple, leaning on each other, even when we became frustrated by each other’s irritating foibles. Yet you seldom got openly angry with me, and we definitely gave each other cause sometimes. I wonder now if I was as tolerant as you were of me.
Our lives were intertwined and impacted critical decisions we made even when we didn’t know we were making life changing ones. You finished your Masters in Canterbury and were uncertain what to do next, so you came to visit me Sussex, slept on the floor of my post graduate residence room for a few weeks. Little did we know what that would mean as suddenly your life trajectory shifted dramatically. You got a research assistant job at IDS, followed by a study award to do a D.Phil, a residence room in the adjacent block, we ate all our meals together, watched football and movies, argued about our theses, Poulantzas and Marxist theory, South African politics, travelled to London working out how to scam the train ticket system, went on holidays together, did our fieldwork together in Johannesburg living in the same house and travelling together around Joburg and Pretoria on that 90cc moped we borrowed with you on the back. And in a few years you had a doctorate, and your career path was clear.
And some years later when I twisted your arm with political guilt and persuaded you to leave your first academic job in Boston, your girlfriend, and join me in the economic history department at UCT, who knew what would come out of that choice. I couldn’t meet you at Cape Town airport when you finally arrived for reasons well beyond my control so I asked Jensy if she would fetch you. When I came out of Pollsmoor I found the two of you were a couple and look where that led.
I intended to recount a host of stories we laughed about last night, about some of the escapades we got up to when we were younger, but I realise they belong to us and it is not necessary to parade them now for others to read. Maybe another time. For now I want you to know what always perturbed me.
We shared an intellectual world as well as a friendship. We had as students a routine of going to the library on a Friday afternoon and reading journals and magazines … but you knew so much more than me. You were veritably a ‘19th century man of letters’. Your intellectual world encompassed such a breadth of poetry, literature, culture, art, music, and history – oh you loved delving into and recounting the detailed intricacies of this revolution or that set of circumstances – politics, and social commentary. Did I forget to mention economics? I did, but for a reason. You loved floating in all this vast array of knowledge, a never ending world of ideas and instead allowing yourself to fly in it, as you got older you chose rather to constrict yourself, squeezing yourself into the academic gown of a dry economist. There were always two intellectuals living side by side, and I so wish you had found a way of integrating them.
I have to end now but I want to do so on a note for others to remember. As you got older I remember fondly laughing at your increasing pessimism, quoting a version of Schopenhauer’s dictum as your mantra – ‘It is best to expect the worst because that way you will never be disappointed’. But as you grappled with this illness and as its tentacles spread through your body twisting you in pain you exhibited the opposite. You were so brave, so optimistic in the face of certain impending doom. Belynda and I marveled at you, and when I wrote to you saying this, you quietly quoted me back a line from Hamlet: ‘Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it’. That is true but it is also true there was plenty in the way you lived your life that became you.
When you left Cape Town to fly back to Paris we both hoped to see each other again, but in our bones we doubted it. One of your last texts to me rings in my ears: “we go back such a long way. I will so miss having you nearby”….
Dave what am I going to do not having you nearby ….
January 16, 2026
From the beginning, David was the big brother I looked up to. His enthusiasm for life, for connection, was always very evident.
In primary school, I vividly remember him performing onstage where he played one of Macbeth’s wicked witches.
School was a platform he thrived on, for me it was an endurance. The pattern was set and replicated.
David was a very loyal institutional man, UCT was lucky to have him in its ranks. He was one of the finest teachers they ever had.
I, on the other hand, was made to vist the Vice chancellor’s Office and threatened with expulsion if I did anything further to blacken UCT’s name! Such was my form of rebellion.
However, our parents’ divorce rocked David. It rocked us both and shaped us indelibly. David found some refuge and comfort in his pursuit of knowledge.
He was sensitive, intelligent and fiercely curious. David found a way to take the best of our parents, because for all their faults they were both strong, even magnetic characters, while he also managed to distance himself from those features he found problematic.
With great care and ferocity David built, together with Jennifer, a beautiful loving family and beyond them he created a legacy that is testimony to just how many people he touched so deeply. I will miss him hugely.
In primary school, I vividly remember him performing onstage where he played one of Macbeth’s wicked witches.
School was a platform he thrived on, for me it was an endurance. The pattern was set and replicated.
David was a very loyal institutional man, UCT was lucky to have him in its ranks. He was one of the finest teachers they ever had.
I, on the other hand, was made to vist the Vice chancellor’s Office and threatened with expulsion if I did anything further to blacken UCT’s name! Such was my form of rebellion.
However, our parents’ divorce rocked David. It rocked us both and shaped us indelibly. David found some refuge and comfort in his pursuit of knowledge.
He was sensitive, intelligent and fiercely curious. David found a way to take the best of our parents, because for all their faults they were both strong, even magnetic characters, while he also managed to distance himself from those features he found problematic.
With great care and ferocity David built, together with Jennifer, a beautiful loving family and beyond them he created a legacy that is testimony to just how many people he touched so deeply. I will miss him hugely.
January 16, 2026
I first met Dave about 40-45 years ago. But by then I already knew much about the Family Kaplan. When we first met I was sharing an apartment with Dave’s brother, Mark. I had met his (much) larger than life father, Arthur. I think that I had met his less effusive, but no less formidable, mother. I had previously lived in an apartment block in Mowbray that had been colonized by a bunch of Zimbabwean students that included Baldy, a Kaplan cousin. And, of course, I was already and remain a firm friend of Dave’s mutt-and-jeff partner, Mike Morris. So that by the time Mike strode into the office that I occupied at the Abe Bailey Institute followed by someone with a bad hairstyle (a Kaplan gene) and announced in his dulcet tones that ‘this is Kappy’, it’s fair to say that I already had the back story on the Kaplans of Buluwayo.
Not long after this Dave returned to South Africa and we began a long working relationship first in the Industrial Strategy Project and then in the Labour Market Commission. We set up (with Alan Hirsch) the Development Policy Research Unit at UCT. I joined the Economic History department of which Dave was a member and immediately got drawn into an intra-departmental battle of an intensity that is only found in university battles. I naturally sided with Dave in this vicious fight and since then we have been pretty inseparable as work colleagues and personal friends, the latter cemented by him taking up with and marrying a friend, Jensy Fine (although I think that I may have been a little jealous at the time).
In these early days I recognized that whereas my historic role in our relationship was persuading Dave that in a range of possible outcomes, the worst one was not necessarily the most likely, his role was to persuade me to be more considered and rational before leaping to judgement. Neither of us entirely accomplished our respective missions but I have no doubt that in consequence of our efforts we both became better people.
But let me fast forward some 30-plus years. I was in and out of a Johannesburg hospital and Dave was in Paris. COVID was rampant. From our respective sites of isolation, Dave and I began a long-distance, telephonic relationship that significantly deepened our already strong personal and work relationships. By the time that I emerged from hospital Dave and I were speaking for about 2-3 hours each week. Since then our telephone time increased to about 5-6 hours each week. And contrary to popular wisdom, there’s something particularly powerful about a telephone relationship. Above all, there are no interruptions (only a call from Jennifer or Terry was ever allowed to interrupt our conversations). And there are no eavesdroppers.
No stone was left unturned. Marriage. Children. The fate of the EU. The dollar. Innovation. Corruption. State Capture. Sport. Endless gossip. We read each other’s book recommendations and discussed what we read in great detail. No question was too stupid. No topic was too big or too complicated for our calls, even topics that neither of us knew anything about.
And, of course, in the past 18 months, we discussed grandchildren, particularly Sofia. I readily agreed – and sincerely so – that she is an exceptionally smart, beautiful and cute little girl and I have an endless supply of badly shot videos that confirm this. In one of our last conversations Dave told me that not only was Sofia a special grandchild, but that he, Dave, was almost certainly the best grandfather in the world. This too I accepted unconditionally. I loved how interested we were in each other’s families. We knew each other’s children and really liked them. Gentle, warm Dan and vivacious, charming Julia will always have a special place in my heart. In his last days when his illness had engulfed him, Dave still thought to send my daughter, Jes (who, aside from Mike and I, is the only person I know who calls him Kappy), a message congratulating her on a work achievement.
I’m going to miss him like crazy. I do already. This morning I read an interesting piece about something or another and my immediate thought was to send it to Dave. Who will discuss all these interesting things with me?
Google tells me that a mensch is a ‘person of integrity and honour’, a ‘kind, thoughtful and honourable person’. Dave was a real mensch and from where I sit the world is poorer for his passing.
Hamba kahle.
David Lewis
PS I also loved the video of Dave dancing. There is another one of him dancing in the street in Stockholm. But about that beret: Dave was the only full time, real intellectual that I have known. He didnt want to be a political activist or a powerful politician. He didnt want to be an F1 driver or an opening batter. He wanted to be someone who knew shit and thought about all the things he knew. And now he was in Paris, a city that celebrated intellectuals and even had a dress code for them that always included a beret and a gauliose. Hence the beret - he thought he looked like Sartre or Picasso etc. He was living his chosen life - baguettte under arm, beret on head he returned from cheese shopping. And if you dont believe this I forced him to concede to my analysis over a long phone call. The best that could be said of it is that it was a better style than those awful Andy Capps that he sometimes wore
Not long after this Dave returned to South Africa and we began a long working relationship first in the Industrial Strategy Project and then in the Labour Market Commission. We set up (with Alan Hirsch) the Development Policy Research Unit at UCT. I joined the Economic History department of which Dave was a member and immediately got drawn into an intra-departmental battle of an intensity that is only found in university battles. I naturally sided with Dave in this vicious fight and since then we have been pretty inseparable as work colleagues and personal friends, the latter cemented by him taking up with and marrying a friend, Jensy Fine (although I think that I may have been a little jealous at the time).
In these early days I recognized that whereas my historic role in our relationship was persuading Dave that in a range of possible outcomes, the worst one was not necessarily the most likely, his role was to persuade me to be more considered and rational before leaping to judgement. Neither of us entirely accomplished our respective missions but I have no doubt that in consequence of our efforts we both became better people.
But let me fast forward some 30-plus years. I was in and out of a Johannesburg hospital and Dave was in Paris. COVID was rampant. From our respective sites of isolation, Dave and I began a long-distance, telephonic relationship that significantly deepened our already strong personal and work relationships. By the time that I emerged from hospital Dave and I were speaking for about 2-3 hours each week. Since then our telephone time increased to about 5-6 hours each week. And contrary to popular wisdom, there’s something particularly powerful about a telephone relationship. Above all, there are no interruptions (only a call from Jennifer or Terry was ever allowed to interrupt our conversations). And there are no eavesdroppers.
No stone was left unturned. Marriage. Children. The fate of the EU. The dollar. Innovation. Corruption. State Capture. Sport. Endless gossip. We read each other’s book recommendations and discussed what we read in great detail. No question was too stupid. No topic was too big or too complicated for our calls, even topics that neither of us knew anything about.
And, of course, in the past 18 months, we discussed grandchildren, particularly Sofia. I readily agreed – and sincerely so – that she is an exceptionally smart, beautiful and cute little girl and I have an endless supply of badly shot videos that confirm this. In one of our last conversations Dave told me that not only was Sofia a special grandchild, but that he, Dave, was almost certainly the best grandfather in the world. This too I accepted unconditionally. I loved how interested we were in each other’s families. We knew each other’s children and really liked them. Gentle, warm Dan and vivacious, charming Julia will always have a special place in my heart. In his last days when his illness had engulfed him, Dave still thought to send my daughter, Jes (who, aside from Mike and I, is the only person I know who calls him Kappy), a message congratulating her on a work achievement.
I’m going to miss him like crazy. I do already. This morning I read an interesting piece about something or another and my immediate thought was to send it to Dave. Who will discuss all these interesting things with me?
Google tells me that a mensch is a ‘person of integrity and honour’, a ‘kind, thoughtful and honourable person’. Dave was a real mensch and from where I sit the world is poorer for his passing.
Hamba kahle.
David Lewis
PS I also loved the video of Dave dancing. There is another one of him dancing in the street in Stockholm. But about that beret: Dave was the only full time, real intellectual that I have known. He didnt want to be a political activist or a powerful politician. He didnt want to be an F1 driver or an opening batter. He wanted to be someone who knew shit and thought about all the things he knew. And now he was in Paris, a city that celebrated intellectuals and even had a dress code for them that always included a beret and a gauliose. Hence the beret - he thought he looked like Sartre or Picasso etc. He was living his chosen life - baguettte under arm, beret on head he returned from cheese shopping. And if you dont believe this I forced him to concede to my analysis over a long phone call. The best that could be said of it is that it was a better style than those awful Andy Capps that he sometimes wore
January 15, 2026
Oh Dave... oh…oh.. so many memories.
So, so sad.
You are part of our history…it started with studying Economics with Raphie in 1967-8, then the Radical Students Society and then there was the sit-in at UCT in 1968. A few years later in England you lived with us in Sussex whilst writing your DPhil. Your unheated bedroom was in the attic – which is now our overheated bedroom. Our home was yours and your spirit is still in our house.
We remember the time in 1974, Natasha was 18 months old, when you brought her a gift of something in a largish brown box …. you helped her open it and when she discovered it was a large rabbit … she fell over backwards in excitement.. You were wonderful with her and it seems this was good training for later years with your own kids - Dan, Julia and then Sofia.
And when, penniless, you lived with us in frosty Sussex you and Mike made it a principle that on every visit to the university canteen, you were obliged to steal a bread-bun – or indeed anything. We were too bangbrook to copy you.
One winter night you decided that you really had to steal potatoes from the farmer’s crop at the rear of our house - despite our pleading (‘property is theft’). A dark night, you dressed all in black, balaclava to hide your face (from whom? It was moonless). Half an hour later you returned, potato-less and white-faced. Your nail was at right angles from your finger. Scrabbling for potatoes requires gloves!
We remember when you joined us in a camping trip in the Mara in Kenya in 1975. We were in a hunting block with wild animals roaming nearby. And then two Masai warriors rocked up. No common verbal language - but you decided to teach them kung fu which you had been practising in your Kapital-reading group (oh, the delights of over-studying Marx). They were perplexed… one of them picked you up, put you over his shoulder and ran with you up the hill. You had the grace to laugh … but not nearly as loudly as we did.
On the same trip, a day later, whilst we were game-watching, leaving our valuables (lots of money, expensive cameras, etc) in the tent, we came back to discover we had been robbed – no money taken, no cameras missing - only some salt, a cooked chicken, a red blanket and a panga! Oh, the arrogance of western materialism. And then the rains came – poured in fact – and we decided that we were camped too near the crocodile infested river and had to shift to higher ground. No raincoats.
And then so many more memories, with you and your family – Sussex, Cape Town, Athens, China, Mombasa, Nairobi, Paris, Ottowa, Boston, Oxford, Maastricht, Geneva and more. Poetry, politics, family (worries and pride), jokes, gossip, scandal… Generosity – you gave us a Willaim Kentridge print. He was unknown at the time - now worth more than £10,000.
Our short, special farewell in Paris is imprinted in our souls. So sad and hard, but as always you were filled with generosity, wisdom, concern for others and courage.
You are in our souls – you were family! We miss you but you live on in us all. .
We send special love and wishes for strength to Jens, Dan, Julia, Mark and families. How lucky we were all to have had you in our lives for so long – tragically not long enough.
Hamba Gahle.
Cathy and Raphie
xxxxx
So, so sad.
You are part of our history…it started with studying Economics with Raphie in 1967-8, then the Radical Students Society and then there was the sit-in at UCT in 1968. A few years later in England you lived with us in Sussex whilst writing your DPhil. Your unheated bedroom was in the attic – which is now our overheated bedroom. Our home was yours and your spirit is still in our house.
We remember the time in 1974, Natasha was 18 months old, when you brought her a gift of something in a largish brown box …. you helped her open it and when she discovered it was a large rabbit … she fell over backwards in excitement.. You were wonderful with her and it seems this was good training for later years with your own kids - Dan, Julia and then Sofia.
And when, penniless, you lived with us in frosty Sussex you and Mike made it a principle that on every visit to the university canteen, you were obliged to steal a bread-bun – or indeed anything. We were too bangbrook to copy you.
One winter night you decided that you really had to steal potatoes from the farmer’s crop at the rear of our house - despite our pleading (‘property is theft’). A dark night, you dressed all in black, balaclava to hide your face (from whom? It was moonless). Half an hour later you returned, potato-less and white-faced. Your nail was at right angles from your finger. Scrabbling for potatoes requires gloves!
We remember when you joined us in a camping trip in the Mara in Kenya in 1975. We were in a hunting block with wild animals roaming nearby. And then two Masai warriors rocked up. No common verbal language - but you decided to teach them kung fu which you had been practising in your Kapital-reading group (oh, the delights of over-studying Marx). They were perplexed… one of them picked you up, put you over his shoulder and ran with you up the hill. You had the grace to laugh … but not nearly as loudly as we did.
On the same trip, a day later, whilst we were game-watching, leaving our valuables (lots of money, expensive cameras, etc) in the tent, we came back to discover we had been robbed – no money taken, no cameras missing - only some salt, a cooked chicken, a red blanket and a panga! Oh, the arrogance of western materialism. And then the rains came – poured in fact – and we decided that we were camped too near the crocodile infested river and had to shift to higher ground. No raincoats.
And then so many more memories, with you and your family – Sussex, Cape Town, Athens, China, Mombasa, Nairobi, Paris, Ottowa, Boston, Oxford, Maastricht, Geneva and more. Poetry, politics, family (worries and pride), jokes, gossip, scandal… Generosity – you gave us a Willaim Kentridge print. He was unknown at the time - now worth more than £10,000.
Our short, special farewell in Paris is imprinted in our souls. So sad and hard, but as always you were filled with generosity, wisdom, concern for others and courage.
You are in our souls – you were family! We miss you but you live on in us all. .
We send special love and wishes for strength to Jens, Dan, Julia, Mark and families. How lucky we were all to have had you in our lives for so long – tragically not long enough.
Hamba Gahle.
Cathy and Raphie
xxxxx
January 14, 2026
I will always remember Dave. For his kindness to me and his interest in my sons and my work and my life; for the huge and flexible intellect that he used in the service of his principles; for his integrity; for his sense of fun and adventure. For the way he threw himself into life in Paris and loved it, though he missed South Africa.
And for his love for his family. In a generation where so many couples split up, Dave and Jennifer's marriage was a rare example of what could be when two people loved each other they way they did.
I am very glad to have spent precious evenings with them in Paris, eating salmon and drinking wine (Dave drank beer) and renewing a very old friendship.
In November, when the Boks beat France, Dave sent me hilarious videos of him dancing to Ciao Bella Ciao. That is how I would like to remember him, laughing, waving his hands like any Frenchman in his beret, and dancing the night away.
As long as we live, he too shall live.
And for his love for his family. In a generation where so many couples split up, Dave and Jennifer's marriage was a rare example of what could be when two people loved each other they way they did.
I am very glad to have spent precious evenings with them in Paris, eating salmon and drinking wine (Dave drank beer) and renewing a very old friendship.
In November, when the Boks beat France, Dave sent me hilarious videos of him dancing to Ciao Bella Ciao. That is how I would like to remember him, laughing, waving his hands like any Frenchman in his beret, and dancing the night away.
As long as we live, he too shall live.
January 14, 2026
David read poetry. Well, he often recited poetry by heart, and only read the text where he needed to fill the gaps. His recall of English poetry was prodigious. His recitations at our Shabbat table were part of the ritual. I'd remind David that economists say there's no such thing as a free lunch, and the cost of his Shabbat meal was a poem, recited with expression. He always obliged. Often it was Philip Larkin, sometimes The Bard. But his most repeated poem at our table was WH Aiden's tribute In Memory of WB Yeats.
It was David's signature poem and our kids loved it and loved the way David read it with both gravity and reverence. He would recite it by heart, but more important - he would say it with heart. Heart.
And then David was himself no more, and Auden's words ring equally true of David who read this at our Shabbat table so often:
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
It was David's signature poem and our kids loved it and loved the way David read it with both gravity and reverence. He would recite it by heart, but more important - he would say it with heart. Heart.
And then David was himself no more, and Auden's words ring equally true of David who read this at our Shabbat table so often:
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
January 14, 2026
David’s absence is palpable and yet his presence is, and will always be, also with us as I do believe that we carry traces of those we have loved, and been loved by, because we are fundamentally altered through our relationship with them.
Children carry their parents on a cellular level but wherever there has been a profound bond with another, whether through kinship or friendship, we are similarly transformed. Love has that effect.
And David was deeply loved, in different ways, by so many people, especially by those gathered here, including myself.
I feel very privileged to have known David, over the past 35 years, since my marriage to Mark, his younger brother.
Over the years, David progressed from a brother in law to a real friend. We shared a love of books, art, French culture and in the last couple of years I also shared extracts of my creative writing with him because I valued his perceptive feedback.
What always struck me about David, was his enthusiasm and embrace of Life, in all its manifestations and expressions, his openness to new experiences, his curiosity about all the different cultures he encountered during his multiple travels across the globe, always doing his homework before visiting each country, as well as going out of his way to engage with people who happened to cross his path. He loved youth and youth loved him back. He supported the very different paths our two children, Alexia and Michael, have chosen and he developed independent, meaningful relationships with each of them. As their one and only uncle, he will be missed by them also.
Throughout his life, David modeled integrity, loyalty and enthusiasm for Life. When facing Death, he did so with immense dignity, courage and grace.
A precious recent memory of David, captured on video by Jennifer, was of him, under the influence of some pretty serious medication, dancing and singing along with a professional singer in a Parisan restaurant, in wild abandon. For Life and Death are part of the same dance and David’s dance on this planet was intentional, beautiful and joyful.
Children carry their parents on a cellular level but wherever there has been a profound bond with another, whether through kinship or friendship, we are similarly transformed. Love has that effect.
And David was deeply loved, in different ways, by so many people, especially by those gathered here, including myself.
I feel very privileged to have known David, over the past 35 years, since my marriage to Mark, his younger brother.
Over the years, David progressed from a brother in law to a real friend. We shared a love of books, art, French culture and in the last couple of years I also shared extracts of my creative writing with him because I valued his perceptive feedback.
What always struck me about David, was his enthusiasm and embrace of Life, in all its manifestations and expressions, his openness to new experiences, his curiosity about all the different cultures he encountered during his multiple travels across the globe, always doing his homework before visiting each country, as well as going out of his way to engage with people who happened to cross his path. He loved youth and youth loved him back. He supported the very different paths our two children, Alexia and Michael, have chosen and he developed independent, meaningful relationships with each of them. As their one and only uncle, he will be missed by them also.
Throughout his life, David modeled integrity, loyalty and enthusiasm for Life. When facing Death, he did so with immense dignity, courage and grace.
A precious recent memory of David, captured on video by Jennifer, was of him, under the influence of some pretty serious medication, dancing and singing along with a professional singer in a Parisan restaurant, in wild abandon. For Life and Death are part of the same dance and David’s dance on this planet was intentional, beautiful and joyful.
January 14, 2026
It is impossible to fully encapsulate what dad meant to us in just a few lines. His best qualities shaped our lives not only during childhood, but well into adulthood where his presence remained a constant even as Dan and I built our own independent lives.
He took a genuine interest in young people and had a remarkable ability to connect with them. He befriended our friends and showed real curiosity about who they were and what mattered to them. He had a deep love of learning and an equally strong desire to teach. Family holidays involved informal lessons about the places we visited, guided by his curiosity and unwavering enthusiasm. He knew how to have fun and never lost his child-like sense of play. We have most recently been reminded of this with Sofia as he continually found creative ways to spark her imagination and engage meaningfully with her, even when he was very unwell.
Dad loved his family and we never had any doubt that we came first. People talk about “showing up” for someone who is dying, we felt instead that dad made it his mission to show up for us. His greatest fear was not death itself, but how his absence would affect us and his last months were spent nurturing and strengthening the relationships that mattered most.
For me, this grief is two-fold. I mourn not only my own loss, but also Sofia's. In dad’s words “I can only say that my love for her knows few bounds. My key project in my retirement years was to play a big role in her life. I already feel I have made an imprint on her but I have so much left to give.” He certainly did, but I do believe the imprint he made will endure.
We have been so moved by the many messages and memories that have been shared with us during this time. They have been a powerful reminder of what an extraordinary man he was and how much he meant to so many. Dan and I have a deep sense of gratitude and pride in having had him as our father.
He took a genuine interest in young people and had a remarkable ability to connect with them. He befriended our friends and showed real curiosity about who they were and what mattered to them. He had a deep love of learning and an equally strong desire to teach. Family holidays involved informal lessons about the places we visited, guided by his curiosity and unwavering enthusiasm. He knew how to have fun and never lost his child-like sense of play. We have most recently been reminded of this with Sofia as he continually found creative ways to spark her imagination and engage meaningfully with her, even when he was very unwell.
Dad loved his family and we never had any doubt that we came first. People talk about “showing up” for someone who is dying, we felt instead that dad made it his mission to show up for us. His greatest fear was not death itself, but how his absence would affect us and his last months were spent nurturing and strengthening the relationships that mattered most.
For me, this grief is two-fold. I mourn not only my own loss, but also Sofia's. In dad’s words “I can only say that my love for her knows few bounds. My key project in my retirement years was to play a big role in her life. I already feel I have made an imprint on her but I have so much left to give.” He certainly did, but I do believe the imprint he made will endure.
We have been so moved by the many messages and memories that have been shared with us during this time. They have been a powerful reminder of what an extraordinary man he was and how much he meant to so many. Dan and I have a deep sense of gratitude and pride in having had him as our father.
made with 
Français
Deutsch
Nederlands
Español
Português
Magyar
Русский
繁體中文