David Ferreira
South Africa-at-Large & Magdalen 1984
Born in Chingola, Zambia in 1962, David Ferreira studied at the University of the Witwatersrand and qualified as a lawyer before going to Oxford to read for a second undergraduate degree in PPE (philosophy, politics and economics). He completed a further year as a Rhodes Scholar studying development economics at LSE and then worked as a lawyer in New York before taking up a career in development finance. Returning to South Africa, Ferreira worked under Nelson Mandela’s government, building vital infrastructure for the new South Africa. He then moved into private equity, with a focus on supporting healthcare systems across the world. Ferreira is currently CEO of Vitality Asia at Discovery Limited, based in Shanghai. He is also a member of the selection committee for Rhodes Scholars in China. This narrative is excerpted from an interview with the Rhodes Trust on 6 August 2024.
‘It was absolutely, abundantly clear to me that the system was unfair’
I grew up in Zambia and then in South Africa. My father was working in Zambia – then Northern Rhodesia – to make some money so that he could go to university, which he eventually did. But first, he met my mother and they had me. After studying for his BSc in agriculture, my father became a salesman for a time and then took on the management of a farm. We moved out to the middle of nowhere and I used to travel into school by bus every day. It was a pretty harsh existence, and then my father got another farm manager job, further east near the Mozambique border. That was a citrus and sub-tropical farm – bananas, grapefruit, lychees – and it was near the mountains, so I would go hiking with my father, which was brilliant.
Then, when he was 33 and I was 12, my father died of a brain tumour. Things after that became very tough for me and my mother and my two younger sisters. I went to a lot of different schools. Most of the time, I was in a very conservative environment: Afrikaans-speaking, white-only schools, and politically not only aligned with but also supportive of South Africa’s apartheid nationalist government. The farming community was largely in the same mould, although my father had been different, and he had told me I shouldn’t just swallow the propaganda.
In 1976, when I was 14, there was a youth uprising that started in Soweto but then went nationwide. I remember talking to a black man whose kids were involved in the uprising, and he told me how his son had basically learned to read upside down. There were so few textbooks that two of the children in the group would get to look at the book the right way up, while the other two would have to turn around and read it upside down. It was absolutely, abundantly clear to me that the system was unfair. You had to make a choice as to where you stood. But when I started questioning things, the response at school was quite vehement, and eventually, I was asked to leave. I was lucky enough to be able to talk myself into a place at a left-leaning, liberal private school, and that happened because my mother’s employers, a Jewish family, had connections to the school. The head was a wonderful man, and the first in a series of amazing Jewish mentors I’ve had.
On applying for the Rhodes Scholarship
I finished high school early and went on to university when I was only 16. I started a degree in the sciences, but I only lasted a few months, because I was just too young. I had no idea what I wanted to do, except see the world, so I took the money I’d squirrelled away from part-time jobs, travelling to Europe and then on to a kibbutz in Israel. By that time, I’d figured out that I wanted to go back and contribute to political change in South Africa.
I started again at university and got involved in student journalism and student politics. I went on to study law, where I began as a full-time student and then completed my degree part-time, at night. I then worked for a big law firm in Johannesburg. It was another epoch of having amazing mentors – Michael Katz and Basil Wunsh – who supported me in helping to establish their labour law practice. I did a lot of work with the National Union of Mineworkers, whose Secretary General at that time was Cyril Ramaphosa, now the president of South Africa.
I became aware of the Rhodes Scholarship and loved the idea of studying abroad. But the Scholarship also became a lifeline for me, because in 1986, I was drafted into the military. There was no way I was going to be part of an army that patrolled black townships and attacked innocent people, and my only options besides military service would have been to leave the country secretly or risk prison. So, the Rhodes really saved my skin.
‘The chance to really live like a student’
I’d originally wanted study for the BCL at Oxford, as Edwin Cameron (South Africa-at-Large & Keble 1976) had done, because I was so impressed by the legal work he was doing to resist the apartheid regime. But I saw friends from South Africa choosing degrees in things they hadn’t studied before, so I decided to switch and study PPE (philosophy, politics and economics). It was a fantastic choice, and I had wonderful tutors.
Oxford also gave me the chance to really live like a student. Because my father had died when I was so young, I had had a lot of responsibility, and then, at university in South Africa, I had been intensely involved in political activity. At Oxford, I suddenly realised, ‘Well, I’m at university, and I can do things like act in a play,’ so that’s what I did. I made so many good friends by just exploring different things.
‘My own personal mission’
After Oxford, I went to practise law in New York. The Rhodes Trustees had very generously agreed that I could come back and spend a third year studying in London, at LSE, and I built on what I learned there and in New York to move into the world of economics. I had been lucky enough to work with someone who went on to become president of the World Bank, so when I left LSE I went to Washington, DC and began working at the World Bank on finance and private sector development, especially around infrastructure projects in Asia and Latin America.
And then, South Africa became democratic, and some of people I’d worked with in the anti-apartheid struggle were suddenly in Nelson Mandela’s cabinet. I went back and joined the Development Bank of Southern Africa. One of the very first projects I was involved in was getting clean water to the areas of Kanyamazane and Matsulu, the same place where I’d been told children were learning four to a textbook. It had been such a divided place, where the historically white town had this magnificent water system but in the townships, there had been people dying of cholera. To work on building a consortium with the community and private investors to guarantee a clean, affordable water supply was incredibly exciting.
After my time at the Development Bank, I joined with two friends to create a private equity business. I also sat on a number of boards, including for Soul City, where I helped establish an investment company so that historically disadvantaged communities in South Africa could start to accumulate assets and equity. After that, I was hired by Gavi – the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization – heading up their US operation as part of a worldwide public-private partnership to bring vaccines to children in developing countries. My involvement with healthcare continues, in the work I now do with Vitality in China and elsewhere in Asia. That involvement with healthcare systems went on to underpin the work I do now, for the wellness programme Vitality, in China.
My life has been, not a narrow path, but a highway, and without the Rhodes, I don’t think it would have been possible. The Scholarship and the contacts I made through it propelled me into an international career. That let me live out my own personal mission, trying to contribute to righting some of the inequalities that exist in the world.
‘Put yourself out there’
Things have changed so much since I was in Oxford, and for the better. Rhodes House is now a phenomenal resource in terms of both spaces and people. I would really encourage today’s Scholars to use it. I would also say: don’t just spend time with Scholars from your own constituency. I completely understand that there can be anxiety about how you will be received in Oxford, but if you do just a little bit of reaching out and put yourself out there and say who you are, that will be repaid.
There are a lot of resources invested in people who are lucky enough to study at Oxford, and it’s a great privilege and a very luxurious education. It’s hard to overstate the extent of the options it gives you for enrichment. Try and use the time to broaden and not necessarily deepen. That’s important both intellectually and in terms of the other things that you do. At Oxford, you have the ability, with ease, to broaden your knowledge base, at the highest level, learning from the best in the world.