Portrait photo of Rob Knutzen.
Rob Knutzen
Diocesan College, Rondebosch & St Catherine's 1972
Portrait photo of Rob Knutzen.
Born in Cape Town in 1949, Rob Knutzen studied at the University of Cape Town before going to Oxford to read for the BCL, a postgraduate law degree. After a period teaching in universities, he practised SHIPPING law and THEN moved into the shipping industry. Knutzen is the former President of Golden Ocean Group Ltd based in London and Tokyo. he was also a board member of the Swedish club for 12 years. in 2000 he returned to South Africa. he lectured maritime law part time at UCT and in 2003 founded marine crew services, which trains seafarers. in 2005 he founded RK Offshore Ship Management in Singapore. since then, he has largely been based in Singapore where he now lives permanently. This narrative is excerpted from an interview with the Rhodes Trust on 19 August 2025.
‘As I’ve got older, I’ve gravitated much more to going back to Norway’
I was born in the married quarters at the University of Cape Town (UCT) where my father was finishing off a medical degree on a US government GI bill. He had been sent to the US along with his brother at the outbreak of the Second World War. My father’s family had originally come from Norway: a lot of the shipping and whaling families there sent people out to South Africa, and my grandfather who was an engineer came to South Africa in 1904. As I’ve got older, I’ve gravitated much more to going back to Norway and connecting with my relatives there. It’s funny how these seeds that are sown when you’re quite young mature as you get older.
My grandfather worked his way up Africa and in 1915 he started the Zambezi Sawmills in Livingstone with two other Norwegians. My father was born in Livingstone and then sent to boarding school in Cape Town and later, I was also sent to boarding school at Diocesan College, colloquially known as Bishops, and one of the original selection constituencies of the Rhodes Scholarship.
I was born just after the Nationalist government got into power in South Africa. The new government were pro-apartheid, and that was the end of any sort of liberal thought in the country. When the nationalists got in again in 1952, my parents decided they didn’t want to stay in South Africa, so, we went to the UK. My father took a hospital job in Bath, in Somerset. Later, we moved to Yorkshire. Life in the UK was hard at that time, with rationing still in place, and my Norwegian family used to send us food parcels twice a year.
In 1958 my parents decided to go back to South Africa, because he couldn’t afford to put us through private school on a doctor’s salary in the new National Health Service. I went to Bishops. We had some very good teachers there. I had a brilliant history master whom I remember well. I also started running there, and most days, I would run up to the Rhodes memorial and look at Kipling’s words underneath the statue.
So, my background made me conscious of poverty and disadvantage, but also of the importance of public investment. I think it’s absolutely vital that there should be a strong governmental sector intervening in the displacement of privilege, the allocation of opportunities.
On applying for the Rhodes Scholarship
A year before university, I was called up into the army. I went to the Army Gymnasium in Pretoria and we were taken up to patrol the Mozambican border. Fortunately, we didn’t catch or shoot anybody. I had a fairly easy time, and then I left and went to UCT.
I went on to study law at UCT, and I loved it there. Boarding School had been quite restrictive, but at UCT I felt a great sense of liberation. I got very involved in cross-country and marathon running and that absorbed most of my non-academic time.
The Rhodes Scholarships was a big thing at school, because at the end of prize-giving every year, the headmaster would announce five or six names of boys who would be eligible to apply. I wasn’t one of the five or six, but you could apply to the headmaster later if you wanted to join the group. So, I was put on the list, which entitled me to apply. One of the people interviewing me for the Scholarship was a young judge, Johan Steyn (Cape Province & University 1955) who later became a Supreme Court judge in the UK. When I got into the law in London, I went to ask his advice. So, I kept that link.
I think what won me the Scholarship was that I had had a job in every school and college holiday. At UCT, I spent my holidays working on the docks and I even worked my passage as a deck boy to Denmark and then turned up at my Norwegian family’s front doorstep on Christmas Eve. I also remember being asked in my interview about what I understood by the rule of law. The nationalist government in South Africa at that time was detaining people without trial. Too many of the detainees died in detention.
After the interviews, I remember the headmaster of my school phoning me at home to tell me I’d won the Scholarship. I was gratified to hear that the selection committee had chosen me unanimously.
‘The winter was a bit of a shock’
I started Oxford later than usual in the academic year. I arrived in December, and the winter was a bit of a shock. I discovered that the wearing of a hat was a great plus! Of course, I did what I normally do when I go anywhere and joined the running club. So, I was running as term started and running was an absolutely integral part of my life at Oxford.
I did the BCL, which was the postgraduate law degree. I had a couple of fantastic tutors and being taught by the people who wrote the definitive books in the subject was a great privilege. The law library was a wonderful building to work in and it was close to my college, St Catz.
Rhodes House wasn’t what it is today. Bill Williams was the Warden. He was a very nice man but he was of his time and visiting him was like visiting the headmaster. The transformation both of the Scholarships and of Rhodes House in the last 25 years has been fantastic, because it really was a pretty gloomy place when I was a student. But apart from that, Oxford was a great experience: it gave me the confidence in the rest of my professional life of never feeling that I was at a disadvantage.
‘I’ve met people from absolutely all over the place’
After Oxford, I was offered a job in South Africa, but by then, I had a child. I said, ‘I don’t think we should go back.’ But I had a Green Alien Registration document that meant I couldn’t stay in the UK. So, we went to France for three months and I got a job teaching at Canterbury University in New Zealand. Long story short, I scuttled back to the UK to write my professional exams and to get a job in a law firm. That was when I met Johan Steyn again and he sent me along to a shipping law firm. The shipping connection appealed to me because I had experience of it growing up.
I wasn’t a particularly good lawyer. I found it difficult to take instructions. So, I moved on and essentially went to work for a Chinese client, in the shipping industry. This was in the early 1980s when the shipping industry was consolidating. It was also the beginning of China’s opening up to the world. My first trip to China was on my 40th birthday. I travelled all over the country before it opened up. Being part of that process was a tremendous privilege.
Golden Ocean ended up over-extending and being taken over. IN 2000 I went back to South Africa and lectured on the master’s law programme in shipping at UCT. In 2003 I started a company to train seafarers In Cape Town and in 2005 I founded an offshore supply vessel company in Singapore. The OSV market had been in the doldrums for about 20 years, but owners were starting to build ships in Singapore and China. My Japanese shipping connections chartered vessels from me and traded them mostly in West Africa. I raised my finance in Norway. I was also able to place cadets on the vessels enabling them to gain experience at sea and thus complete their qualifications.
Since about 2011, I’ve lived substantially in Singapore. having a Canadian passport – through my Canadian mother – and having lived in New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, I’ve always said that I’m relatively at home anywhere, but I’m now happily particularly at home in Singapore. Working in shipping, I’ve met people from absolutely all over the place. It’s a bit like going to an event for Rhodes Scholars now. You have people from everywhere, which is fantastic
‘You have to stop chasing the next award’
I was a recipient of one of the South African school Rhodes Scholarships, which I was very privileged to get. I’m also an advocate for making those Scholarships open to everybody because the constituency that they represent is too narrow at the moment. I think that the new money that has come into the Rhodes Trust means that Cecil Rhodes and his wishes have become less important in the process. The Second Century Founders and their injection of new money has transformed the scholarship.
I think one of the difficulties of a thing like the Rhodes Scholarship is that most of the people who apply are achievers of some sort. But there comes a time when you have to stop chasing the next award. I would say that you should always put in more than you take out. And don’t take out more than you need. If you can achieve that in life, you’ve done well but there’s no such thing as legacy: when you’re gone, you’re gone.