Michael Gelfand

Michael Gelfand OBE, CBE, Knight of the Order of St. Sylvester, was one of Zimbabwe's most distinguished colonial medical practitioners, who received a Papal Order of the Knighthood of St. Sylvester.[1] Gelfand was noted for a humanistic approach to medicine, and for his historical and ethnographic works, which are considered to have played an important role in his reexamination of significant colonial prejudices he held about African peoples, culture, and religious practices.[2][3]

Gelfand was born in Wynberg, Cape Province, South Africa, in 1912, of immigrant Lithuanian parents, and he died on 12 July 1985, while attending a patient in the Avenues Clinic in Harare, Zimbabwe. Gelfand was a practitioner of Judaism.[4]

After qualifying in South Africa and working there and in England, in 1939 he joined the then-Southern Rhodesia Medical Service as Physician, Pathologist and Radiologist. He had married a Bulawayan, Esther Kollenberg, whom he had met at the University of Cape Town. When their first of three daughters was due, they joined Esther's family in Rhodesia. Once in government service, he quickly gained a reputation by being the only doctor to correctly diagnose the illness of the wife of the Head of the Medical Services.

In 1955, he founded the Central African Journal of Medicine with Joseph Ritchken, and remained its co-editor for many years.[5]

In 1962, he joined the then-University of Rhodesia as founding Professor of African Medicine. From 1970 until his retirement, in 1977, he was Professor and Head of Department of Medicine, and thereafter Emeritius Professor and Senior Clinical Research Fellow.

He was a prolific writer: 330 articles and monographs in various journals on topics ranging from medicine, ethics, philosophy, history and religion, to Shona custom, religion and culture, with titles including "Migration of African Labourers in Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1890 - 1914)"[6] He wrote more than 30 books, amongst them The Sick African and Livingstone, the Doctor.

In his 1979 article, "The infrequency of homosexuality in traditional Shona society," he expressed his homophobic leanings: "The traditional Shona have none of the problems associated with homosexuality [so] obviously they must have a valuable method of bringing up children, especially with regards to normal sex relations, thus avoiding this anomaly so frequent in Western society." [Central African Journal of Medicine 25 (9): 201-2 ]

Esther Gelfand, his widow, still lives in Harare, in the same house they shared together for many years.