List of alumni of the University of Cape Town

This list of the notable alumni of the University of Cape Town is divided into the six faculties of the university: Commerce, Humanities, Sciences, Health Sciences, Engineering, and Law.

Commerce

 * Raymond Ackerman, businessman, who purchased the Pick 'n Pay supermarket group from its founder; philanthropist
 * Roelof Botha, grandson of Pik Botha; began his career as an actuary and became a venture capitalist
 * Polly Courtice, founder Director of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and member of the Supervisory Board of Mercedes Benz Group
 * Chelsy Davy, ex-girlfriend of Britain's Prince Harry
 * Sir Bradley Fried, ex-chief executive of Investec Bank; current chairman of Goldman Sachs International
 * Geordin Hill-Lewis, Mayor of Cape Town (2021– )
 * Nick Mallett, played for and later coached the Springboks, South Africa's national rugby union team
 * Tshediso Matona, CEO of Eskom
 * Mark Nielsen, CEO of Talent
 * Mark Shuttleworth, billionaire entrepreneur; founder of Canonical Ltd; sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux distribution; second space tourist
 * Kimeshan Naidoo, entreprenuer and engineer, founder of Unibuddy.

Humanities

 * Lauren Beukes, international best-selling author of The Shining Girls, winner of Arthur C. Clarke Award
 * J. M. Coetzee, Professor Emeritus, Literature, 2003
 * Jean Comaroff, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago
 * John Comaroff, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago
 * Harold Cressy, head teacher and first coloured person to gain a degree in South Africa
 * Janette Deacon, archaeologist specialising in heritage management and rock art conservation
 * Roger Ebert, film critic, graduated with an English degree as part of a Rotary International program
 * David Fanning, Emmy Award-winning producer of Frontline
 * Bobby Godsell, Masters of Arts, later CEO of AngloGold Ashanti and Chairman of Eskom
 * Johannes de Villiers Graaff, professor of welfare economics; economist
 * Adrian Guelke, Professor of Comparative Politics at Queen's University Belfast
 * Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, deputy prime minister of South Africa, obtained an M.A. at the age of 17
 * Philip Edgecumbe Hughes, New Testament scholar, Professor at Westminster Theological Seminary
 * Edward Neville Isdell, former CEO of the Coca-Cola Company
 * Gail Kelly, CEO of Westpac; 8th most influential woman in the world, according to Forbes magazine
 * David Lewis-Williams, Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand specialising in Upper-Palaeolithic and Bushmen rock art
 * Gwen Lister, South African-born Namibian journalist; anti-apartheid activist; founder of The Namibian
 * Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk Louw, Afrikaans-language poet, playwright and scholar
 * Archie Mafeje, anthropologist and activist who significantly contributed to the decolonization of African identity and its historical past, criticising anthropology's typically Eurocentric techniques and beliefs; also known for the "Mafeje affair"
 * Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop of Cape Town, PhD from the University of Cape Town
 * Steven Markovitz, award-winning film and television producer
 * Ebrahim Patel, held positions as South African Minister of Trade and Industry and as the Minister of Economic Development, on the University Council of UCT; former staffer in the Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit in the School of Economics
 * André du Pisani, political scientist and professor at University of Namibia
 * Nik Rabinowitz, comedian, actor and author
 * Mamphela Ramphele, managing director of the World Bank; former Vice-Chancellor of UCT
 * Isaac Schapera, Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics; leading expert in the anthropology of South African tribesmen
 * Nora Schimming-Chase, Namibia's first ambassador to Germany, obtained a teaching diploma from UCT in 1961
 * Carmel Schrire, Professor of Archaeology, Rutgers University
 * Robert Carl-Heinz Shell, South African author and professor of African Studies
 * Lady Skollie, feminist artist and activist
 * Lady Kitty Spencer (born 1990), English model
 * Andries Treurnicht, founder and the leader of the Conservative Party in South Africa
 * Elizabeth Anne Voigt, archaeologist and director of the McGregor Museum
 * Mary Watson, 2006 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing

Music

 * Richard Cock, conductor
 * Cromwell Everson, classical music composer and composer of the first Afrikaans opera
 * Ernest Fleischmann, impresario best known for his tenure at the Los Angeles Philharmonic
 * Malcolm Forsyth, musician; composer; Canadian Composer of the Year; Juno Award winner; member of Order of Canada
 * Hendrik Hofmeyr, composer and music theorist; winner of the 1997 Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Composition Prize; Professor of Music at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town
 * Galt MacDermot, composer of the musical Hair
 * Melanie Scholtz, vocalist, operas, jazz, pop, r&b, and classical music; graduated from the School of Opera
 * Barry Smith, organist, conductor, musicologist, former Associate Professor of Music at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town
 * Désirée Talbot, operatic soprano and one of the founding members of the UCT Opera Company
 * Pretty Yende, operatic soprano

Fine art

 * Anne Bean, British installation and performance artist
 * Alex Binaris, fashion model
 * Breyten Breytenbach, author
 * Roger Ebert, Pulitzer Award-winning American film critic and writer
 * Kai Lossgott, interdisciplinary artist
 * Simphiwe Ndzube, visual artist
 * Claudette Schreuders, South African sculptor and painter
 * Jonathan Shapiro, South African political cartoonist known as "Zapiro"
 * Marjorie van Heerden, South African writer and illustrator of children's books
 * Pauline Vogelpoel, arts administrator at the Contemporary Art Society and Tate Gallery

Drama

 * Jodi Balfour, actress
 * Katlego Danke, actress
 * Nadia Davids, playwright, novelist, and author of short stories, and screenplays
 * Vincent Ebrahim, known for his role on The Kumars at No. 42
 * Richard E. Grant, actor
 * Kagiso Lediga, stand-up comedian, actor and director
 * Zolani Mahola, lead singer of the South African band Freshlyground
 * Zandile Msutwana, actress
 * Koleka Putuma, poet and theatre-maker

Sciences

 * Professor Allan McLeod Cormack, Medicine, 1979
 * Hilary Deacon, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Stellenbosch specialising in the emergence of modern humans and African archaeology
 * Emanuel Derman, Goldman Sachs financial engineer and author of My Life As A Quant
 * Jonathan M. Dorfan, director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
 * Professor Mulalo Doyoyo, South African engineer and inventor; known for inventing cenocell, a cementless concrete
 * George Ellis, cosmologist; collaborator with Stephen Hawking; winner of the 2004 Templeton Prize
 * Tim Hawarden, astrophysicist
 * Michael David Kirchmann, architect and developer, founder of GDSNY
 * Sir Aaron Klug, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1982
 * Paul Maritz, former Microsoft executive; VMware CEO
 * Magdalena Sauer, first woman to qualify as an architect in South Africa
 * Sydney Harold Skaife, South African entomologist and naturalist
 * Stanley Skewes, number theorist most famous in popular mathematics for his bound for the point of changeover in magnitude between the number of primes up to a certain number and an important approximation of this, which was for many years the largest finite number ever legitimately used in a research paper
 * Edith Layard Stephens, South African botanist
 * Willem Van Biljon, former co-founder of Mosaic Software, acquired by S1 Corporation ; founder of Nimbula, a startup funded by Sequoia Capital
 * Richard van der Riet Woolley, British astronomer who became Astronomer Royal

Health sciences

 * Neil Aggett, South African trade union leader and labour activist who died in custody after 70 days' detention without trial
 * Frances Ames, first woman to receive an MD degree from UCT; first female professor at UCT
 * Christiaan Barnard, professor, performed the world's first heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital
 * Enid Charles, statistician and demographer
 * Alan Christoffels, bioinformatics scientist, academic, and an author
 * David Cooper, theorist and leader in the anti-psychiatry movement
 * Tamaryn Green, medical doctor, Miss South Africa 2018 and 1st runner-up at Miss Universe 2018
 * Cecil Helman, physician, medical anthropologist and author
 * Margaret Keay (1911–1998), plant pathologist
 * Bongani Mayosi, cardiologist and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine
 * Mervyn Maze, anaesthesiologist, medical researcher and academic
 * Riaad Moosa, comedian, actor and doctor
 * Jean Nachega, physician, infectious diseases doctor and academic
 * Gisela Sole, professor of physiotherapy at University of Otago in New Zealand
 * Max Theiler, virologist awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1951 for developing a vaccine against yellow fever
 * Louis Vogelpoel, cardiologist and one of the founding members of the Cardiac Clinic at Groote Schuur Hospital as well as a highly regarded horticultural scholar and researcher
 * Carolyn Williamson, virologist and microbiologist, professor of medical virology
 * Heather Zar, paediatric pulmonologist and Chair Department of Paediatrics

Social sciences

 * John Karlin, industrial psychologist whose research led to the rectangular push-button telephone
 * Debora Patta, broadcast journalist and television producer
 * Joel Pollak, editor-in-chief of Breitbart News
 * Josina Z. Machel, women's rights activist
 * Wanga Zembe-Mkabile, social policy researcher

Law

 * David Bloomberg, former Mayor of Cape Town (1973–1975) and defence attorney for Dimitri Tsafendas, who fatally stabbed the Prime Minister, Dr H.F. Verwoerd, in Parliament in 1966
 * Sheila Camerer, South African politician; former Deputy Minister of Justice; long-serving Member of Parliament of the main opposition the Democratic Alliance; ambassador to Bulgaria; completed a Bachelor of Law degree at UCT in 1964
 * Ryan Coetzee, South African politician; former CEO of the Democratic Alliance and Shadow Minister of Economic Development; chief strategist for Western Cape premier Helen Zille; graduated from UCT in 1994
 * Beric John Croome, Advocate of the High Court of South Africa; Chartered Accountant CA (SA); taxpayers' rights pioneer; completed a Bachelor of Commerce degree (1980), Certificate in the Theory of Accountancy (1981) and a PhD (Commercial Law) (2008) at UCT
 * Zainunnisa "Cissie" Gool, anti-apartheid political and civil rights leader
 * Zuleikha Hassan, Kenyan politician; Kwale County Woman Representative and Member of Parliament
 * Stephen Jolly, Australian activist and politician
 * Fana Mokoena, South African politician and actor, member of the National Assembly of South Africa and a delegate to the National Council of Provinces
 * Ian Neilson, Executive Deputy Mayor of Cape Town
 * Dullah Omar, South African anti-apartheid activist; lawyer; Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa; minister in the South African cabinet from 1994 until his death
 * Kate O'Regan, former Constitutional Court of South Africa judge
 * Albie Sachs, Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa
 * James Selfe, long-serving Member of Parliament with the Democratic Alliance; chairperson of the party's federal council; holds a master's degree from UCT
 * Donald Woods, South African journalist and anti-apartheid activist
 * Percy Yutar, South Africa's first Jewish attorney-general and prosecutor of Nelson Mandela in the 1963 Rivonia Treason Trial.