In Memoriam
Dr Jean-Claude Jacobs, who spent the better part of three decades shaping veterinary and livestock services across the Soutpansberg and the former Venda and Gazankulu homelands, died on 9 May at the age of 93. He passed away at the family farm Somershoek, outside Louis Trichardt, where he had been in the care of his daughter Anne.
Jacobs served as head of veterinary services for both Venda and Gazankulu from 1972 and remained in that role through Venda's independence in September 1979 until his retirement in October 1993. His career in southern Africa spanned more than three decades and took him from Namibia's Kaokoveld to the cattle ranches of the former Belgian Congo before he settled in Louis Trichardt in 1968.
Born on 7 January 1934 in Braine-le-Comte, Belgium, Jacobs grew up in central Africa, where his father worked as a medical practitioner in the Government Service of Rwanda and subsequently in the Belgian Congo — now the Democratic Republic of Congo. He attended primary school in Léopoldville, now Kinshasa, and secondary school in Elisabethville, now Lubumbashi.
He completed his first-year BSc at the University of Cape Town in 1954 and qualified as a veterinarian at Onderstepoort in 1958. In January 1960, he joined the South West Africa Division of Veterinary Services — now Namibia — and worked as a state veterinarian in the Kaokoveld for a year before returning to the Belgian Congo in March 1961, where he was employed by a large ranching company with 30,000 head of cattle in the Katanga Province.
By July 1967, deteriorating security in the country prompted his return to South Africa. He joined the SA Veterinary Service in June 1968 and was stationed in Louis Trichardt, becoming a naturalised South African citizen in 1972.
Beyond the Limpopo region, Jacobs participated in several international missions to Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and the Comoros Islands, aimed at developing livestock farming in those countries. In Gabon, he was involved in training people to become stock farmers and contributed to a study evaluating the trypano-tolerance of Ndama cattle, carried out in collaboration with the International Livestock Centre for Africa and the International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases in Kenya.
Jacobs married Jocelyne Renée Mathieu in September 1969. The couple's son was killed in an air crash; two daughters survived. Jocelyne passed away on 6 December 2024. He is survived by his daughters Anne and Pascale, six grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and family in Belgium and Sardinia.
A memorial service will be held on Saturday, 23 May, at the Catholic Church in Jeppe Street, Louis Trichardt, at 10:00.