The Board

The Board

Arne Nielsen
Board Member

Arne Nielsen has served as a Financial Director of Solchem Limited Company and Solms Van Niekerk Company. He has also been a management member of the Accounting Practice Dulverton Financial Service. Arne also currently holds the portfolio trustee for Trust inter alia , namely John Charles Lawton family, Woodleigh Body Corporate, Van Der Watt Family Trust, The Vermeulen Family Trust and the Honiton Trust.

Mercy Brown-Luthango
Board Member

Mercy Brown-Luthango is a Research officer and City Lab coordinator for African Centre for Cities (ACC). She started her career at ACC in 2008 till currently. Her job amongst other responsibilities entails coordinating the Philippi City Lab, supervision of Postgraduate students and conveying the “Community Development” module of ACC’s Mphil in Urban Infrastructure Design and Management course.

Mercy Brown-Luthango worked as Gender Research Coordinator from 2001 to 2004 for Labour Research Services (LRS). At the LRS she was responsible for managing and coordinating a joint research project between LRS, Women on Farms Project (WFP) and the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS). This project used a participatory action research methodology and involved female farm workers in the auditing of their living and working conditions on selected wine farms.

From the year 2006 till 2008, Mercy Brown-Luthango was at position at Development Action Group (DAG), At DAG she was a Researcher and Impact Area Coordinator and her position entailed conceptualising, initiating and implementing a new advocacy impact area in the organisation around Land Value Capture

Seth Maqetuka
Board Member

Seth is a contract service provider to the National Treasury Cities Support Programme (CSP) and is charged with the responsibility of managing the CSP Human Settlements Component and City Coordinator for Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality

Seth has more than 24 years of practical and management experience in community-based housing and development in cities. He started his career in 1987 as Environmental Health Practitioner for a regional authority, then from 1993 he worked in the planning of housing projects as Project Facilitation Manager in one of the country’s largest Presidential Integrated RDP project, involving 30 communities. He has been a housing operations manager for the City of Tygerberg where he was responsible for 12 000 municipal rental units and 13 Housing Estate Housing Offices. Seth has also served as a director for Capacity Building in the National Department of Housing, where he managed the National Housing Capacity Development Programme.

For 3 years , as from the year 2004, Seth was a Chief Director for Housing Delivery for the Western Cape Provincial Government, in which capacity he was responsible for the implementation of all housing programmes in the Province, including the Housing Subsidy Programme, as well as policy development, the Provincial Housing Development Plan, the Provincial Housing Budget and financial transfers to municipalities.

From 2007 till 2014 he served as the Executive Director for Human Settlements with Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality and City of Cape Town. Seth is currently serving on the following Boards as Non-Executive Director Habitat for Humanity in South Africa and the Leadership Legacy (L.E.A.D Legacy – PE).

Sophie Oldfield
Board Member

Sophie Oldfield holds the University of Basel–University of Cape Town Professorship in Urban Studies, based at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town. She is an urban and human geographer with a focus on cities in the Global South through her theoretical and primary research and as co-editor of the path breaking Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South (Routledge, 2014). She served as president of the Society of South African Geographers from 2012 to 2014 and helping to establish and develop the Southern African City Studies Network from 2007 to the present.