Jock Alves

Alves was of Scottish origin.^[1] Alves earned his Bachelor of Arts from a South African university.^[2] He pursued his doctorate at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, but had to return to Southern Rhodesia in 1947 before completing his degree.^[3] He later returned and was awarded a PhD in 1953.^[4][5]

Alves was a physician and was the director of the Bilharzia and Malaria Research Laboratory in Salisbury from 1944 into the 1950s.^[6][7][8][9] He also belonged to the department of parasitology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.^[7] He was considered an international authority on bilharzia, and during his tenure at the laboratory developed a treatment for the disease that was successfully tested on 25 patients.^[6][8][9] He served on the World Health Organization (WHO) expert committee on parasitic diseases.^[10] In 1958, he led a WHO project in the Philippines.^[11] In 1961, he was senior advisor on a WHO malaria eradication project in the Solomon Islands.^[4]

Alves was elected to the Salisbury City Council and served as deputy mayor from 1971 to 1972 under Mayor Roger Bates.^[12] On 2 August 1972, he was sworn in as mayor Salisbury at a special meeting of the city council.^[13] He served as mayor until 7 August 1974, when he was succeeded by Tony Tanser.^[14] Alves continued to serve on the city council, and later became a member of the Rhodesian senate.^[15] In 1978, as chairman of the city council's African affairs committee, Alves introduced a scheme to set up a two-tier system in which blacks and whites would each have municipal representation on their own city councils.^[15] The proposal passed without debate in January 1978.^[15] In June 1978, Alves made a speech before the senate in which he urged the Rhodesian government to include the African nationalist leader Joshua Nkomo, and possibly Robert Mugabe, in any potential settlement negotiations.^[16] He was a member of the ruling Rhodesian Front party, and was for a time a party spokesman.^[17]

Alves died at Andrew Fleming Hospital in Salisbury on 10 February 1979, aged 70.^[18]