Ubuntu is an African concept of mutual support under a communal umbrella. It's a principle embodied by the winners of Nature's 2007 South Africa Mentoring Awards.

Barry Fabian, who won the lifetime achievement award, and mid-career recipient Charles de Koning are professors at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Both returned to South Africa after training abroad. Nominators praised them not only for their scientific acumen but also for their ability to pass it on without condescension, and for their equitable treatment of all, regardless of race, sex or background.

Fabian was inspired by his own mentor, Margaret Kalk, who graded his essay from jail after being arrested on an anti-apartheid protest. Now an emeritus professor of developmental biology, he says that academics in South Africa have a responsibility not just to train young scientists, but to create an informed scientific culture within government, the civil services, the media and the public. Jane den Hollander, pro-vice-chancellor of Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia, remembers struggling to adapt as an undergraduate from a small mining town. With Fabian's encouragement, she went on to do her MSc with him. Later she was offered a position outside academia. “Everyone but Barry thought I was making a great error,” Hollander says. Fabian asked her about her skills, strengths and what she wanted in life: indirect guidance that helped her make a satisfactory decision.

De Koning has had 32 MSc and PhD students, who have helped him produce 61 of his 75 published papers. Perhaps the greatest testament to his efforts is the number of his students who stay in science. Many undergraduates are pressured to leave with a BSc, then work in industry to support their extended families. He's sympathetic, but emphasizes the rewards of postgraduate education.

One student had tended cattle and worked in the mines before coming to Witwatersrand. With constant encouragement from de Koning, he eventually did a PhD in Germany and a postdoc in Atlanta, Georgia, before returning to South Africa.

De Koning's commitment is summed up by Edwin Mmutlane, a research chemist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria. “On a continent characterized by a dearth of skills and scientific role models, he is doing a phenomenal job as a relatively young person who could have otherwise opted for the alluring prospects of the developed world,” says Mmutlane.