Roger M. Strover FRCS attended Plumtree School in Rhodesia between 1946 and 1951 — the same country where his father Minto had served as the only doctor across 30,000 square miles. He qualified in medicine, earned his Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, and specialised in plastic, maxillo-facial and reconstructive surgery. From 1963 he was a registered specialist plastic surgeon, establishing his practice at the Wynberg Medical Centre in Cape Town and serving as Principal Consulting Surgeon and clinical lecturer at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital — the institution where Christiaan Barnard performed the world's first human heart transplant in 1967.
His friends called him Rogermatic. Not because he was mechanical or cold — but because whatever needed fixing, he fixed it. Broken instruments, broken bodies, broken systems. He understood how things moved. Not as an artist but as an engineer of tissue — which is precisely what a plastic surgeon is.
McIndoe, Penn
and Davies
Roger Strover was fortunate enough to have been taught by Sir Archibald McIndoe — one of the most important surgeons of the twentieth century. McIndoe pioneered reconstructive plastic surgery for badly burned RAF pilots during the Second World War, understanding that rebuilding a face was also rebuilding a person. He transformed plastic surgery from a cosmetic specialty into a profound humanitarian one. To have trained under him in the early 1960s was to receive a direct transmission from the man who had defined what the specialty was for.
He was also taught by Jack Penn — one of South Africa's most celebrated plastic surgeons — and by David Davies, who by all accounts preferred Roger over his own son. That is the highest professional compliment a mentor can pay. It means he saw in Roger something he couldn't manufacture in his own blood.
"I could make you any surgeon. But not a plastic surgeon. You don't have the patience." — Roger to his son Bruce, closing one door and opening exactly the right one.
Roger's rules of
plastic surgery
He passed twelve rules to his son across the supper table. They are reproduced here exactly as they were given — in his voice, not tidied up — because the untidiness is the point. These are not textbook principles. They are the compressed wisdom of a career, transmissible only from hand to hand.
The only plastic surgeon
in a conflict
During the Rhodesian Bush War, Roger Strover was the sole plastic surgeon available. Every blast injury requiring reconstruction. Every burn demanding tissue repair. Every facial trauma needing a surgeon who could restore the human form. There was no one else. He published clinical observations during the conflict — recording what he saw and contributing it to the literature at a time when most surgeons would have considered survival of the workload sufficient.
On the night of December 3rd 1967 — the night of the world's first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur — Roger was in the adjacent theatre, fixing a hand. He told Bob Maloy, who was nearby, what was happening next door. Bob Maloy went on to become one of the principal journalists covering Christiaan Barnard's work. He thanked Roger for his career.
The clinic that
outlasted him
Founded to close a gap.
Still closing it today.
South Africa carries one of the highest melanoma burdens in the world. Roger Strover co-founded the Cape Melanoma Clinic at Groote Schuur in the early 1980s — revolutionary for pairing a plastic surgeon and an oncologist in the same room, allowing simultaneous screening, immediate cross-consultation, and rapid treatment planning.
He ran the clinic continuously for over two decades. In 2006, on his retirement, he passed the leadership to his surgical colleague Dr Roger Graham. The clinic continues. The patients it sees today are the beneficiaries of an institution a surgeon built because it needed to exist.
Work that entered
the permanent literature
Dick, J.S. & Strover, R.M. (1971). "Vaginoplasty following vesicovaginal fistula repair: a preliminary report." South African Medical Journal, 45(22), 617–620.
Published June 1971. Detailed reconstructive techniques using tissue flaps to treat vaginal stenosis following severe trauma or obstructed labour. A precursor to standard regional flaps — TRAM and abdominal wall variations — now central to reconstructive surgery globally. Still cited in the international literature on obstetric fistula reconstruction fifty years later.
Hudson, D.A., Krige, J.E.J., Strover, R.M., & King, H.S. (1990). "Subungual melanoma of the hand." Journal of Hand Surgery (British Volume), 15(3), 288–290.
Published from the Cape Melanoma Clinic. Contributed to clinical understanding of subungual melanoma — a variant frequently misdiagnosed, carrying disproportionate mortality as a result.
How he passed it
to his son
Margette — née Tighe Ketteringham, from Hermanus, direct descendant of the MacFarlane clan that founded the town — met Roger in casualty at Groote Schuur in 1961. She thought he was a medical student; he looked so young. She walked up to him. Three months later they were married. She became his scrub sister, which meant she watched his hands work for years before she ever watched him from the other side of a table. She made sure the patients paid. She kept him on the straight and narrow. She was the infrastructure of everything.
Throughout his undergraduate years at UCT — 1992 to 1998 — his son Bruce assisted Roger in theatre three times a week, full operating slates, and had supper with his parents almost every evening. Six years. The twelve rules. The cases talked through over the table. The standard transmitted not by lecture but by proximity and repetition and a father who went to work to get better each time, not to get paid.
Roger had written a letter to old friends in September 1996: "Bruce is nearing the end of fourth year and loving it. He is as enthusiastic as a puppy and drives Ticks and Samantha mad when he comes to supper because he spends all his time talking shop to me."
Margette died in 2015, after twelve years of Alzheimer's disease. Roger visited her every day in frail care. He could fix anything — but not this. Nine months after she died, he followed. The medical word is broken heart syndrome. Roger would have known the physiology of it. It wouldn't have mattered at all.
Minto built a clinic network across 30,000 square miles of Rhodesia. Roger built the Cape Melanoma Clinic. Angus built the Droitwich Knee Clinic, the London Knee Clinic, and The Knee Foundation. Dr. Bruce Strover is currently running a programme to bring Iraqi hospital practice to European standards in Najaf.
Each generation of this family has looked at what was missing and built it. Not as ambition. As obligation.
During his undergraduate years at UCT, Bruce assisted his father in theatre three times a week and came home to supper almost every night. Roger's blood pressure machine — inherited from Minto — is still in the family. The transmission is unbroken.