disable the uitableview highlighting but allow the selection of individual cells

You can just set the cell's selection style to "None" from Storyboard:

Or from code:

cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone;

For Swift 3:

cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyle.none

For Swift 4 & above:

cell.selectionStyle = .none

Change UITableViewCell's selectedBackgroundView color to transparent.

    let clearView = UIView()
    clearView.backgroundColor = UIColor.clearColor() // Whatever color you like
    UITableViewCell.appearance().selectedBackgroundView = clearView

or to set for a specific cell:

cell.backgroundView = clearView

Try setting cell selection style to None -

[cell setSelectionStyle:UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone];

This will solve your problem