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11 April 2018 Photo Leonie Bolleurs
First accredited ICS training in SA presented at UFS
Prof Andries Jordaan, Head of DiMTEC, with Greg Archer from the United States Forest Services, and Yong Sebastian Nyam, a DiMTEC PhD student from Cameroon.
The University of the Free State’s (UFS) Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa (DiMTEC) and the Free State Umbrella Fire Protection Association (FSUFPA) presented the first training exercise in the Free State, offering practical experience regarding the implementation of the Incident Command System (ICS) under simulated emergency conditions.

An Exercise Coordination Team (ECT), consisting of US instructors, under the leadership of Mike Kopitzke from the United States Forest Services, together with Johann Breytenbach from FSUFPA and supported by local personnel, facilitated the exercise.

Training complete with sand table exercise 
This dual site desktop exercise took place at the Rooipoort Training Centre outside Dewetsdorp and the DiMTEC offices in the Agriculture Building on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus. The Incident Management Team (IMT) training – complete with a sand table exercise   was presented at Rooipoort, At the same time a simulation of an Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) was offered at the DiMTEC offices. 

According to Prof Andries Jordaan, Head of DiMTEC, the exercise was based on a variety of actual scenarios that had previously taken place elsewhere in the Free State. The exercise simulated a train and bus accident on the Thaba Nchu road. “Using an incident like this keeps the training realistic and relevant,” he said.

In these exercises the work of different departments, including South African Police Services (SAPS), South African National Defence Force (SANDF), Transnet, Spoornet, Traffic Department, and Eskom are coordinated. “We would like to work with the National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) to implement a uniform Incident management system in South Africa where all departments speak the same language and have the same understanding of the role and responsibilities of a command structure,” Prof Jordaan said.

Accredited training the outcome
In 2017 Prof Jordaan, General Elias Mahlabane from the SAPS, and Johan Breytenbach from the FSUFPA, attended an incident command course in California in the US. They were introduced to the National Incident Management System (NIMS) in the US. The system was implemented after lessons learned during 9/11. “According to the NIMS structure, all government organisations at all levels, as well as emergency agencies, had to standardise terminology and systems,” said Prof Jordaan.

Insight gained during the visit and a work relationship with the United State Forest Services, provided Prof Jordaan and Breytenbach the necessary background to conduct training for incident management teams.

Currently DiMTEC is offering accredited ICS 100, 200 and 300 courses. To qualify as incident command managers, students need to attend the ICS courses together with the practical training. As part of the training they also need to shadow a qualified ICS manager during two real incidents. These courses are taking place in conjunction with the FSUFPA. 

News Archive

Lecture by Judge Albie Sachs: ‘Sites of memory, sites of conscience’
2015-03-23

Judge Albie Sachs

Human rights activist and former Constitutional Court Judge, Albie Sachs, will deliver a public lecture on the Bloemfontein Campus. The topic of his discussion will be ‘Sites of memory, sites of conscience’. This lecture will form part of a series that focuses on how the creative arts represent trauma and memory – and how these representations may ultimately pave the way to healing historical wounds.

The details of the event are:
Date: Thursday 26 March 2015
Time: 12:30
Venue: Albert Wessels Auditorium, Bloemfontein Campus
RSVP: Jo-Anne Naidoo at Naidooja@ufs.ac.za
A South African Sign Language interpreter will be present at the event.

Joining Judge Sachs on stage as respondent will be Dr Buhle Zuma, a young scholar and lecturer at the University of Cape Town's Psychology Department.

Expressing experiences of trauma
Judge Sachs is no stranger to the use of the arts as a way of expressing the inarticulable and overwhelming experiences of trauma. Targeted as an anti-apartheid freedom fighter, he lost his right arm and was blinded in one eye in a car bomb attack in 1988. As a judge of the Constitutional Court, he spearheaded conversations about the role of the arts in our constitutional democracy. This has led to the installation of some of the best artworks by South African artists at the Constitutional Court.

Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture Series on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past
This lecture will launch of the Vice Chancellor’s Lecture Series on Trauma, Memory and Representations of the Past. It forms part of a five-year research project led by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, funded by the Mellon Foundation. The event is hosted by the UFS Trauma, Forgiveness and Reconciliation Studies.

“One of the most remarkable aspects of trauma,” Prof Gobodo-Madikizela says, “is the loss of language, a moment of rupture that produces what some scholars have referred to as ‘speechless terror’. The arts, in all its forms – literary, performance, and visual – are a viable mechanism through which the unspeakable, traumatic past may be represented.”

These artistic forms of representing trauma are at the heart of this Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture Series. “We are interested not only in how experiences that transcend language are represented through the arts,” Prof Gobodo-Madikizela explains, “but also in probing the limits of trauma theory, and how the creative arts might be employed to bear witness in a way that may open up the possibility of healing.”

Dr Buhle Zuma
Former Mandela Rhodes scholar and one of the 2011 Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans, Dr Zuma is particularly interested in issues at the heart of our rainbow nation. His current research revolves around the question of freedom: what it means to be human for black people after centuries of dehumanisation, and the role of desire and fantasy in the political imagination of post-apartheid South Africa.

 

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