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18 December 2018 | Story Thabo Kessah | Photo Thabo Kessah
Charlotte Maxeke
Residence students preparing old tyres to use in new playing swings.

The name Charlotte Maxeke is, since time immemorial, associated with ‘hope’ for the downtrodden Black majority. And the name Fulufhelo means ‘hope’ in Tshivenda, the language spoken mainly in Limpopo, her birth province. She was the first black South African woman to earn a degree, a Bachelor of Science from the Wilberforce University in the Unites States of America in 1901.

Khayelisha and Khayelethu also project a very high expectation of ‘hope’. Considering our painful past dominated by the 1913 Land Act, the former literally means ‘our new home’, whilst the latter means ‘our home’.

Fast forward to 2018 at the University of the Free State’s Qwaqwa Campus. These are the names of student residences that brought hope to the needy when they collaborated with Community Engagement to give back to their communities.

“The need to give back was sparked by our encounter with needy students on campus. We then thought that if we could do the little for our fellow students who are part of the No Student Hungry (NSH) campaign, we could actually extend this to those who are even worse off,” said Beyoncé Matsoso, Prime of Charlotte Maxeke and Residence for first year students.

“Taking time out to give toys, play with the kids on the swings we erected for them, helping them with their laundry and giving them fruit and food bought from our own pockets gave us a lot of satisfaction,” said Beyoncé, a final year BA Psychology and Languages student.

Acknowledging the role played by Residence Head, Makeresemese Mokhatla, in the whole exercise was Sikolethu Dodo, Prime of Khayelitsha / Khayelethu Residence.

“Having had a dialogue on how we can make other people’s lives better with our Residence Head Makeresemese Mokhatla and Mme Matsoso from Community Engagement led to this initiative. Some of us will be going out to the world of work soon and this has equipped us with necessary skills like compassion,” said Sikolethu, a final year BAdmin student.

The centres visited were the Itsoseng housing disabled children as well as the Team Spirit Hospice.

News Archive

Central SRC constitution for UFS approved by Council
2005-07-20

University of the Free State Fact Sheet

1. The Council of the University of the Free State (UFS) on 10 June 2005 unanimously approved the establishment of a Central Student Representative Council (CSRC)  to constitute a legitimate basis for the democratic participation of students of all three of its campuses in the governance of the university.

2. In a major breakthrough and transformation step for student governance, the Central SRC will include representatives of the main campus in Bloemfontein, the Vista Bloemfontein campus and the Qwaqwa campus of the UFS.

3. The need to establish the Central SRC follows the incorporation of the Qwaqwa campus into the UFS in January 2003 and the incorporation of the Vista campus in Bloemfontein into the UFS in January 2004.

4. The constitution of the Central SRC is the outcome of a consensus reached during a lengthy process of negotiation between the SRCs of the three UFS campuses, indirectly involving diverse student formations such as Sasco, ANCYL, YCL, Pasma, SASO, SADESMO, AZASCO, SCO, HEREXVII, KovsieAlliance, ACDP, etc. Independent constitutional and political experts facilitated key parts of the negotiation process.

5. In this process, the UFS management went out of its way to ensure the participation of all student formations, especially Sasco and the ANC Youth League, as well as the duly elected SRC officials of the three campuses.

6. With the establishment of a Central SRC, the UFS has adopted a federal student governance model whereby the CSRC is the highest representative student body on matters of common concern for all students. The three campuses of the UFS will retain SRC structures for each campus with powers and responsibilities for matters affecting the particular campus.

7. The central SRC will have 12 members made up of delegates of the different campus SRCs, including the presidents of these three SRCs. In total, the main campus will have 5 representatives, the Qwaqwa campus will have 4 representatives and the Vista campus will have 3 representatives. This ratio ensures a strong voice for the smaller campuses in the central SRC.

8. This arrangement will be reviewed after a year to make allowance for the phasing out of undergraduate (pipeline) students at the Vista campus, as was agreed in the negotiations preceding the incorporation of that campus into the UFS.

9. From these 12 members a central SRC president will be chosen on a quarterly basis to represent the general student body at Executive Management, Senate and Council.

10. The historic official inauguration of the first Central SRC is scheduled to take place in early August 2005.

11. This event, like the adoption of a broadly negotiated new constitution for the main campus SRC, represents a  breakthrough in that all three campus SRCs delegations and all relevant student organizations have been part of the process and have accepted the outcome of the process.

20 July 2005

 

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