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01 January 2018

After South Africa’s battle with the record-breaking drought of 2015, Prof Andries Jordaan from our Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa(DiMTEC) saw room for improvement in dealing with this kind of disaster. 

Drought impact

Commercial farmers   who are usually net exporters of food crops   and communal farmers who own the bulk of the country’s livestock, were all hit hard in 2015. Most of the latter had no resources to spare as the drought progressed. The concern about the drought’s impact on the country’s food production and availability resulted in a joint goal of preventing food scarcity during future droughts.

Prof Jordaan’s visit to the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the US, several years ago prepared him to better equip communities in South Africa to deal with drought situations. “I recognised that in spite of the impact DiMTEC has been able to make on disaster preparedness, a gap remained in disaster response in South Africa.”

Sharing knowledge

In August this year Prof Jordaan again visited the NDMC. This time he requested a few key players in South Africa’s agriculture and disaster response communities to join him. With him were Janse Rabie, head of Natural Resources at AgriSA, a nonprofit organisation that functions as an interface between the government and about 28 000 South Africa farmers, and Moses Musiwale Khangale, director of Fire Services for the South African Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.

The South African delegation met with and learnt from climatologists, geospatial technologists, and outreach and planning analysts. 

News Archive

Judge Deon van Zyl donates prominent collection of legal books to the UFS
2009-12-08

 His Honourable Judge Deon van Zyl, Inspecting Judge of Prisons recently donated his collection history of law books, including valuable editions of Roman Dutch law resources and works on Roman law and history of law to the Faculty of Law at the University of the Free State (UFS). “I trust that this will be of use as aids for research and training in law,” Judge Van Zyl said.

This is the biggest collection ever that the faculty received.

Prof. Johan Henning, Dean of the Faculty of Law says this collection is of invaluable worth for the faculty as well as the UFS. This unique source will enables the faculty to place postgraduate learning and research about the common law on a much higher level. “Without this collection the faculty will have been much poorer,” Prof. Henning said.

Judge Van Zyl made this donation showing his appreciation for what the Faculty has managed to accomplish over the years. At age 26, from 1 July 1971 to 31 December 1973, he was the first Head of and Professor in the Department of Roman Law and History of Law who taught in the Faculty of Law at the UFS.
Photo: Stephen Collett

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