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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

Kovsie student nominated for 2012 national music award
2012-09-08

Sibongile Potelwa
Photo: Supplied
6 September 2012

Sibongile Potelwa, a postgraduate student at our university, has been nominated for the 2012 South African Traditional Music Achievement (SATMA) Award in the category “Best Praise Singer”.

Sibongile, who studies Financial Economics & Investment, has been a busy student on the Bloemfontein Campus, with a list of achievements that continues to grow. In his first year, he received a certificate for being on the list of the Top 10 First Years in academics at Villa Bravado residence and he was inducted as a member of the Golden Key International Honour Society in his second year. He was also a tutor in Accounting and Economics for first-year students. This year, Sibongile became a Student Ambassador for the university in the Office of the Rector.

Sibongile performs under the stage name “Sijadu” and has been involved in praise poetry since the age of 11. He lists his recent performance at the Charlotte Maxeke Memorial Lecture, where he performed in front of President Jacob Zuma and other cabinet ministers, as one of his favourites.

“I would like to appeal to the university community, the Free State Province and South Africa at large to vote for me. This award absolutely belongs to Kovsies and therefore I believe that we cannot let the opportunity pass us by,” says Sijadu.

The SATMA Awards take place on 27 October 2012 in East London in the Eastern Cape. Voting lines will be open until 26 October. People can vote by sending a sms with the following information: SATMA, SIJADU, BEST PRAISE SINGER to 34066. Each sms costs R2.
 

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