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Prof Marian Tredoux, Associate Professor in the
Department of Geology at the University of the Free State,
recently had a mineral named after her.
Photo: Sonia Small
Prof Marian Tredoux is a geochemist and lecturer in the Department of Geology at the University of the Free State (UFS). Her research interests are rocks, particularly the chemistry of rocks and the minerals they are composed of – chemicals similar to those found in laboratories, although they occur in nature.
Prof Tredoux started her research career at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), after which she spent a number of years at the University of Cape Town (UCT). For the past 11 years, she has been at the UFS, which has brought her in close proximity of her primary field-research area in Barberton. This fascinating part of the country has been the focus of her research for 30 years. She has always been intrigued by the earth's crust in this area, which she describes as "very old, very strange, and very interesting".
Prof Tredoux has been collaborating with colleagues and peers overseas in an attempt to unravel the intricacies of this unusual geological area. Some of these colleagues recently discovered a new mineral in one of the rock formations of the Barberton mountain range. They decided to name the mineral after Prof Tredoux, dubbing it tredouxite. "I am very honoured by this, and very grateful that all these years of collaboration are being acknowledged," Prof Tredoux said.
Award-winning photographer exhibits ravages of war, 25 May 2016 until 17 June 2016
2016-06-02
The ruins of the Dimbaza Border Industrial Park built
in the 1970s as a source of cheap labour for industrialists
and ostensible employment for Ciskei Homeland citizens.
This industrial zone collapsed after 1994.
Photo: Images courtesy of the Galerie Seippel.
All images © Cedric Nunn
Cedric Nunn’s latest photographic exhibition, Unsettled: One Hundred Years War of Resistance by Xhosa Against Boer and British, opened on 25 May 2016 at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery of University of the Free State, and will run until 17 June 2016. Since 2014, the exhibition has travelled through South Africa and the USA as well as Germany.
The photographer, documentary film-maker, and artist’s photographic journey was launched in the early 1980s in Durban. In 2011, he won the first FNB Joburg Art Fair Award.
Narratives of the victors and the vanquished
Unsettled deals with the nine wars that Xhosa people were subjected to between 1779 and 1879 in their fight against Afrikaner and British colonial settler forces. Nunn’s art seeks to instigate social change, and highlight lesser-seen aspects of society.
The work emanated from his awareness of a notable gap in the telling of this piece of South African history, as well as the fact that, to date, little has been done to memorialise these acts of colonial aggression and Xhosa resistance. He decided to document the land where these struggles took place.
“Through revisiting this painful past in the contemporary scenes of today, this work attempts to place the present in its factual context of dispossession and conquest,” said Nunn.
Unsettled forms the first component of what will be a trilogy. The next component will address the legacy of colonial dispossession through “bringing ‘the first inhabitants’ back into the picture by giving a select number of self-describing Khoi, Griqua, and San or Bushmen a contemporary face and presence”. The final component will look at slavery.