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05 June 2018 Photo Supplied
Digging up truth South Africa was way different to what you thought
Archaeological excavations in the Wonderwerk Cave, north of Kuruman in the Northern Cape.

Research fellow Dr Lloyd Rossouw from the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS) recently published an article in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal with Dr Michaela Ecker from the University of Toronto as lead author, and Dr James Brink, research fellow at the UFS Centre for Environmental Management. The findings described in “The palaeoecological context of the Oldowan-Acheulean in southern Africa” provides the first extensive paleoenvironmental sequence for the interior of southern Africa by applying a combination of methods for environmental reconstruction at Wonderwerk Cave, which have yielded multiple evidence of early human occupation dating back almost two million years ago.

Where water once was
The Wonderwerk Cave is found north of the Kuruman hills (situated in Northern Cape) a 140m long tube with a low ceiling. The surroundings are harsh. Semi-arid conditions allow for the survival of only hardy bushes, trees, and grasses. But during the Early Pleistocene, stepping out of the Wonderwerk Cave you would have been greeted by a completely different site, the researchers found. Using carbon and oxygen stable isotope analysis on the teeth of herbivores (Dr Ecker), fossil faunal abundance (Dr Brink), as well as the analysis of microscopic plant silica remains (phytoliths) excavated from fossil soils inside the cave (Dr Rossouw), the results show that ancient environments in the central interior of southern Africa were significantly wetter and housed a plant community unlike any other in the modern African savanna. 

What difference does it make?
While East African research shows increasing aridity and the spread of summer-rainfall grasslands more than a million years ago, the results from this study indicate an interesting twist. During the same period, shifts in rainfall seasonality allowed for alternating summer and winter-rainfall grass occurrences coupled with prolonged wetlands, that remained major components of Early Pleistocene (more or less the period between one and two million years ago) environments in the central interior of southern Africa. That means our human ancestors were also living and evolving in environments other than the generally accepted open, arid grassland model.

News Archive

UFS withdraws interdict against SASCO and ANCYL
2003-11-25

The Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Free State, Prof Frederick Fourie, announced today that a court order against the South African Students Congress (SASCO) and the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) had been withdrawn.

The withdrawal of the court order follows after a written statement by SASCO and the ANCYL in which they “unconditionally withdraw or retract statements threatening to render the institution ungovernable” and give their “commitment not to proceed with our threats to establish our own democratic SRC and occupy the current SRC offices”.

The UFS management obtained the court order in October after SASCO and the ANCYL refused to accept the outcome of the recent student referendum and SRC elections and threatened to disrupt the campus.

Prof Fourie also welcomed the undertaking by SASCO and the ANCYL to act in accordance with the prescribed procedures to resolve any grievance that the organisations may have, saying the UFS management remains committed to a constructive dialogue with all student organisations to manage a campus of diversity, tolerance and non-racialism.

In September students voted in a referendum to test support for a system of proportional representation (PR) for the SRC. A vast majority of students voted against the PR system, a system favoured by SASCO and the ANCYL..

Following allegations of fraud in the referendum, the UFS management asked the auditing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers to conduct an independent audit of the ballot papers.

The auditors found that a total of 180 ballot papers out of 3513 – only 5.12% - of the votes cast - appeared to have been altered by means of erasing and then changing the student number.

According to the auditors, with all potentially altered and suspicious ballot papers excluded, a huge majority of 60,8% of students voted against the proportional representation system.

A few days after the referendum, the actual SRC election was held. However, at no stage were there any complaints from any organization about the integrity of the SRC election itself.

Despite this and the findings of the auditors, SASCO and the ANCYL refused to accept the outcome.

Law student Quintin du Plessis was elected SRC president. He welcomed the stance taken by SASCO and the ANCYL to pursue their objectives through the existing structures and said the SRC was always willing to engage with these organisations on issues of student governance.

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