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07 March 2018
Photo Supplied
Ts’epang Sello, one of the Kovsie contenders for a medal at Friday’s Varsity athletics meeting.
Ts’epang Sello, one of the Kovsie contenders
for a medal at Friday’s Varsity athletics meeting.
Photo: Supplied
The University of the Free State will hope to start developing their next Wayde van Niekerk when the first Varsity athletics meeting takes place on Friday at the Tuks Athletics Stadium in Pretoria.
The second meeting is on 23 March, also in Pretoria.
Thirteen members (five men and eight women) of the Kovsie team of 25 are still under the age of 21.
The hope for medals among the men would be on Sefako Mokhosoa (triple jump), Hendrik Maartens, and Tsebo Matsoso (both 200 m). Mokhosoa, who represented South Africa last year at the Southern Region Championships, is in red-hot form and achieved a personal best of 16.13 m at the Motheo/Xhariep meeting two weeks ago. This is currently the third best distance in the country for 2018.
Maartens would like to go one step further. In last year’s final Varsity meeting, he finished second in 20.62. Great things are expected of Matsoso, a first-year student who competed at the African Junior Championship in 2017. Last year, he was one of the top athletes at school level by winning the SA title in a time of 21.14.
Ts’epang Sello (800 m) and Elmé Smith (100 m and 200 m) will lead the charge for the women. Sello already came close to her personal best (2:09.8) this year, while Smith has also been running fast times. Her best this year was 11.88 (100 m) and 24.53 (200 m).
Tyler Beling (1 500 m) is another first-year student who is showing great potential. She obtained a fourth position at last weekend’s CAA Southern Region Cross-country Championships. Maryke Brits (100 m hurdles and long jump) is a possible medallist, despite running her first event for the year on Wednesday night.
The meeting starts at 17:15 and will be broadcast on SuperSport 5.
Self-help building project helps to change lives
2017-12-15
Anita Venter, lecturer in the Centre for Development Support, with the residents of
the eco friendly house. Photo: Supplied
UFS PhD student Anita Venter did not know it in the beginning, but her doctoral research would eventually change her life and the lives of many others.
The research was whether South Africa’s housing policies were socially and culturally responsive to grassroots reality in informal settlements. Venter agreed her research approach might have raised a few eye brows, but it was a journey she holds had more benefits than failures.
Green living
For her case studies, Venter looked at ‘Start Living Green’ as a concept and further examined the implementation models of Earthship Biotecture Academy in New Mexico and Central America and the Long Way Home non-profit organisation in Guatemala.
These groups train people with no specialised construction skills in applying and managing environmentally sound self-help building projects. Furthermore, their primary objectives were not building-related, but people-centred, with an advocacy role to create social, environmental and educational change through utilising the building technologies.
It resulted in Venter signing up for a course in Guatemala to get the skills to implement her case studies here at home in Bloemfontein.
An experimental mud, straw and waste material structure in her back yard grew into similar houses built in informal settlements, through the transfer of knowledge of indigenous building methods.
Are rickety corrugated iron shacks only alternative?
Her case studies, one in Freedom Square in the Mangaung Metro Municipality, highlighted, among others, baffling tenure insecurities and “tangible conflicts” entrenched between Westernised and African perspectives on home ownership.
Venter says her thesis, in essence, did not oppose existing housing strategies but did challenge the applicability of an economically inclined model as the most appropriate housing option for millions of households living in informal settlements.
The main findings of the case studies were that self-help building technologies and skills transfer could make a significant contribution to addressing housing shortages in the country; in particular in geographical locations such as the Free State province and other rural areas.
Venter’s own words after her academic endeavour are insightful: “These grassroots individuals’ courage to engage with me in unknown territories, gave me hope in humanity and inherent strength to keep on pursuing our vision of transforming informal settlements into evolving indigenous neighbourhoods of choice instead of only being living spaces of last resort.”
Positive results
The study has had many positive results. The City of Cape Town is now looking at new innovative building technologies as a result. Most importantly Venter's study will open further discussions that necessarily challenge the status quo views in housing development.