Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
23 March 2018 Photo Supplied
Student Interactive Session ignites creative passion
Luca Dimoon performs a heartfelt rendition of his music

Son of a Sicilian painter and double-bass player, Luca Dimoon was born on 22 August 1982 in Milan, Italy. He was exposed to the arts from the tender age of three, when he began drawing while jazz music echoed in his home. It wasn’t until he heard the music of Michael Jackson that he felt inspired to start singing and at the age of 8 he joined the local church choir. This led to a lifelong career in music as a multi-instrumentalist. This is a short profile of the musical genius who caressed the piano keys as part of the Arts and Culture Student Interactive Session (ACSIS) on the Bloemfontein campus on 2 March 2018.
 
In other activities students and members of the public spoke their hearts and minds at the ACSIS that took place at the Abraham Fischer Cafeteria. They gathered in a circle to embrace and acknowledge one another intellectually and artistically and an individual from the audience would volunteer, walk up to the middle of the circle and speak on a topic of his or her choice.
 
Students such as former SRC Media and Marketing, Refilwe Motsumi took to the stage and reflected openly about the personal difficulties she had encountered at university. “It ignited the beginning of my journey to self-discovery,” she said.

Philemon, widely known as FYA, gave a rendition of one of his own musical items, explaining that his artistic journey began on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus when he entered a national rap competition. The competition was centred on South African universities and the importance of studying where he represented the UFS and won in 2016.
 
The rest of the night saw amazing musical performances from House Kagiso students and Luca.
 
“The Student Interactive Session is a platform for students to be themselves, and we want to urge them to be a part of more student-based initiatives,” said Head of Arts and Culture, Student Affairs, Angelo Mockie.
 
For more information about future events in Student Affairs: Arts and Culture, contact Angelo Mockie on MockieSMA@ufs.ac.za .

News Archive

Expert in Africa Studies debunks African middle class myth
2016-05-10

Description: Prof Henning Melber Tags: Prof Henning Melber

From left: Prof Heidi Hudson, Director of the Centre for Africa Studies (CAS), Joe Besigye from the Institute of Reconciliation and Social Justice, and Prof Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor at the CAS and guest lecturer for the day.
Photo: Valentino Ndaba

Until recently, think tanks from North America, the African Development Bank, United Nations Development Plan, and global economists have defined the African middle class based purely on monetary arithmetic. One of the claims made in the past is that anyone with a consumption power of $2 per day constitutes the middle class. Following this, if poverty is defined as monetary income below $1.5 a day, it means that it takes just half a dollar to reach the threshold considered as African middle class.

Prof Henning Melber highlighted the disparities in the notion of a growing African middle class in a guest lecture titled A critical anatomy of the African middle class(es), hosted by our Centre for Africa Studies (CAS) at the University of the Free State on 4 May 2016. He is an Extraordinary Professor at the Centre, as well as Senior Adviser and Director Emeritus of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Sweden.

Prof Melber argued that it is misleading to consider only income when identifying the middle class. In his opinion, such views were advanced by promoters of the global neo-liberal project. “My suspicion is that those who promote the middle class  discourse in that way, based on such a low threshold, were desperate to look for the success story that testifies to Africa rising.”

Another pitfall of such a middle-class analysis is its ahistorical contextualisation. This economically-reduced notion of the class is a sheer distortion. Prof Melber advised analysts to take cognisance of factors, such as consumption patterns, lifestyle, and political affiliation, amongst others.

In his second lecture for the day, Prof Melber dealt withthe topic of: Namibia since independence: the limits to Liberation, painting the historical backdrop against which the country’s current government is consolidating its political hegemony. He highlighted examples of the limited transformation that has been achieved since Namibia’s independence in 1990.

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept