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04 May 2018 Photo Facebook
Female athletes dominate USSA
From left: Marné Mentz (second), Ts’epang Sello (first) and Tyler Beling (third) were in a class of their own, taking the first three spots in the 1 500m at the University Sport South Africa national championship in Sasolburg.


As expected, the Kovsie athletics team made the University Sport South Africa (USSA) national championship, held over the weekend in Sasolburg, one to remember.

Eight athletes earned gold medals, which is twice as many as last year. The total of 24 medals (including seven silver and nine bronze) is also double the number won in 2017. 

They ended third, just one gold medal below the University of Johannesburg. The female athletes won the women’s competition and contributed to seven of the eight gold medals. The Kovsies dominated the 1 500m and 5 000m events in which they both claimed the first, second and third spots. They even grabbed the fourth and sixth position in the 5 000m in which Kesa Molotsane triumphed, with Tyler Beling second, and Marné Mentz third. Mentz and Beling swapped places in the 1 500m behind Ts’epang Sello. 

Molotsane also won the 10 000m in a record time of 34:49.16 which is a massive three minutes and five seconds quicker than the previous record.

The 800m title also now belongs to Sello. She and Beling won a third medal (bronze) as members of the 4 x 400m relay women’s team. 

The other gold medalist was Lara Orrock (3 000m steeplechase), Lynique Beneke (long jump), Esli Lamley (pole vault) and Rynardt van Rensburg (800m).

All five Kovsies who competed at the CAA Southern Region Youth & Junior Championships that took place over the weekend in Boksburg, won medals. They were Pakiso Mthembu (gold, 5 000m), Michaéla Wright (gold, long jump), Tyler (gold, 1 500m), Tsebo Matsoso (silver, 200m) and Orrock (silver, 3 000m steeplechase).

News Archive

“We relied on outsiders to document our histories.” – Zanele Muholi delivers Women’s Day Lecture
2014-08-13

 

Zanele Muholi
Photo: Stephen Collett

“Our society is decaying because of hate crimes against LGBTI groups. You can’t say it does not affect you, because each of us is at least connected to one person [of LGBTI orientation].”

These words by Zanele Muholi, photographer and visual activist of LGBTI rights, who delivered the Women’s Day Lecture. The event commemorated Women’s Day and took place on Thursday 7 August 2014 at the Bloemfontein Campus. The lecture was hosted by the Centre for Africa Studies, as part of their Gender Studies Programme.

Muholi screened photographs featuring lesbian couples and recounted their all-too-real life stories. Her work emphasises the importance of queering the normative gaze by representing black lesbians in ‘straight’ portraits in a collection of works titled ‘Faces and Phases’. By focusing on lesbians in her work, Muholi shows that women in same sex relationships are just women, with the same dreams and aspirations as their heterosexual sisters.

But lesbian women carry an additional, grave fear – that of corrective rape. Muholi speaks on this topic in the video, ‘We live in fear’, which she screened during her talk. The documentary features the lives of lesbian women in Kwa Thema township in Johannesburg. Shockwaves spread through this settlement in 2008 after the brutal killing of a lesbian woman and the ensuing series of hate crimes against the LGBTI community.

Zanele describes her work as “documenting our own stories. For years we relied on outsiders to document our histories. We should do it ourselves.”

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