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20 November 2018 Photo Varsity Sports
Sikholiwe Mdletshe rewarded with SA colours in Netball
Sikholiwe Mdletshe in action for the Kovsie netball team this year. She also represented the SA Student team and will soon play for the national U20 team.

With her expectations already exceeded for this year, Sikholiwe Mdletshe was further rewarded for a good year on the netball courts when she was selected for the South African U20 netball team.

The team will participate in the Africa Union Sport Council Region 5 Games in Botswana from 7 to 16 December 2018.

Sikholiwe is a second-year BCom Accounting student who plays wing defence or centre for the varsity netball team.

She played a big role in helping Kovsies win the Varsity Netball trophy. Sikholiwe earned two Player of the Match awards. Apart from playing for the Kovsies, she also represented the Free State and was the youngest team member in the national student team for the World University Championship in Uganda.

“It’s been a great year. I didn’t expect to make so many teams and actually play so many games; I feel so blessed that my dreams are starting to become a reality and I couldn’t be more excited for the future,” said Sikholiwe.

She attended Middelburg High School and was selected as a finalist for the Matriculant of the Year competition in 2016. “Once I saw how netball was going at Kovsies, the high calibre of players who formed part of the team, and speaking to their coach, Burta de Kock, my mind was fixed on the UFS as choice of university.”

Sikholiwe also paid tribute to her teammate, friend, and Protea netball player, Khanyisa Chawane. “KC is such a big inspiration, she inspired me from a deeper place than just netball,” explained Sikholiwe.  She further pointed out that she would like to focus on becoming a better player than she is today, and from there she wants to reach greater 

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today that a court order against the South African Students Congress (SASCO) and the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) had been withdrawn.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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