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30 October 2018 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Peet van Aardt
iCAN contributes to a decolonised curriculum
Some of the student writers who contributed to the anthology that tells their stories in Sesotho, isiXhosa, isiZulu, English and Afrikaans.

How do you transform the higher education curriculum? You involve the exact people the curriculum is intended for. The book, Initiative for Creative African Narratives (iCAN,) illustrates how decolonisation can be achieved through literature   for students by students.

iCAN is an initiative by the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at the University of the Free State (UFS) to mentor students in creative and narrative writing. Under the mentorship of Dr Peet van Aardt, project coordinator, and Ace Moloi, author and UFS alumnus, iCAN Volume 1 was recently launched with 47 short stories written by UFS students. 

“The project is a response from the centre for the ever-increasing need for decolonised curricula, steeped in the local cultural perspective of ubuntu,” said Dr Van Aardt.

“This book is an example for how decolonisation can be implemented,” said Prof Francois Stydrom, Senior Director of CTL. The overall aim of the iCAN project is to have the content that materialised from it to be included in the curriculum of first-year students at UFS in the near future.

Book provides multiple voices

Starting in May 2018, CTL presented a series of creative writing workshops on all three of the UFS campuses. “It’s a medium that allows a diverse range of students to express their views and develop their voices as writers,” said Prof Strydom.  

It is a form of empowerment, to pass the baton to students to improve the UFS curriculum by writing and publishing their own stories, thereby contributing to larger bodies of knowledge through their lived experiences.

“I believe we as a university need to enable students so that they move away from just being users to becoming contributors to the curriculum,” Dr van Aardt concluded. 

News Archive

UFS leads the way with GMO testing
2003-08-25

A formal agreement linking Africa’s first testing facility for genetically modified organisms (GMO) to an international organization was signed at the University of the Free State.

According to the manager of the GMO testing facility, Dr Chris Viljoen of the Department of Plant Sciences, the facility is now part of GeneScan, a world leader in food diagnostic testing, which has its headquarters in Germany with subsidiaries in the Unites States, Brazil and Hong Kong.

The facility at the UFS has been selected by the second largest international food company to do all its South African GMO testing for export products.

The GMO testing facility is the brainchild of Dr Viljoen, who is a specialist in the field of marker biotechnology and its applications in crop science.

He says the need for such a testing facility arose due to the international regulations on GMOs in food, especially Europe and Asia that requires South African exporters to certify whether their products contain any GMO.

“The regulations in Europe and Asia reflect a consumer need for choice in what they eat due to concerns over the safety of GMOs, as well as environmental and ethical issues. GMO testing and labelling allow consumers the right of choice to eat genetically modified foods or not. According to EU regulations, any product with a GMO content of 1% or higher is labelled as containing GMO.”

According to Dr Viljoen only four products in South Africa are currently GMO. They are white and yellow maize that have been made insect resistant, soya bean that is herbicide tolerant and insect resistant cotton. He says that the awareness of GMOs among South Africans is still very limited, especially in poorer communities, but it is likely to increase with the efforts being made in consumer education by government, seed companies and NGOs.

The testing facility has been established to accommodate the local as well as international market. The GMO testing at the UFS facility is performed using real time PCR, the most advanced means of GMO detection currently available, and using GeneScan developed technology that is recognized worldwide.
 

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