Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
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

UCT scholar in Philosophical Psychology of Black Existence to join Judge Albie Sachs on stage
2015-03-23

Dr Buhle Zuma, listed as one of the 2011 Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans, is coming to the Bloemfontein Campus. He will share a stage with civil rights activist and former Constitutional Court, Judge Albie Sachs, on Thursday 26 March 2015 in the Albert Wessels Auditorium at 12:30.

Respondent to Judge Sachs

A former Mandela Rhodes scholar, and currently a young lecturer at the University of Cape Town's Psychology Department, Dr Zuma is particularly interested in issues at the heart of our rainbow nation . His research asks the question: What does it mean to be human for black people after centuries of dehumanisation? Dr Zuma also looks at the role of desire and fantasy in the political imagination of post-apartheid South Africa. He describes his developing thought and work as the Philosophical Psychology of Black Existence.

Dr Zuma will act as respondent to Judge Sachs’ public lecture, ‘Sites of memory, sites of conscience’ [Hannes, please link to the article on the main website]. This lecture will form part of a series that focuses on how the creative arts represent trauma and memory – and how these representations may ultimately pave the way to healing historical wounds.

Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture Series on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past

This lecture will launch of the Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture Series on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past. It forms part of a five-year research project led by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela [], funded by the Mellon Foundation []. The event is hosted by the UFS Trauma, Forgiveness and Reconciliation Studies [].

Dr Zuma lives by the belief that, if he imparts what he learns and knows lovingly and creatively, the world will be the better for it.

Details of the event:

Date: Thursday 26 March 2015
Time: 12:30
Venue: Albert Wessels Auditorium, Bloemfontein Campus
RSVP: Jo-Anne Naidoo at Naidooja@ufs.ac.za

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