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The composition of the Council of the University of the Free State is stipulated in the UFS Statute, as promulgated in the Government Gazette of 26 January 2018. The terms of office of the President of Convocation, Prof Johan Grobbelaar, Christo Dippenaar, Henry Madlala (Qwaqwa Campus) expire on 31 October 2018. Convocation has to appoint three representatives in their place, one of which has to be the President of Convocation and another should be from the Qwaqwa Campus. In terms of the Statute, both Dippenaar and Madlala are eligible for re-election.
Written nominations for the election of three representatives of the Convocation for a period of four years, are hereby requested.
The Convocation comprises of all permanent academic staff from lecturer to professor, all permanent staff other than academic staff from Deputy Director to Rector and Vice-Chancellor by virtue of their respective offices and all students (current and former) who obtained a qualification at the university.
Each nomination shall be signed by five members of Convocation and shall contain the written acceptance of the nomination by the nominee under his or her signature, as well as an abridged CV (±2pages). These must reach Dawid Kriel by 12:00 on Monday 12 November 2018. If more than one person per each of the three categories is nominated, elections will be held on or before Friday 16 November 2018. You will be notified of the final date for elections in due course. Please submit your nomination via:
• E-mail: dawid@ufs.ac.za
• Fax: 086 643 1665
• Post: Dawid Kriel University of the Free State: Institutional Advancement PO Box 339 Bloemfontein 9300
• Hand delivered at: Dawid Kriel, Room 26, 1st Floor, Wekkie Saayman Building, Bloemfontein Campus
For enquiries, please contact Claudine Taylor at TaylorCL@ufs.ac.za or +27 51 401 2097.
Click here for the nominations form.
Expert in Africa Studies debunks African middle class myth
2016-05-10
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
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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.