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Two Kovsies in Entrepreneurship Intervarsity finals

19 August 2019 | Story Charlene Stanley | Photo Ayanda Makhanya

A natural heating and cooking system and liquid yeast in its purest form – used in the brewing of beer – form the basis of two innovative business ventures that have earned their inventors a place in the finals of this year’s Entrepreneurship Intervarsity.

LiquidCulture

Christopher Rothman is currently busy with his PhD in Biotechnology at the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at the University of the Free State (UFS). He and a fellow student started the company LiquidCulture last year to make high-quality yeast for their own commercial brewery called Kraft Brewing Co.

“We realised that because of our backgrounds as microbiologists, we could grow our own yeast, have a better quality product, and save some money while also expanding our choice of yeast strains to use. This quickly became more than a solution to our own problems, as other breweries were also interested in using our yeast. We then formed LiquidCulture and started supplying the industry,” says Christopher.

Organic Heat

Grace Mthembu’s inspiration for her eco-friendly, cost-effective heating and cooking device, came after reading about devastating fires in rural and informal settlements caused by cooking fires.

“I decided to investigate the cause of these fires and found that the majority of the households did not have access to electricity or they couldn’t afford it,” explains Grace.
Her invention is based on the traditional metal cylinder or “imbawula”, used by many households in informal settlements to cook or heat with wood or coal. What makes her invention different is that it has a water filtration interior system which makes it safer and ensures that the smoke produced during the heating of the sources does not get released into the home and the air in general.

Her invention has already earned her awards for best community development, best mechanical engineering and best rural development project in the Eskom Expo for Young Scientists, plus a gold medal and all-expenses-paid trip to represent South Africa at the London International Youth Science Fair.
She plans to establish a brand for the system with the name “Organic Heat”.

Student entrepreneurs showcased

The Entrepreneurship Intervarsity gives student entrepreneurs from across the country’s 26 public universities the opportunity to submit their innovative ideas as part of a competition supported by Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE), in collaboration with the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation.
Both Christopher and Grace see it as a great honour to represent the UFS in the finals, which will be held in Johannesburg on 18 September 2019.

“The intervarsity has been fun thus far and the quality of the competitors is really high. Luckily I like public speaking and I am really passionate about my company so pitching to the judges has been very comfortable for me so far,” says Christopher.

“I’m not obsessed about winning,” says Grace. “I’m looking forward to networking and connecting and building relationships with potential investors. If I do happen to win, it will obviously be amazing and will provide me with a lot of exposure and bring opportunities.”

News Archive

The TRC legitimised apartheid - Mamdani

2010-07-20

Prof. Mahmood Mamdani

“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) accepted as legitimate the rule of law that undergirded apartheid. It defined as crime only those acts that would have been considered criminal under the laws of apartheid.”

This statement was made by the internationally acclaimed scholar, Prof. Mahmood Mamdani, when he delivered the Africa Memorial Lecture at the University of the Free State (UFS) last week on the topic: Lessons of Nuremberg and Codesa: Where do we go from here?

“According to the TRC, though crimes were committed under apartheid, apartheid itself – including the law enforced by the apartheid state – was not a crime,” he said.

He said the social justice challenges that South Africa faced today were as a result of the TRC’s failure to broaden the discussion of justice beyond political to social justice.

He said it had to go beyond “the liberal focus on bodily integrity” and acknowledge the violence that deprived the vast majority of South Africans of their means of livelihood.

“Had the TRC acknowledged pass laws and forced removals as constituting the core social violence of apartheid, as the stuff of extra-economic coercion and primitive accumulation, it would have been in a position to imagine a socio-economic order beyond a liberalised post-apartheid society,” he said.

“It would have been able to highlight the question of justice in its fullness, and not only as criminal and political, but also as social.”

He said the TRC failed to go beyond the political reconciliation achieved at Codesa and laid the foundation for a social reconciliation. “It was unable to think beyond crime and punishment,” he said.

He said it recognised as victims only individuals and not groups, and human rights violations only as violations of “the bodily integrity of an individual”; that is, only torture and murder.

“How could this be when apartheid was brazenly an ideology of group oppression and appropriation? How could the TRC make a clear-cut distinction between violence against persons and that against property when most group violence under apartheid constituted extra-economic coercion, in other words, it was against both person and property?”, he asked.

“The TRC was credible as performance, as theatre, but failed as a social project”.

Prof. Mamdani is the Director of the Institute of Social Research at the Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda; and the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Department of Anthropology at the Columbia University in New York, USA.

Media Release
Issued by: Mangaliso Radebe
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2828
Cell: 078 460 3320
E-mail: radebemt@ufs.ac.za
20 July 2010

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