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12 February 2019 | Story Xolisa Mnukwa | Photo Charl Devenish
Kovsie ACT
The University of the Free State encourages its students to prioritise social awareness through fun and exciting community-engagement activities.

9 February 2019 marked the conclusion of the Kovsie Act programme, which took to a competitive start with the UFS Bloemfontein South College being named as the overall winners of the Kovsie ACT 2019 Eco-vehicle race. West College won the trophy for the drag and slalom races, with the South College taking the trophy for endurance.

The UFS Kovsie Act theme for 2019 was centred around building social awareness and encouraging students to develop and maintain lasting methods of preserving the environment that they live in.

The 2019 group of first-year students enjoyed a fun- and adventure-filled first two weeks (28 January–9 February) of varsity life as they undertook a number of projects and activities that aligned community engagement and service learning in order to invest in and promote overall responsible behaviour and a sustainable environment.

Activities that formed part of the line-up included a tree-and-traffic-signs project that entailed old T-shirts/material being sewn/crocheted together to make different patterns that were fitted around the trees on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus in order to create a beautiful piece of art portraying a message of social awareness.

A canvas painting put together by first-years with assistance from their seniors addressed environmental, crime, gender-based, and other societal issues, and will be placed on the wall at the Thakaneng Bridge at a later stage.

Art sculptures were built to form part of the Eco-vehicle race, and if approved, will be assigned a spot on campus where they can spread the message of awareness and be appreciated by fellow students.  

Kovsie Act, as per norm, succeeded in getting students involved with social-awareness campaigns that are detailed and purposeful, and allowed them to put their time and effort into meaningful projects to aid the development of a sustainable environment.

The day of the Eco-race progressed into a festive one, with members of the Bloemfontein community and students amassing at the Bloemfontein Campus rag farm to enjoy musical performances from industry giants, such as Bittereinder, Busiswa, and Shod Madjozi at the Kovsie Act Music Festival. The audience rumbled in a frenzy, with shouts of enjoyment and gratification as the stage came alive with beautiful performances.

News Archive

Expert in Africa Studies debunks African middle class myth
2016-05-10

Description: Prof Henning Melber Tags: Prof Henning Melber

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

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.

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