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21 June 2019 | Story Valentino Ndaba | Photo Ernst & Young
UFS Accounting Students win EY Project Alpha
At the Ernst & Young Project Alpha 2019 Awards, some of the members of the winning team, from left: Kyle du Bruyn, Luke Rhode, Janri du Toit, Nicolaas van Zyl, Mojalefa Mosala (Business Ethics Lecturer), Bianca Malan, Lorandi Koegelenberg and Frans Benecke.
A few years ago the news was saturated with Volkswagen’s (VW) fuel emission scandal. “Dieselgate”. Investigations in the US found the German automaker guilty of programming computers in their diesel cars to alter its engine operations to seemingly meet legal emission standards.

A question of ethics

A notice of violation of the Clean Air Act issued by the US Environmental Protection Agency had dire consequences for the automobile company, but positive implications for the economy and the environment. As part of a lawsuit settlement, vehicles were recalled, fines were paid, and approximately 21 million affected vehicles with VW diesel engines were refitted by September 2015.

Project Alpha tackles ethical issues

A group of eight students from the University of the Free State (UFS) presented their case study of “Dieselgate” to a panel of judges in this year’s Ernst & Young Project Alpha competition. They emerged as the ultimate winners.

The “Hoaxwagen” group’s 10-minute video demonstrated “a critical assessment of a multidimensional matter”   captivating the judges. “I was impressed, because their presentation addressed other skills such as the ability to present, communicate, come out of their comfort zone and be innovative, while at the same time addressing an ethical issue,” said Mojalefa Mosala, a judge and Business Ethics lecturer at the UFS.

Centred on critical thinking

The UFS is the first university outside of Johannesburg that participated in the Project Alpha contest. Ernst & Young and the UFS have forged a strong relationship over the past few years, giving students a glimpse into the corporate world of accounting. 

“Project Alpha encourages critical thinking and not taking things at face value, by looking a bit deeper, spending time to understand the pros and cons of any situation in order to make an informed decision,” said Frans Benecke, member. of the winning team that prevailed over 82 others. Benecke’s team walked away with R2000 shopping vouchers and a life-long learning experience.

Engaging in global conversations 

Participation in the competition gave students the opportunity to be exposed to contemporary global thinking, which is strongly advocated in the UFS’s Integrated Transformation Plan.


UFS Accounting students win 2019 Ernst & Young Project Alpha competition from University of the Free State on Vimeo.

News Archive

“We relied on outsiders to document our histories.” – Zanele Muholi delivers Women’s Day Lecture
2014-08-13

 

Zanele Muholi
Photo: Stephen Collett

“Our society is decaying because of hate crimes against LGBTI groups. You can’t say it does not affect you, because each of us is at least connected to one person [of LGBTI orientation].”

These words by Zanele Muholi, photographer and visual activist of LGBTI rights, who delivered the Women’s Day Lecture. The event commemorated Women’s Day and took place on Thursday 7 August 2014 at the Bloemfontein Campus. The lecture was hosted by the Centre for Africa Studies, as part of their Gender Studies Programme.

Muholi screened photographs featuring lesbian couples and recounted their all-too-real life stories. Her work emphasises the importance of queering the normative gaze by representing black lesbians in ‘straight’ portraits in a collection of works titled ‘Faces and Phases’. By focusing on lesbians in her work, Muholi shows that women in same sex relationships are just women, with the same dreams and aspirations as their heterosexual sisters.

But lesbian women carry an additional, grave fear – that of corrective rape. Muholi speaks on this topic in the video, ‘We live in fear’, which she screened during her talk. The documentary features the lives of lesbian women in Kwa Thema township in Johannesburg. Shockwaves spread through this settlement in 2008 after the brutal killing of a lesbian woman and the ensuing series of hate crimes against the LGBTI community.

Zanele describes her work as “documenting our own stories. For years we relied on outsiders to document our histories. We should do it ourselves.”

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