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06 March 2019 | Story Ruan Bruwer | Photo Varsity Sports
Tharina van der Walt
Tharina van der Walt, a first-year student, won the hammer-throw item at the first Varsity Athletics meeting in Stellenbosch on Friday – the only gold medal for the Kovsies.

Hammer thrower Tharina van der Walt was the bright spark for the University of the Free State (UFS) at the first Varsity Athletics meeting in Stellenbosch on Friday.

Van der Walt, who recently turned 19 and is one of three first-year students in the UFS team of 25 athletes, bagged the only gold medal for the Free State students. She won the hammer throw with a distance of 53,12 m.

The UFS ended in fourth place behind NWU (first), UJ (second), and Tuks (third).

Six athletes achieved second places. Both Sokwakana Mogwasi (100 m) and Ts’epang Sello (800 m) came within a whisker of claiming victory.  Mogwasi lost the 100 m by 00:04 seconds, but in the process improved her personal best from 11,89 to 11,58. Sello (2:08,47) was in the lead for most of the 800 m but was eventually defeated by Niene Muller of Tuks by less than half a second.

Mogwasi was also second in the 200 m with a fast 24,92. Other silver medals were obtained by Yolandi Stander in the discus (52,70 m), Peter Makgato in the long jump (7,66 m), and Marné Mentz in a very fast 1500 m race. Mentz (04:26,63) chopped more than five seconds off her previous best time of 4:32,00. Her time was the third fastest ever in the 1 500 m at Varsity Athletics.

There were three third places: Sefako Mokhosoa (15,47 – triple jump), Petrus Jacobs (14,55 – 110 m hurdles), and the women’s 4x100 m relay team (Mogwasi, Elsabé du Plessis, Joviale Mbisha, and Micháela Wright).

Four athletes just missed out on podium positions, achieving fourth places.

The second Varsity athletics meeting will take place in Potchefstroom on 15 March 2019.

News Archive

UFS starts lecture series on reconciliation and empathy
2012-02-28

 

Attending the inaugural Dialogue between Science and Society lecture were from left: Profs Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Jean Decety,Dr Melike Fourie, a researcher at the University of Cape Town,  and Prof. Driekie Hay, Vice-Rector: Academic.
Photo: Johan Roux
28 February 2012


The University of the Free State has begun with the first of a series of lectures that will deal with issues of humanity.

The Dialogue between Science and Society Lecture series, hosted by Prof. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, will bring together different disciplines such as Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience and Literature to explore the broad field of reconciliation and empathy.
 
Prof. Jean Decety, a leading scholar in the social neuroscience of empathy at the University of Chicago delivered the inaugural lecture on 23 February 2012. He spoke about the social neuroscience of empathy and moral reasoning.
 
Drawing lessons from US president Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, Prof. Decety opened his speech with a quote on empathy as the glue that makes much of social life possible. He said a feeling of empathy means putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes. Prof. Decety discussed in depth the link between empathy and helping, saying that it linked to morality.
 
Prof. Gobodo-Madikizela, author of the bookA human being died that night: a South African story of forgiveness, on her interviews with convicted Vlakplaas murderer Eugene de Kock, recently joined our university.

 

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