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20 March 2019 | Story Xolisa Mnuwka | Photo Charl Devenish
Stagedoor Finals
Houses Vergeet-My-Nie and NJ van der Merwe won over the judges at the 2019 Stagedoor finals.

‘Vergeet van der Merwe’, a hybrid of female residences Vergeet-my-Nie and NJ van der Merwe, are the 2019 Stagedoor competition’s overall winners. The dynamic girl duo showed up and showed off during the 2019 Stagedoor finals in the Kopanong Auditorium on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus over the weekend.

The girls enthused the audience with a soul-filled sing-off and a relatable theatrical performance, which earned them both the audience’s and the judge’s best votes. Teams Welwitschia and Imperium (Welperium), and Outeniqua and Soetdoring (Outdoring), walked away with the second and third positions respectively, as each of the residences were recognised for team excellence and spirit when it came to creativity and overall acting in each of their performances.

The UFS Stagedoor competition is an annual event that employs first-years to take cognisance of the day-to-day societal issues and pressures that university students are faced with. In 2019, the event was for the first time entirely organised and ran by students for students.

The competition has over the years become a major highlight on UFS students’ arts and culture calendar and continues to be a platform of expression for residence and off-campus first-year students. Stagedoor performances are traditionally themed to tackle modern-day issues such as infrastructure and economic inequality, land reform, and education. However, this year’s competition engaged students in telling their stories without any restrictions, and still being able to effectively examine the pressures that come with varsity life, and many other issues that face South Africa, but more specifically the youth. The 2019 Stagedoor event was successfully coordinated and structured by UFS Bloemfontein Campus SRC: Arts and Culture, Patrick Chirilele, with help from Residence Committee (RC) Culture members.

News Archive

Ecofeminism a possibe solution to impending famine
2016-05-12

Description: Ecofeminism Tags: Ecofeminism

Dr Inge Konik (right) is pictured with her postdoctoral supervisor, Prof Bert Olivier, Senior Research Professor at the Department of Philosophy.
Photo: Valentino Ndaba

In view of the environmental and social problems faced in South Africa today, researchers such as Dr Inge Konik are hard at work mapping these issues and seeking long-term solutions. Dr Konik,  a lecturer in the Department of Journalism, Media and Philosophy at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) shared her views in a presentation on 6 May 2016. She spoke about revaluing indigenous ways of life and subsistence-focused lifeways, linking this to materialist ecological feminism, or ecofeminism for short.

Dr. Konik’s presentation, hosted by the Department of Philosophy at the Bloemfontein Campus of the University of the Free State (UFS), was entitled: “Transversal reflections on ecological feminism and ubuntu.” The research underpinning the presentation derived from Dr Konik’s doctoral thesis which was supervised by Ariel Salleh (University of Sydney) and Andrea Hurst (NMMU).

Dr Konik’s research suggests that ecofeminism - which is a convergence between environmentalism and feminism - may hold the answers to the question of how we may work against environmental and social injustices. She also proposed that society look back toward subsistence communities of the past, and those currently being marginalized in our industrial societies, and linked the values evidenced in the practices of these communities to the African philosophty of ubuntu. In order to solve  complex contemporary challenges Dr Konik suggests that we combine these seemingly disparate theoretical frames - ubuntu and ecofeminism - by applying a transversal approach, which involves openness to dialogue  between traditions.

“My focus was on ecological feminism and critical theory and very specifically on South Africa, given the challeges South Africa faces - the environmental and social challenges and what kind of frameworks would be helpful,” said Dr Konik, who will officially become a postdoctoral research fellow at the department as of July 2016.

Prof Pieter Duvenage, Head of the Departement, stated that compelling research outputs are anticipated from Dr Konik as a fellow.

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