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28 November 2019 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Dr Peet van Aardt
iCAN read more
The book was launched during the Student Arts and Life Dialogues Festival on the Bloemfontein Campus in October.

In its continued bid to decolonise the academic curriculum at the University of the Free State (UFS) the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) published the second volume of Creative African Narratives (iCAN) short stories written by UFS students. 

iCAN Volume 2 comes after extensive creative writing workshops were presented on all three campuses during the year. The project is coordinated by Dr Peet van Aardt from CTL and is funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation

Through the iCAN project, CTL plans to incorporate the students’ written texts as part of the extensive reading component of the first-year academic literacy courses across all faculties. “We are teaching and motivating our students to read, but we cannot keep relying on a curriculum that is foreign to them,” said Dr Van Aardt.

The volume comprises 55 short stories with topics ranging from the Struggle, to campus life, mental illness, family affairs and love, with the students’ lived experiences also a main theme throughout the anthology. The stories are written in Sepedi, isiZulu, Setswana, English, Afrikaans and Sesotho. Some were also performed at the recent Multilingual Mokete, held on the Bloemfontein campus in September.

“We are really proud of this year’s publication, and the project as a whole,” says Dr Van Aardt. “This year we were able to include more student contributions than last year.”

News Archive

‘Mandela’s principles are important for business’
2012-10-30

Photo: Leatitia Pienaar
29 October 2012

“Respect a person’s time. That is the ultimate show of respect for a human being.” Zelda la Grange, the right hand of retired President Nelson Mandela for 18 years, shared some of his principles with an audience at the UFS Business School.

Zelda was Mr Mandela’s private secretary and became his private assistant on his retirement. At a lunch-time lecture she has shared her life with the global icon and believes his principles are also good business ethics.

Some of the principles are:

  • The better thing to do is the right thing to do.
  • If you are late, you are disrespecting other people. ‘What makes your time more precious than mine?’
  • The way you approach people determines the way they will treat you.

She said Mr Mandela was like a grandfather to her. “He can probably do without me, but I cannot do without him.”

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