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02 October 2019 | Story Ruan Bruwer | Photo Hannes Naudé
Pakiso Mthembu and Prof Prakash Naidoo
Pakiso Mthembu (right) receives the trophy as the University of the Free State Senior Sportsman of the Year from Prof Prakash Naidoo, Vice-Rector: Operations. Khanyisa Chawane (Senior Sportswoman of the Year) and Sne Mdletshe (Junior Sportswoman of the Year) was unable to attend the awards function.
Pakiso Mthembu was recognised for his performances in cross-country and Khanyisa Chawane for her feats on the netball court at the KovsieSport Awards function on Tuesday night.

The two were honoured as the University of the Free State’s Senior Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year for 2019. Achievements between 1 October 2018 and 30 September 2019 were taken into consideration.

Mthembu was South Africa’s second-best senior male athlete at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Denmark earlier this year. He also came second in the senior men’s 10 km category of the South African Cross Country Championships and won a bronze medal at the University Sport South Africa Championships in the 10 000 m. It was the seventh consecutive year and ninth time in the last ten years that the men’s winner came from the athletics code.

Chawane has played in 14 of the last 17 tests for the Proteas. She was a member of the World Cup team in July, where they finished fourth – their best performance in 24 years. She also represented the SA Fast5 team and was named as the player of the tournament in the 2018 Varsity Netball competition.

The Junior Sportswoman of the Year award went to another netballer, Sne Mdletshe. She was the co-captain of the SA U20 team for the Africa Union Sport Council Region 5 games in Botswana, which was won by the team. At the National Championship, she was named the best centre-court player. There was no winner in the Junior Sportsman of Year category this year.

News Archive

‘Miratho’ seeks to drive policy-changing research through international collaboration
2017-09-29

Description: ' AM Bathmaker CRHED Miratho Tags: AM Bathmaker CRHED Miratho

From the left: Phathu Mudau (Thusanani Foundation),
Prof Melanie Walker (UFS), Prof Ann-Marie Bathmaker
(University of Birmingham), Prof Monica McLean
(University of Nottingham), and Fulu Ratshisusu
(Thusanani Foundation).
Photo: Eugene Seegers

Miratho is a TshiVenda word that refers to informal, self-made bridges, which are usually built by rural community members during floods or other natural disasters. These are usually dangerous, unstable constructions, and only the brave tend to use them. When community members build miratho, though, they create opportunities for stranded students to attend school. Miratho symbolise the determination to access education even in the face of danger, and working with others to make progress.

The Miratho Research Project is led by the Centre for Research on Higher Education and Development (CRHED) at the University of the Free State (UFS), in partnership with the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham in the UK, and the Thusanani Foundation. The project is jointly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Department for International Development in the UK, as well as the National Research Foundation in South Africa. The project research team consists of Prof Melanie Walker, Prof Merridy Wilson-Strydom and Dr Mikateko Höppener from CRHED at the UFS, Prof Monica McLean from the University of Nottingham, and Prof Ann-Marie Bathmaker from the University of Birmingham.

Miratho is a four-year project, stretching until August 2020, which seeks to investigate multidimensional dynamics shaping or inhibiting disadvantaged students’ capabilities to access higher education, participate and succeed in it, as well as move from higher education to work. By means of a systematic, integrated and longitudinal mixed-methods investigation, Prof Walker and her team, in close collaboration with the Thusanani Foundation, aim to develop an inclusive, capabilities-based higher education Index, which in turn would serve to inform policy and practice interventions that challenge inequalities that have an impact on learning outcomes.

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