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MICT SETA gives UFS Journalism students a stepping stone

07 October 2019 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Rulanzen Martin

MICT Seta Grant — The MICT SETA Journalism programme will give addition training to 20 Journalism students from the Department of Communication Science.

Student success is one of the key components in the Integrated Transformation Plan. Facilitated by a grant from the Media Information and Communication Technologies (MICT) SETA, the Department of Communication Science at the University of the Free State (UFS) is providing an additional training opportunity for its students with a programme for second-year journalism students.

The MICT SETA Journalism Short Programme is a prestigious extracurricular opportunity. “The programme will provide additional exposure and training in specialist areas not necessarily covered in depth as part of the BA (Journalism) degree,” says Dr Willemien Marais, Programme Director: Communication Science. “Participation in this programme provides students the opportunity to build a portfolio to enhance their employability.”

The SETA grant was acquired through an application made by the department with the assistance of Juanita Burjins Head: Leadership and Development Unit in the Human Resources Department at the UFS, and was signed earlier this year.

In-depth training

The programme will entail short courses on writing, photojournalism, documentary filmmaking, entrepreneurship and personal development.
“It gives us an opportunity to swim in an ocean where it feels you are drowning. I am very excited to have been chosen to be part of the programme,” says.Rene Robinson, a second-year Journalism student and one of 20 selected for the programme. They were selected based on academic performance as well as on the essay they wrote.

Robinson says: “As a Journalism student you meet a lot of negativity about the degree you are pursuing and this programme offers a chance to elevate yourself.”
Keamogetswe Mosepele, who is also part of the programme, adds: “I am really excited to see what it will deliver.”

The programme specifically targets second-year students so these students, once in their final year, can share their experience through assisting a new cohort of first-year journalism students in various practical exercises, thus reinvesting in the department. They will also work at various media partners of the Department of Communication Science.

From the left; Nkonsinathi Gabuza, from the MICT Seta; Dr Willemien Marais; Prof Collin Chasi, Head of the Department Communication
Science and Juanita Burjins. (Photo: Rulanzen Martin)

News Archive

African historian honoured at UFS Library book launch

2016-08-23

Description: Library book launch Tags: Library book launch

The UFS Library, in collaboration with the Department of Political Studies and Governance, launched This Present Darkness, a book by the late Stephen Ellis on 23 August 2016 at the Sasol Library on the Bloemfontein Campus.

Stephen Ellis was a Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and a senior researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden. He wrote ground-breaking books on the ANC, the Liberian Civil War, religion and politics in Africa, and the history of Madagascar. He died in 2015.

The book explores how Nigerian criminal syndicates acquired a reputation for involvement in drug-trafficking, fraud, cyber-crime, and other types of criminal activity. Successful Nigerian criminal networks have a global reach, interacting with their Italian, Latin American, and Russian counterparts. Yet in 1944, a British colonial official wrote that “the number of persistent and professional criminals is not great in Nigeria” and that “crime as a career has so far made little appeal to the young Nigerian.”

Ellis, a celebrated Africanist, traces the origins of Nigerian organised crime to the last years of colonial rule, when nationalist politicians acquired power at regional level. In need of funds for campaigning, they offered government contracts to foreign businesses in return for kickbacks, a pattern that recurs to this day. Political corruption encouraged a wider disrespect for the law that spread throughout Nigerian society. When the country’s oil boom came to an end in the early 1980s, young Nigerian college graduates headed abroad, eager to make money by any means. Nigerian crime went global, and new criminal markets are emerging all over the world at present.

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