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18 October 2019 | Story Thabo Kessah | Photo Tshepo Moeketsi
Prof Pearl Sithole
Prof Pearl Sithole says higher education needs to create space for Africa to be contributors and innovators of knowledge.
“Excellence is my main priority. For me, excellence means mastery of cross-communicable science and liberation of intellectual creativity that is free of mere complacency and acknowledging the right to analyse from where we stand. I am unapologetic about indigenous knowledge being the basis for scientific advancement.” This is how the newly appointed Vice-Principal: Academic and Research, Prof Pearl Sithole, sums up her vision and plan for academia and research on the Qwaqwa Campus. 

She believes that the human mind is geared towards ‘seeking and constantly explaining itself in the service of innovative change.’ 

“With this service of innovative change fully realised, the Qwaqwa Campus will be able to produce students who can analyse, innovate, and solve real social and world problems. For me, this is the University of the Free State graduate I pine to see – and there had better be truth to the ‘free’ part of this intellectual soul! I see Qwaqwa as a site for this intellectual innovation catalyst,” she said.

Social anthropologist

Prof Sithole is a Social Anthropology graduate with both master’s and PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge in England. “I stumbled upon Anthropology as part of my three majors at the then University of Durban-Westville. This discipline confessed its previous conceptual sins in a way that inspired change! From the exploration of human origins, to economic and political developments, and that was Anthropology. I was just absolutely taken by its acknowledgement of the intellectual project being socio-culturally rooted,” she said about her chosen area of study.

“I have always been inspired by Archie Mafeje’s work. I was motivated by Bernard Magubane’s scholarship, and I marvelled at the rigour of Oyeronke Oyewumi and Marilyn Strathern in feminist discourse. I mention these, because they inspire intellectual passion in me and I eventually met them,” she added.

Higher education in SA

She believes the higher-education sector is succumbing to streamlining methods, uninformed processes, and very little impact. “Like in government, higher education should not suffer from reduction of people into statistics, interventions into annual performance plan targets, and planning and monitoring into sanitised expenditure against targets. I see the shortage of relevance, responsiveness, and humanness; as well as ‘being captured’ by the latest fashions of doing rigid academe as the major challenges of higher education in South Africa today. We need to liberate our own innovative potential. We really need to create space for Africa to be contributors and innovators of knowledge,” Prof Sithole, the author of Unequal Peers, said.

She is, however, optimistic about the future of higher education in South Africa. “The day that we will have our innovation systems and systems of defining excellence – liberated from merely kneeling before the altar of Westernisation – we will gain integrity both conceptually and instrumentally in terms of responding to a society that is waiting for higher education to solve societal problems. The solution is to let those who see this truth continue to produce the knowledge despite being less than pleasing to the average scientific oversight bodies steeped in conventional Western validation.”

Research interests

Prof Sithole was previously employed with the Public Service Commission as a commissioner, a position she held from 2015 to August 2019. Prior to that, she worked at the University of KwaZulu-Natal as an Associate Professor of Community Development from 2010 to 2015, and at the South African Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) as a senior researcher from 2006 to 2010. Her research interests and areas of expertise are governance, gender and development, analysis of social inequality, and the politics of knowledge production.


News Archive

State of our campuses: UFS closes campuses until Friday 28 October 2016 to readjust academic programme
2016-10-15

UFS announces strategy for completion of the 2016 academic year

Agreement between UFS management and student leadership in relation to residences

After almost four weeks of student protests about fees at the University of the Free State (UFS) and the subsequent suspension of the academic programme and closing of campuses, the senior leadership announced on 14 October 2016 a strategy to ensure that students will be able to complete the 2016 academic year.

The university on 13 October 2016 announced that it will shut down its Bloemfontein and South Campuses until 28 October 2016 for crucial and complex arrangements to be put in place to readjust the academic calendar and ensure that all students can complete their studies. The senior leadership did, however, make it clear that the university will not be shutting down for the remainder of 2016.

No teaching and learning activities at undergraduate and honours level will be offered between 17 October and 28 October 2016. The university will re-start teaching and learning at undergraduate and honours level in the first week of November 2016.

However, teaching and learning will not take place in the classrooms during November 2016, but through a different mode of delivery that consists of a combination of printed and recorded lectures, study materials and learning aids that will be provided by the university and delivered through Blackboard. In this manner no attempts at disrupting the rest of the academic year will affect our students’ academic programme. Students, however, will sit for the exam on campus.

Students in residence accommodation can return to campus as from 29 October 2016 and it is recommended that students who do not have off-campus internet access return to campus in order to access study material to complete the academic year.A new timetable for exams is still being developed and will be communicated as soon as the arrangements have been finalised.

Faculties have been differently affected by the loss of teaching time. Some faculties like the Faculty of Law have completed their curriculum, while other faculties like the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences require more teaching time. Some faculties, like the Faculty of Health Sciences, cannot do teaching through alternative modes of delivery.

The needs of the different faculties have been taken into account for developing a rescue plan to complete the 2016 academic year.

  • The Faculty of Health Sciences will continue its classes and clinical rotations as normal for all three schools on the Bloemfontein Campus and in the relevant hospitals. All students registered in programmes in the Faculty of Health Sciences will stay in residences for the full period of their studies and exams. Final-year medical students will graduate in December 2016 as expected.
  • In the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, final-year students for the Certificate in the Theory of Accounting (CTA) will stay on campus during October through to December 2016 and their classes and tests will not change.
  • Arrangements for all other faculties and programmes are being prepared and within the next week, students and parents/guardians will receive communication about how curriculum content will be completed and when the final exams will take place.
  • The university is extending the academic year so that we can recuperate all the lost teaching and learning time. The qualifications conferred on the 2016 class will be of the same quality and standards as all UFS qualifications.

The UFS is and will remain a fundamentally contact teaching and learning education university. However, under the current circumstances faced not only by the UFS, but higher-education institutions across the country, the best way of ensuring the integrity of the academic programmes in most faculties is by using an alternative way of teaching and learning. Other South African universities have chosen the same approach to be able to complete the academic year.

Instead of students going to class, they will have content delivered to them where they are (library, computer labs, their own computers, etc.) through Blackboard and printed and electronic material. This is a different way of learning but students will be carefully guided and supported.

Faculties are currently preparing all the necessary materials and instructions to support student learning.Standards and quality will be the same as if students were attending classes. Some faculties require practical laboratory work as part of their curriculum. The exam timetable will be adapted for these students to be able to complete their practical work when the academic activities commences in November 2016. The relevant faculties will communicate the schedule of practical work directly to the students.

Students in their final year will complete their studies during 2016. It is possible that in some cases the graduation ceremony for these students will be in June 2017 instead of April 2017. This will not prejudice students with bursaries, or committed employment in law firms or other businesses. The university will provide the necessary academic transcripts as proof of the completion of the relevant qualifications. None of these changes will affect postgraduate students.

The university will maintain regular communication with students and parents/guardians to update them on the new exams timetable.Faculties will communicate directly with students about issues related to their programmes.

“One of the areas in which significant progress was made, is that we were able to agree on a basis for stability with student leaders. The student protests occurred during an important time in the university’s academic calendar and the readjustment of our academic programme has put tremendous pressure on academic and support services staff, and created anxieties for parents,” said Prof Nicky Morgan, Acting Rector of the UFS.

“The senior leadership restates its commitment to free education as well as its willingness to stand together with students and other public universities to impress on government the urgency to decide on a time frame for the roll-out of free higher education for the poor and missing middle. We will use the next two weeks to meet with the leadership of Universities South Africa to coordinate collective action in this regard. We will furthermore also roll out a series of activities to inform and educate students and the general public on different models and experiences of providing free higher education,” he said.

The strategy to readjust the 2016 academic year is applicable to students on the Bloemfontein and South Campuses.


Released by:
Lacea Loader (Director: Communication and Brand Management)
Telephone: +27 51 401 2584 | +27 83 645 2454
Email: news@ufs.ac.za | loaderl@ufs.ac.za
Fax: +27 51 444 6393

 

State of our campuses #15: UFS closes campuses until Friday 28 October 2016 to readjust academic programme

State of our campuses #14: All academic activities on UFS campuses remain suspended on 13 and 14 October 2016

State of our campuses #13: Availability of information about plans for remainder of UFS 2016 calendar year

State of our campuses #12: All academic activities at UFS campuses suspended for 11 and 12 October 2016

State of our campuses #11: Academic activities on UFS campuses continue

State of our campuses #10: Impact of non-completion of the 2016 academic year on UFS students 

State of our campuses #9: Academic programme on all UFS campuses to resume on Monday 10 October 2016

State of our campuses #8:  UFS extends vacation as from 28 September until 7 October 2016, 28 September 2016

State of our campuses #7: All three UFS campuses will be closed today, 27 September 2016.

State of our campuses #6: All UFS campuses reopen on Tuesday 27 September 2016

State of our campuses #5: UFS campuses to remain closed on Monday 26 September 2016

State of our campuses #4: Decisions about the UFS academic calendar

State of our campuses #3: UFS campuses closed until Friday 23 September 2016 

State of our campuses #2: UFS Bloemfontein and South Campuses closed on Tuesday 20 September 2016 (19 September 2016)

State of our campuses #1: Academic activities suspended on UFS Bloemfontein Campus (19 September 2016)

 

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