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21 October 2019 | Story Thabo Kessah | Photo Tshepo Moeketsi
Qwaqwa research research
Mamokete Mokhatla (SRC: International Students Council), Pulane Xaba (Assistant: Afromontane Research Unit), Dr Hagenmeier, Morena Ntsane Mopeli, Prof Pearl Sithole, Chief Mlati, Kanego Mogotsi (Internationalisation: Qwaqwa Campus), and Prof Joseph Francis.

Communities are beginning to wonder if universities exist for themselves or for their communities. This is the view shared by Prof Pearl Sithole, Campus Vice-Principal: Academic and Research, during the opening of the two-day Travelling Seminar that was recently hosted on the Qwaqwa Campus. 

Research in communities

“This event is well-placed, considering what many communities are currently going through. We must ask ourselves what we are doing with and for our communities. We must be careful to not only reap data from them, but to be scientific in a way that accommodates our communities and allows the African and indigenous agenda into the world of science,” she added.

Providing background to the concept of homestays, the Director: Institute for Rural Development at the University of Venda, Prof Joseph Francis, acknowledged the role played by communities in research.

 “This seminar seeks to develop a testable framework for homestays; a concept enabling postgraduate students to be placed with rural families while conducting research in the area. It is also aimed at giving birth to a vibrant, community-based rural and regional development network connecting grassroots communities, business, government, and non-governmental stakeholders,” he said.

“We do not only train students for local deployment and within national borders. It is important to produce an ‘all-weather’ graduate who stands out wherever they are. Graduates must ask themselves, ‘what in me stands out among the rest?’ As a student and researcher, never see yourself as being confined to the space where you are,” he added.

Students as ambassadors

Cornelius Hagenmeier, Director: Office of International Affairs at the University of the Free State, said for internationalisation to work, it has to be inclusive and create student ambassadors. “As this seminar will show, our networks of stakeholder communities go beyond the national confines and borders. We must strive, through this project, to create ambassadors of the university, of communities, of the broader South Africa and Africa,” he said.

Participants in the seminar were academics and postgraduate students from both the Universities of the Free State and Venda. Also present were community and traditional leaders from Qwaqwa and the Vhembe District in Limpopo. 

News Archive

Inaugural lecture challenges leaders in higher education
2012-10-30

Dr Mamphela Ramphele
Photo: Stephen Collett
29 October 2012


Lecture
(Pdf format)

According to international statistics, South Africa’s school performance is rated 140th out of 144 countries. South Africa is also ranked 143rd out of 144 countries when it comes to  the quality of mathematics and science. About 600 000 South African graduates are unemployed and about 500 000 learners are failed by our current education system.

Dr Mamphela Ramphele brought these shocking statistics to the light at the inaugural lecture of the Annual Prestige Lecture at the Faculty of Education on Thursday 25 October 2012 at the University of the Free State (UFS).

This lecture will henceforth be known as the Mamphela Ramphele Prestige Lecture.

Dr Ramphelefocused her lecture on ‘Educating the 21st century citizen’.

“One of the defining characteristics of the 21st century is the vast number of choices that confront us every day at a personal, professional and political level.”

She asked if 21st century South Africans are equipped with the skills to make the choices that confront them daily.

“The failure to transform our apartheid education into one characterized by equity and excellence, is producing graduates who lack self-confidence.”

Dr Ramphele said that in South Africa about 1/6th of government expenditure goes to education, but the outcomes remain shocking.

For Dr Ramphele the answer lies in creating platforms for open conversation about South Africa’s painful past and the agenda for radical socio-economic restructuring should include the fundamental transformation of education.

She praised the UFS, under its current inspirational leadership, for its role as change agents through the education.

Prof. Rita Niemann, senior professor at the Faculty said the Annual Mamphela Ramphele lecture is to further expand and celebrate education in South Africa.

“Dr Ramphela has given us so much food for thought by challenging leaders in higher education to speak out about the questionable state of education in South Africa and to become engaged in the ‘revolution of the spirit’ in order to deliver citizens who own and shape the country.”
 

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