Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
04 August 2020 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath

Apart from its devastating impact on people’s lives and livelihoods, the COVID-19 pandemic has also affected the nature and quality of our democracies – democracy read in its widest sense here as collective and individual self-determination. Formal, institutional democracy has beencurtailed through the imposition of states of emergency or disaster and the logistical difficulties associated with social distancing. Extra-institutional democratic work, such as protest and social-movement activity, has suffered from prohibitions imposed by law and through state suppression related to ‘lockdown’. The nature (and perhaps democratic quality) of public conversation has changed – for better or worse – from increasing reliance on ‘science’ and ‘scientists’ to justify public choices. The crisis has brought to the fore already existing characteristics of our democracies, such as the prevalence and power of special-interest bargaining, the extreme inequality of our societies, and chauvinist nationalisms that force us to ask whether we have ever had democracy at all. What will be the long-term effects of these impacts of the crisis on our democracies? What will democracy look like post-COVID? What does the crisis teach us about what our democracies have always been?

Join us for a discussion of these and other democracy-related issues in these troubled times by a panel of four hailing from Colombia, India, South Africa, and the USA.

Date: Thursday, 13 August
Time: 14:00-16:00 (South African Standard Time – GMT +2)

 

Please RSVP to Mamello Serasengwe at serasengwemsm@ufs.ac.za no later than 12 August 2020 upon which you will receive a Skype for Business meeting invite and link to access the webinar

Panel

Prof Natalia Angel Cabo (University of Los Andes, Bogota, Colombia)

Dr Quaraysha Ismail-Sooliman (University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa)

Dr Usha Ramanathan  Independent Law Researcher  (Delhi, India)

Prof Katie Young (Boston College, Boston, USA) 

Moderator

Prof Danie Brand (Free State Centre for Human Rights, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa)   




News Archive

Nadine Gordimer lauds university for transformation
2012-11-09

Nadine Gordimer
Photo: Sonia Small
09 November 2012

Lecture (Pdf format)

Renowned writer and Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer has lauded the university for its efforts at reconciliation, highlighting several initiatives the university has put in place over the last few years.

She delivered the inaugural Reconciliation Lecture on the Bloemfontein Campus, and was introduced as a “champion of human oneness” by Prof. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Senior Research Professor on Trauma, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, who also referred to Gordimer as “the living expression of the power of critical consciousness”.

Gordimer praised the university by saying it was doing things in South Africa differently from what had been done during the country’s shameful past. In a message addressed at students, her lecture touched on topics of race, reconciliation, freedom of expression, education, inequality and poverty.

“Black and white – we have been conditioned; no, brain-washed, by legal and cultural and even religious, demeaning distinctions between race and colour. This university has discarded; is tackling these: an image breaking of false consciousness. We await your generation’s entry to public life, when you come out of the University of the Free State equipped to bring to us, along with your professional degrees, the way to function in a population as the human beings you have learnt to be at this university.”

The Nobel laureate also warned students of threats facing South Africa’s future.

“What is your reaction, then, to the Protection of State Information Act, the Secrecy Act that has been drop on our heads? The Secrecy Act means that we the people are not allowed to know the facts about our own country. Know how our society, our population is manoeuvred by those entrusted and empowered by our votes.”

The inaugural lecture was hosted by the Vice-Chancellor and Rector, prof. Jonathan Jansen, and the Rectorate, with the support of the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice and Prof. Gobodo-Madikizela.

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept