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20 December 2020
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Story Thabo Kessah
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Photo Thabo Kessah
Mbuyiselwa Moloi with student volunteers, Keamogetswe Mooketsi (presenter), Tshumelo Phaladi (producer), and Siphamandla Shabangu (SRC member – Social Justice and Universal Access).
The month of October 2020 marked the first anniversary of the Qwaqwa Campus online student radio, Q-Lit. “It has been a rocky road of sleepless nights, tears, and a lot of challenges. However, we have grown from strength to strength. We have made dreams of ordinary students possible. We have influenced change and inspired students to tap into their talents and potential,” said an elated station manager, Mbuyiselwa Moloi.
The station came in handy during the worst lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic when it bridged the communication gap between students and the university to integrate teaching and learning into the programming to ensure that no student was left behind. “With all of the regulations and online learning, Q-Lit had to be reinvented. While it was not an easy journey, we have grown more than ever before. Our August 2020 report shows that we have pulled in more than 1 600 listeners, even amid the learning, unlearning, and relearning processes. It was during this month that we also ran a series highlighting strategic offices led by women on campus as part of our Women’s Month celebration,” Mbuyiselwa revealed.
Looking to the future, the station hopes to obtain a full broadcasting licence from the regulatory body, the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa (ICASA), soon.
Afrikaans place names were not only given by Afrikaner people, says professor.
2012-09-25
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Prof. Peter Raper delivering his lecture on South African place names.
25 September 2012 |
Prof. Peter Raper, honorary professor at the Department of Linguistics and Language Practice, delivered a public lecture in Clarens earlier this month. The theme of the lecture was “From Stone Age to GPS: The fourth edition of the South African Place Names Dictionary”.
Prof. Raper shared the historical development of the project as well as the challenges and other interesting observations associated with the topic. He elaborated on the dramatic change in the focus of his research on place names in South Africa.
It was previously assumed that all of the Afrikaans place names were given by the Afrikaner people and that changing these place names was consistent with the mandate of the South African Geographical Names Council (SAGNC) to transform place names. Prof. Raper said more in-depth research revealed that a significant number of place names are actually translations of original San names – into Afrikaans, Khoi and the Bantu languages. He told the audience that given the constitutional stipulation that no cultural group’s heritage may be removed, this discovery calls into the question the modus operandi of the SAGNC.
Prof. Raper’s lecture was part of the conference programme of the Third International MIDP IV Symposium that took place on the Qwaqwa campus. The MIDP (Multilingual Information Development Programme) is a project sponsored by the Province of Antwerp. The theme for this year’s symposium was “Multilingualism for Empowerment” and was presented in collaboration with the University of Antwerp.