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Embark on your Gateway to an exciting Kovsie life

23 January 2020 | Story Xolisa Mnukwa

Enrich your first University of the Free State (UFS) experiences with the annual Gateway first-year’s college. Form long-lasting friendships and memories with your fellow freshmen and gear up for a vibrant academic career at the UFS.

Gateway comprises an exciting series of student-life and learning experiences that are intended to introduce and acquaint students with their respective Kovsie campuses and overall UFS campus life.

The 2020 Gateway programme inducts first-year students into academic faculty life in order to help them adjust and settle into the university environment. It also aims to instil effective skills in them to thrive academically, and to develop into well-rounded, globally competitive graduates.

Want to experience Gateway? Here’s how

The Gateway Orientation programme on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus is conducted according to student colleges. First-year students who do not belong to an on-campus or day residence on the Bfn Campus, are assigned to a college in Exam Room 3 during their registration. This enables them to follow and be part of the series of events according to the colleges they are assigned to.

Get to know your UFS campus

UFS Campus Tours no longer form part of the Gateway Programme; however, Gateway mentors assigned to specific colleges are available for students to get in touch with, in order to arrange tours of the Bloemfontein Campus. Day-residence students and students residing on campus are paired with P3 mentors, who have been placed in their respective residences to facilitate campus tours for them.

KovsiesACTUP Performing Arts Competition

The UFS Arts, Culture and Dialogue office has partnered with the Kovsie ACT office for the 2020 Gateway programme, introducing the KovsiesACTUP Performing Arts Competition for all prospective and current students of the UFS. It is geared towards engaging students and enhancing the general social atmosphere on the Bloemfontein Campus during registration.

The competition comprises various categories, including dancing, singing, poetry, DJing, musical bands, and rap. The winner from each category will walk away with R1 500 in cash. The competition finale will be held at the RAG farm on 27 January 2020 at 14:00.

For more information on how to get involved with the Arts, Culture and Dialogue Office, students can visit the Callie Human Centre on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus. The office has set up a performance stage, where fellow Kovsies associated with the office are entertaining prospective students and parents who are waiting to register.

For enquiries about Gateway on each campus, see the details below:

Bloemfontein Campus: +27 51 401 9876 or email gateway@ufs.ac.za
Qwaqwa Campus: Dulcie Malimabe, +27 58 718 5041; malimabeDP@ufs.ac.za
South Campus: Tshego Setilo, +27 51 505 1362; SetiloT@ufs.ac.za

Visit the UFS Gateway page for more information on the 2020 programme and how you can get involved.

News Archive

Lecture focuses on how Marikana widows embody the transformative power of art

2015-08-11

Makopane Thelejane

"When I got the news of my husband is dead, I put my hands above my head, as you see me in this picture. I could not bear the ache in my heart." - Makopane Thelejane

A woman looks down on a canvas covered in thick layers of red, dark shadows falling across her face. A brief moment that captures the silently-devastating aftermath of the Marikana massacre that bled into the lives of 34 widows.

It is this silent trauma that was at the centre of the last instalment of the Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture Series for 2015. “These stories of the Marikana widows are important. It is these stories of silence that live behind the spectacular scenes of the violence,” Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Senior Research Professor in Trauma, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation Studies at the University of the Free State (UFS) said at the event.

Panel
The lecture, which took place on Monday 27 July 2015 on the Bloemfontein Campus, took the form of a panel discussing the theme of “Speaking wounds: voices of Marikana widows through art and narrative”. The panel consisted of members from the Khulumani Support Group, including Dr Marjorie Jobson (National Director) and Judy Seidman (Sociologist and Graphic Artist), as well as Nomfundo Walaza, former CEO of the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre.

Betty Lomasontlo Gadlela

"Then this dark time came, a dark cloud over me. It made me to have an aching heart, which took me to hospital, from losing my loved one, my husband, in such a terrible manner. " - Betty Lomasontlo Gadlela

Trauma made visible
In a project initiated by Khulumani, the Marikana widows were encouraged to share their trauma through painting body maps – in which the widows depicted their own bodies immersed in their trauma – and narrating their personal stories. Throughout the workshops, the focus always remained on the women. As Siedman put it, “the power of this process is rooted in the participants. The statements of what the participants experienced is what’s important.”

Initially silenced and isolated, this group of women has now moved “into a space where they have become connected to each, and stand up for each other in the most powerful ways,” Dr Jobson said. “Our work is conceptualised in terms of giving visibility and voice to the people who know what it takes to change this country; to change this struggle.”

The transformative power of art and narrative
During her response, Walaza pointed out “how art and narrative can transform traumatic memory and become integrated in the survivors’ life story.” This gives individuals the opportunity, she said, “to step into a space of mutual listening and dialoguing in which people bond together.”

Co-hosted by Prof Gobodo-Madikizela and the UFS Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice, the lecture series forms part of a five-year research project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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