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16 July 2020 | Story Valentino Ndaba
Add these emergency safety contacts to your speed dial.

Staying safe during the coronavirus pandemic extends to ensuring that students at the University of the Free State (UFS) are safe from crime. Crime in South Africa remains an unfortunate reality which continues to affect students, staff and the institution in general. 

“Crime requires constant vigilance from the community and this can only be achieved through initiatives that are aimed at informing the community on what to do and what not to do. To this end the BSafe Safety First flyer is geared at informing specifically the student community on safety measures that must be taken,” said Cobus van Jaarsveld, Assistant Director: Threat Detection, Investigations and Liaison at Protection Services.

The Safety First flyer is a guide for students to be crime-conscious whether at their accommodation, on the street, or in their vehicles. It also offers tips on how to act responsibly as far as alcohol and drugs are concerned.

Engaging students on their safety 

UFS Protection Services recently engaged with off-campus residence students in Bloemfontein in order to provide tips on how to stay safe in their neighbourhoods. During the engagement, the new Safety First pamphlets were distributed, and students were encouraged to join the Student Crime-Stop Brandwag WhatsApp group.

As from 15 June 2020, Nissi Armed Response was deployed from 18:00 to 06:00. This initiative has already led to them responding to several suspicious persons and vehicles, as well as some minor incidents and disturbances. Two arrests were made on different occasions as a result of the deployment. In the first incident, a suspect was arrested on 27 June 2020 after a burglary in Brandwag, and the second relates to a suspect who was arrested on 10 July 2020 after threatening students at Universitas.

These successes were the result of student and community participation in providing information, coupled with excellent response from private security companies, including Nissi Armed Response, VR Security, and BloemSec.

News Archive

SAB World of Learning Brewery bid awarded to Kovsie Brewing
2017-11-28

Description: Kovsie Brewing 2 2017 Tags: Kovsie Brewing 2 2017 

Visitors from SA Breweries (AB InBev), Khosi Mogotsi,
Patience Selesho and Zinhle Ngcobo with
Dr Jan-G Vermeulen and Dr Errol Cason from
Kovsie Brewery.
Photos: Moeketsi Mogotsi

With the recent procurement of SAB by Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (AB InBev), a Belgian transnational beverage and brewing company, the 500L educational brewery located at the SAB Cyril Ramaphosa World of Learning, became available for donation. After an initial shortlisting of three universities, the SAB World of Learning Brewery was awarded to the University of the Free State (UFS) to be managed by Kovsie Brewing.

Prof Corli Witthuhn, Vice-Rector: Research at the UFS, approved the application for a micro-manufacturing liquor licence right in the middle of campus, which effectively put the UFS bid in a class of its own. It is part of her vision that entrepreneurial activities must be visible on campus”

Sixteen universities were approached to obtain the brewery for their respective campuses.

Kovsie Brewing is an initiative started by postgraduate students at the UFS Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology in 2012. The main objective of this initiative was to expose BSc students to brewing as a practical application of the scientific fields presented at the department.
 

Description: Kovsie Brewing 1 2017 Tags: Kovsie Brewing 1 2017 

Label mock-ups made by
Dr Jan-G Vermeulen from
Kovsie Brewery entered into
the yearly  SAB Intervarsity
Brewing Competition. Kovsie
Brewing has won the best label
competition in 2013, 2014 and 2015
and was placed in the top three in
2016 and 2017.


First brewing and fermentation school
Dr Errol Cason, project leader at Kovsie Brewery, said: “Over the past five years the small-scale experimental brewery has steadily grown to the point where we obtained institutional support to establish the first Brewing and Fermentation School at the university.

Dr Cason explains that the primary role of Kovsie Brewing is to establish an accredited fermentation-based curriculum at the UFS to educate undergraduate and postgraduate students in the scientific process involved in the production of beer. “In addition, the donation enables Kovsie Brewing to provide practical job-related training and skills development on industrial grade equipment,” he said.

Emphasis on entrepreneurship
The secondary role is for Kovsie Brewing to function as a multi-disciplinary platform to stimulate the interaction between students from various fields of study. Currently Kovsie Brewing has well-established cooperative projects with both Marketing and Entrepreneurship programmes.

“In the future, Kovsie Brewing will expand on these multi-disciplinary interactions by incorporating other departments of the UFS with the focus on product development, logistics, as well as the legal aspects concerned with brewing,” Dr Jan-G Vermeulen from the Kovsie Brewery team said.

Corporate social investment representatives from AB InBev recently visited the university. Among others they met Drs Vermeulen and Cason. During their visit they also looked at other university projects, including the Department of Paediatric and Child Health and the Universitas Hospital, the Engineering Sciences Department and the Naval Hill Planetarium.

Khosi Mogotsi from AB InBev said: “It was wonderful to experience the passion with which UFS staff do their work.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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