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22 June 2020
Dear UFS NSFAS and Funza Lushaka student,

You have been identified as an eligible student of the University of the Free State (UFS) who will receive a 3-month data-bundle grant, downloaded directly to your mobile device, as provisioned through a grant from the Department of Higher Education, Science and Innovation.   

Specifics of this data-bundle allocation are:

1. This grant is available only to students funded by NSFAS and Funza Lushaka.
2. The grant has a fixed duration of 3 months only, commencing on the date of your full registration with the national telephone company.
3. There are no in-month data top-ups on these allocations. Once this data allocation has been used, all further data required for academic engagements with the UFS will be for your own account.
4. The data will be provisioned directly to your mobile device from your preferred (contracted) mobile data provider on a monthly basis (for 3 months only).
5. No VPN access (through GlobalProtect) is required when accessing the academic websites of the UFS through these data bundles.
6. Your mobile number on the university’s PeopleSoft system will be used to initiate the download of the data bundles. You need to make sure that the cell number we have is your correct number. This cannot be changed afterwards.
7. There is no roll-over facility for unused data. A fresh, automatic provision will be made on a monthly basis. Unused data will not be added to the data bundles of the following month (3 months only).

NEXT STEPS

1. Telkom subscribers:

Based on the DHET grant conditions, a national agreement was reached with Vodacom, MTN, and Cell C for cell-based data provisioning. Unfortunately, the same agreement could not be reached for Telkom subscribers. The Telkom offer is based on an ADSL facility installed at your place of study and is thus based on a fixed landline approach. This implies that if you do not have a fixed landline to your home (place of study), you need to apply for an ADSL facility to be installed.  The associated arrangements and costs are for your personal account.

• If you do not have a Telkom landline at home (place of study), and you prefer to be serviced through a mobile data facility, you can opt for a 3-month engagement with any of the other three mobile data providers, being Vodacom, MTN, and Cell C. In this regard, you must physically visit the preferred provider and buy a SIM card and provide the new SIM-card number to the Student Helpdesk at Student Academic Services (051 401 9666) BEFORE 14:00 on Friday 26 June 2020, as this number will now be the number to which the data bundle will be provisioned for the 3 months.  

To do so, proceed as follows:

• Select the provider you want to deal with, or which is closest to you.
• Go to the shop (outlet) and buy a new SIM (at your own cost).
• You must take your national ID and proof of residence with you to RICA the new SIM card (as per the legal requirement).
• After obtaining the new SIM card, you must provide the new cell number attached to the SIM card to the UFS through the Student Helpdesk at Student Academic Services (051 401 9666) BEFORE 14:00 on Friday 26 June 2020.
• If you prefer to update your cell number yourself, please use the following URL:

https://pssa.ufs.ac.za/csprd/signon.html

2. Please note:

Once the monthly data allocation has been downloaded to the pre-identified cell number of your chosen mobile data provider (Vodacom, MTN or Cell C), the use of the data must be carefully managed for academic purposes only.  

Should you, for whatever reason, use this data inappropriately (for private use, etc.), you will run out of data soon, as it is a limited allocation of 10 GB of daytime data and 20 GB after-hours data (30 GB in total). NO further monthly data top-ups are available to you under this grant, and all further data requirements will be billed against your private number until the next monthly allocation is downloaded to your device (3 cycles only).

3. The GlobalProtect VPN access mechanism is not required for this data use, and your access will be directly to the internet and the UFS website, from where you will be able to engage with the academic content published there.

4. Technical setup assistance:

• Once you have received your monthly data bundle, you will have to set up your mobile device as a hotspot and link your laptop or desktop device to it. The cellphone then acts as a modem through which you will be able to engage with the academic resources of the UFS.
• There is no ongoing data usage monitor to inform you of the volumes of data you have consumed per session or per day. Be careful how you manage this data.

5. General notes:

• Please make sure that we have your correct cell number on our PeopleSoft system. The final date for any changes or confirmation of your correct cell number is 14:00 on Friday 26 June 2020.  Unfortunately, no late cell number changes can be accepted thereafter.
• If you are a current Telkom subscriber, you will have to provide the number of the new SIM card to the UFS as well. Should you miss the deadline of 26 June 2020, there will be no further opportunities to correct your number, and data that should have been allocated to you, will now be used by another person for the full duration of the grant, being 3 months.
• You are not allowed to change your mobile number in the next 3 months, as the data-bundle allocation will be done in a once-off manner and will remain as such for the full duration of the data grant.

6. Technical setup guides:

Please refer to the UFS website’s Digital Life section under the ‘Student’ heading, for guides to set up your mobile phone as a hotspot and to link your laptop or desktop to your phone.

This is a valuable once-off grant by the Department of Higher Education, Science and Technology. You are encouraged to perform all the actions required to use this data optimally.

7. Enquiries:

For enquiries regarding the technical configuration of your device, please contact:

ICT Services Service Desk at +27 51 401 2000 (during office hours).



News Archive

The failure of the law
2004-06-04

 

Written by Lacea Loader

- Call for the protection of consumers’ and tax payers rights against corporate companies

An expert in commercial law has called for reforms to the Companies Act to protect the rights of consumers and investors.

“Consumers and tax payers are lulled into thinking the law protects them when it definitely does not,” said Prof Dines Gihwala this week during his inaugural lecture at the University of the Free State’s (UFS).

Prof Gihwala, vice-chairperson of the UFS Council, was inaugurated as extraordinary professor in commercial law at the UFS’s Faculty of Law.

He said that consumers, tax payers and shareholders think they can look to the law for an effective curb on the enormous power for ill that big business wields.

“Once the public is involved, the activities of big business must be controlled and regulated. It is the responsibility of the law to oversee and supervise such control and regulation,” said Prof Gihwala.

He said that, when undesirable consequences occur despite laws enacted specifically to prevent such results, it must be fair to suggest that the law has failed.

“The actual perpetrators of the undesirable behaviour seldom pay for it in any sense, not even when criminal conduct is involved. If directors of companies are criminally charged and convicted, the penalty is invariably a fine imposed on the company. So, ironically, it is the money of tax payers that is spent on investigating criminal conduct, formulating charges and ultimately prosecuting the culprits involved in corporate malpractice,” said Prof Gihwala.

According to Prof Gihwala the law continuously fails to hold companies meaningfully accountable to good and honest business values.

“Insider trading is a crime and, although legislation was introduced in 1998 to curb it, not a single successful criminal prosecution has taken place. While the law appears to be offering the public protection against unacceptable business behaviour, it does no such thing – the law cannot act as a deterrent if it is inadequate or not being enforced,” he said.

The government believed it was important to facilitate access to the country’s economic resources by those who had been denied it in the past. The Broad Based Economic Empowerment Act of 2003 (BBEE), is legislation to do just that. “We should be asking ourselves whether it is really possible for an individual, handicapped by the inequities of the past, to compete in the real business world even though the BBEE Act is now part of the law?,” said Prof Gihwala.

Prof Gihwala said that judges prefer to follow precedent instead of taking bold initiative. “Following precedent is safe at a personal level. To do so will elicit no outcry of disapproval and one’s professional reputation is protected. The law needs to evolve and it is the responsibility of the judiciary to see that it happens in an orderly fashion. Courts often take the easy way out, and when the opportunity to be bold and creative presents itself, it is ignored,” he said.

“Perhaps we are expecting too much from the courts. If changes are to be made to the level of protection to the investing public by the law, Parliament must play its proper role. It is desirable for Parliament to be proactive. Those tasked with the responsibility of rewriting our Companies Act should be bold and imaginative. They should remove once and for all those parts of our common law which frustrate the ideals of our Constitution, and in particular those which conflict with the principles of the BBEE Act,” said Prof Gihwala.

According to Prof Gihwala, the following reforms are necessary:

• establishing a unit that is part of the office of the Registrar of Companies to bolster a whole inspectorate in regard to companies’ affairs;
• companies who are liable to pay a fine or fines, should have the right to take action to recover that fine from those responsible for the conduct;
• and serious transgression of the law should allow for imprisonment only – there should be no room for the payment of fines.
 

Prof Gihwala ended the lecture by saying: “If the opportunity to re-work the Companies Act is not grabbed with both hands, we will witness yet another failure in the law. Even more people will come to believe that the law is stupid and that it has made fools of them. And that would be the worst possible news in our developing democracy, where we are struggling to ensure that the Rule of Law prevails and that every one of us has respect for the law”.

 

 

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