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12 March 2020 | Story Xolisa Mnukwa | Photo Supplied
Student Governance dialogue session
The UFS Student Governance office aims to motivate engaged scholarship among students and academia, to act as a reservoir of excellence in governance, and shape an excellent landscape of leadership.
“I’m anticipating philosophical discussions that will unpack moral courage, ethics in leadership, and governance,” said UFS Manager for Student Governance, Buti Mnyakeni, in opening the Division of Student Affairs’ first annual Student Governance Leadership Series (SGL) at the University of the Free State (UFS). 

The Student Governance office intends to encourage engaged scholarship among students and academia to produce a broader landscape of equipped student leaders from the university. 

UFS Vice-Rector: Institutional Change, Student Affairs, and Community Engagement, Prof Puleng LenkaBula, joined by former SRC President, Phiwe Mathe, and student leaders Sam Masingi and Amanda Charles, provided rich and provoking contributions under the theme The concept of good governance. On the first day of the series, the discourse kicked off with problematising the concept, and further led to egocentrism, and Afrocentric modalities of governance. 

The panel also unpacked the exclusivity of governmental systems by discussing institutional and managerial culture, which according to them, results in detached knowledge and ways of thinking. 

Day two of the series focused on discussions around moral courage in the era of ethical decay. Attorney of the High Court and International Economic Law Lecturer at the UFS, Mmiselo Qumba; former Vice-President of the SRC, Bokang Fako; former president of the SRC, Richard Chemaly; and freelance writer, broadcaster, author, and communicator, Ace Moloi, engaged extensively on the influence of personal values on shared ethical standards as a vehicle that can lead to a socially just community and society.

The SGL series established a platform to encourage current and prospective student leaders to reflect, connect, and be innovative in their design thinking as leaders in their respective governance structures.

The Programme Director for the event, Adv Thanduxolo Nkala – an accredited mediator in commercial and court-annexed mediation – reflected on the dialogues as “rich and robust.”

News Archive

Dr Henry Jordaan’s research to establish benchmarks for sustainable freshwater use in agri-food industries
2014-08-22

 

 Photo: en.wikipedia.org

Dr Henry Jordaan, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Economics, is working on a multi-disciplinary research project for the Water Research Commission. The project assesses the water footprints of selected agri-food products that are derived from field and forage crops produced under irrigation in South Africa. These foods include animal products, such as meat and dairy, and crop products such as bread and maize meal.

“The water footprint of a food product is the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the product, measured from the farm to the actual consumption of the food product. Thus, the water footprint is a good indicator of the impact that the consumption of a product has on our scarce freshwater resource. The agri-food sector is a major user of freshwater in South Africa with a relatively large water footprint,” says Dr Jordaan.

However, the agri-food sector also has an important role in economic development in South Africa. It generates income and employment opportunities along the value chains of the food products.

The challenge is to maximise the economic and social benefits from using freshwater in an environment where freshwater gets increasingly scarce.

Through his research, Dr Jordaan aims to establish benchmarks for sustainable freshwater use in selected agri-food industries – from an environmental, economic and social perspective. These benchmarks will inform water users on the acceptable volumes of freshwater to use to produce food products. It will also inform users of the economic and social benefits that they are being expected to generate through their actions so that their water use behaviour could be considered sustainable.


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