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25 November 2020

The UFS SRC Elections will be held from 01 to 04 December 2020 for the QwaQwa and South Campus. The Bloemfontein Campus SRC elections for the elective portfolios will be held in 2021. 

• The window for the nomination of candidates for the CSRC elective portfolios has closed and the final candidate list of candidates is now available on the election website.

• Candidates’ on the final list may therefore conduct their campaigns. Candidates’ campaigns must be within the prescripts of the UFS SRC Election Code of Conduct. 

• Nominations for ex-officio candidates have since closed. In this regard, the final list of candidates will be published on election website on 25 November 2020 

• Student Council Elections for the ex-officio portfolios will be held from 26 to 30 November 2020. To this effect, an invitation to respective student council meetings will be sent out via student emails. 

• Manifesto launches will take place via webinars between 25 and 30 November 2020. A detailed schedule will be made available via the election website.   

KDBS Consulting (Pty) Ltd has been appointed to oversee and manage the SRC elections 2020/2021 as the Independent Chief Elections Administrator. A website has been launched to provide up-to-date information regarding these elections and all processes related to it. The website address is https://www.ufs-srcelection.co.za.

For any queries related to the elections, you can email the Chief Election Administrator at info@ufs-srcelection.co.za  or you can call the election helpdesk at +27 0 800 061 052 toll-free.   

Please look out for election-specific notifications via SMS or your UFS4Life student emails.   

News Archive

Mandela statues and the issue of public representation
2015-09-04

   

Prof Grant Parker, Associate Professor of Classics and Co-Director of the Centre for African Studies at Stanford University, USA, presented a public lecture on the Bloemfontein Campus on 27 August 2015, in which he explored the topic of ”Memorialising Mandela after Rhodes Must Fall”. What stories do the multitude of Mandela statues tell us about the man? Our society? Ourselves? These were some of the questions Prof Parker addressed during his lecture.

Paradoxes
Prof Parker discussed some of the paradoxes presented by the Mandela statues. The huge 9m high Mandela statue at the Union Buildings in Pretoria does not necessarily reflect his humility. Iconic statues strewn across the world do not reveal Madiba’s appeal. “Madiba’s charm,” Prof Parker said, “was all about his ability to relate to people of very different backgrounds. People who were his enemies would – to their surprise – find a humanity they were not expecting. It’s very hard to reconcile that with the colossal statues.”

Rhodes Must Fall
On the topic of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, Prof Parker said that “the debates around it seem to express the frustration of deepening equality in general and lack of demographic change.” He also believes that, although the campaign centres on statues, there are much deeper issues at play that need to be addressed.

Artists should be part of the conversation
Prof Parker also advocated that artists’ voices should be incorporated into the creative processes of public art. “There is a much greater need for creative artists,” he concluded, “to be part of conversations, not only about what we as South Africans want to commemorate, but how we do that. I would very strongly suggest that this be done by non-figural representations.”

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