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16 September 2020 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Supplied
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Prof Mongane Wally Serote will present the Heritage Day webinar on 23 September 2020.

September is dedicated to heritage celebrations, with the nation celebrating Heritage Day on 24 September. The Centre for Gender and Africa Studies (CGAS) will collaborate with the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and the University of the Western Cape to present a national Heritage Day webinar with Prof Mongane Wally Serote as keynote speaker.

Date: 23 September 2020
Time:12:00
Platform: Webinarjam

Registration is required prior to webinar: 

Prof Serote is widely recognised as the ‘Father of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS)’ in South Africa, where he  pioneered research and debate on IKS at national level. Prof Serote is also the National Poet Laureate. Dr Stephanie Cawood, director of CGAS said that Prof Serote is one of South Africa’s struggle and intellectual stalwarts and that his lecture promises “to be insightful and hopeful in a time when we need to reflect on our position as a nation carefully.”

The topic of the webinar is Going to Basics: The Reconstruction and Development Programme of the Source.  “Heritage Day is important to help us reflect on who we are and what we have in common as a people, to focus on what binds us together and not what divides us,” said Dr Cawood

Due to the limitations imposed by government on events as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CGAS had to reinvent what would have been the Africa Day Memorial Lecture. 



About our speaker:

Professor Mongane Wally Serote is the third National Poet Laureate of South Africa inaugurated on November 6, 2018. He is a celebrated poet, author, struggle stalwart, member of the Black Consciousness Movement, Umkhonto we Sizwe commander, pioneer of IKS in South Africa, former MP, and Ngaka (healer). Serote has been awarded national and international accolades, amongst others the Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize (1973); the Noma Award (1993); the English Academy of Southern Africa Medal (2003); the Pablo Neruda Award (2004); the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver awarded by President Thabo Mbeki (2007); the prestigious Golden Wreath Award for Poetry (2012), and the Arts and Culture Trust Lifetime Achievement Award (2016). 

Read more about Prof Mongane Wally Serote

 

News Archive

UFS academic discusses Dutch, Afrikaans and African languages
2006-05-22

During the colloquium presented in Belgium by the Province Antwerp were from the left Prof Pol Cuvelier (University of Antwerp), Prof Theo du Plessis (Director: Unit for Language Management at the UFS), Mr Ludo Helsen (Permanent Deputy: Province of Antwerp) and Mr Jean-Pierre Rondas (Flemish radio journalist).

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UFS academic discusses Dutch, Afrikaans and African languages at international conference

Prof Theo du Plessis, Director of the Unit for Language Management at the University of the Free State (UFS), was the main speaker at a colloquium titled “Routes:  Where to now? - Een traject van het Nederlands naar het Afrikaans en de Afrikatalen”, which was recently presented by the Province Antwerp in Belgium.

 The aim of the colloquium was to discuss the future cooperation in the field of language between the Province Antwerp and South Africa. 

 The Province Antwerp is already involved with projects in South Africa.  One of these projects is the Multilingual Information Development Programme (MIDP), a partnership project between the UFS and the Free State Province that is mainly funded by the Province Antwerp. 

 The project has been running since 1999 and was recently in the news with the presentation of a symposium on multilingualism and exclusion on the Main Campus of the UFS.  It is hoped that the Routes colloquium will indicate new stages on which can be added to the already successful cooperation in the area of language.

 Prof Du Plessis’s presentation titled “Nederlands, Afrikaans en die Afrikatale – kan samewerking slaag? Die geval MIDP in die Vrystaat”, investigated the successes that have been made with the MIDP.  He discussed two possible approaches to cooperation in the areas of language, that of a sentimentalistic  approach against an instrumentalistic approach. 

Cooperation in the first approach makes language the aim.  In the second approach language is used as a means to a greater aim.  According to Prof du Plessis the first approach is driven by a romantisised idea about the relation between the Flemish and Afrikaans speaking people, which may unfortunately polarise the position of Afrikaans in South Africa even further.

 He argues that, given the time that we are in, the second approach will deliver more constructive results as language can among others be used for to further  democracy in South Africa.   This can happen by cooperation in the institutionalising of multilingualism in our society.  The more languages are used in education, law and government administration, the more we can be assured a successful democracy.

 The Routes colloquium was facilitated by the well-known Flemish radio journalist, Jean-Pierre Rondas. About twenty South African and Flemish language specialists took part in the colloquium.  Dr Fritz Kok, outgoing chief executive officer of the ATKV took part in the opening ceremony and Dr Neville Alexander from the University of Cape Town and well-known activist for multilingualism in South Africa was also one of the main speakers.

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