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24 August 2021
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Story Amanda Tongha
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In a year marked by a global pandemic, the University of the Free State (UFS) has made great strides in research, teaching, and impactful engagement.
Our 2020 journey has seen many staff members providing services to advance public knowledge of COVID-19 for the greater good of South Africa. We have produced top-rated scientists, boasting six SARChI research chairs and three A-rated scholars in our world-class workforce. Our various initiatives to ensure student success continue to bear fruit, with current and former students making their mark in the world. One such example is Qinisani Qwabe, a PhD student in the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Rural Development and Extension, who was selected in the education category of the Mail & Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans. He was also chosen to represent South Africa at a BRICS conference in Russia.
You can read these and other facts and figures in ‘Our 2020 Journey’ publication.
Click on image to download the document
Mekondjo! National exhibition to reveal the courage, determination, repression and torture of PLAN
2014-05-21
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Angelina Angula ex PLAN soldier injured during the 1978 Cassinga attack - photo by John Liebenberg. |
A pioneering exhibition by John Liebenberg and Christo Doherty is about to open on the Bloemfontein Campus. ‘Mekondjo! born in the struggle for Namibia’ gives South Africans their first insight into the lives of the men and women who fought against the SADF in the bush of Northern Namibia and Angola from 1966 – 1989.
This public exhibition presents eleven portraits of People’s Liberation Army veterans in the process of speaking about and coming to terms with their very different experiences in the Namibian War of Liberation.
When the People’s Liberation Army (PLAN) returned to Namibia after the UN-supervised elections of 1989, it had been fighting against South African rule for 23 years. Formed in 1966 as the armed wing of the South West African Peoples’ Organisation, PLAN had developed from a handful of poorly armed guerrillas to a sophisticated mechanised force. These soldiers fought alongside Angolan, Russian and Cuban soldiers against the SADF and UNITA. Since SWAPO’s election victory, the new government has mythologised the heroism of the armed struggle. The stories of the individual PLAN fighters’ experiences are only now being articulated, though.
Their stories are of great courage and determination against often impossible odds; but also of repression, torture, and disastrous decisions by the PLAN leadership.
The exhibition will be on display from Thursday 22 May to Friday 23 May for the duration of the Silence after Violence conference. The conference is hosted by the UFS Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice and the Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont.
Date: Thursday 22 May and Friday 23 May 2014
Place: Centenary Complex, Reitz Hall, Bloemfontein Campus
Exhibition Introduction: Thursday 22 May, 14:00 – 15:30
Other viewing times: intermissions during the Silence after Violence programme
The public is welcome to attend.
* Spotlight photo: PLAN commissioner Nkrumah Mushelenga, Windhoek 2013 – photo by John Liebenberg