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25 August 2021 | Story Xolisa Mnukwa | Photo Supplied
Emmie Chiyindiko is a scientist who is also interested in educational research.

Multi-award-winning science communicator, Emmie Chiyindiko, is a Chemistry PhD research student at the University of Free State (UFS), whose work has been featured in numerous media publications, including Forbes Science, News24, and the Sunday Times. When she isn’t hovering over experiments, Chiyindiko is also a part-time Mathematics lecturer at the Central University of Technology, and speaker and event facilitator of STEM community engagement programmes for organisations such as the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement (SAASTA).

“The world is waiting for what YOU have to offer. Only your unique set of skills and view of the world can deliver it. You will find yourself in rooms with smart, highly qualified, and enigmatic people; remember, you deserve to be there.

Breathe, relax, and network. You will strive and succeed.” These are the words that Chiyindiko lives by and would instil in her 15-year-old self.

Where it all started

“My mother is the wisest and most intelligent woman I know, but she never made it into formal high school education.” Chiyindiko went on to explain that boys took precedence over girls in her family’s education budget. Her grandfather’s only expectation of his daughters was for them to be able to read and write a letter; thereafter, he would take them out of school.

Inspired by her mother, who despite the odds stacked up against her, became as successful as one possibly could after being denied the opportunity to continue with school because of her gender, Chiyindiko is determined to climb as high as she can to dominate, inspire, and lead in science. 

Challenges faced by women in the 21st century 

According to Chiyindiko, many of the new emerging science and technology breakthroughs that resulted in the manufacture of various products we use daily, have been developed with input from women – even though they make up less than 30% of the world’s researchers. “Adding diversity to STEM occupations results in increased creativity and innovation, fuelled by different perspectives,” she noted. Furthermore, the restrictive modern hiring processes that require women to disclose information about their personal lives, including plans to have children, increase hiring bias, making it difficult for women to be considered for high-level occupations to make valuable and inclusive contributions to society – which needs to be addressed, explained Chiyindiko.

“Every woman is a woman of impact in the never-ending quest to become our best selves. When you’re faced with life’s daily choices, choose leadership, and remember that no one can do it alone,” is what she believes makes her a woman of quality, impact, and care. At the core of that, Chiyindiko believes that her willingness to speak her truth and be heard, even if her message may not neatly align with the status quo or form part of a popular opinion, is why she would encourage other women to live from the well of their authentic selves.

News Archive

Sites of memory. Sites of trauma. Sites of healing.
2015-04-01

Judge Albie Sachs – human rights activist and co-creator of South Africa’s constitution – presented the first Vice Chancellor’s Lecture on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past on 26 March 2015 on the Bloemfontein Campus.

His lecture, ‘Sites of memory, sites of conscience’, forms part of a series of lectures that will focus on how the creative arts represent trauma and memory – and how these representations may ultimately pave the way to healing historical wounds. This series is incorporated into the five-year research project, led by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, and funded by the Mellon Foundation.

Sites of memory and conscience – and healing

“Deep in solitary confinement, I read in the Bible: ‘the lion lay down with the lamb … swords will be beaten into ploughshares.’” And with these opening words, Judge Sachs took the audience on a wistful journey to the places in our country that ache from the past but are reaching for a better future at the same time.

Some of the sites of memory and conscience Judge Sachs discussed included the Apartheid Museum, Liliesleaf, District Six Museum, and the Red Location Museum. But perhaps most powerful of them all is Robben Island.

Robben Island

“The strength of Robben Island,” Judge Sachs said, “comes from its isolation. Its quietness speaks”. Former prisoners of the island now accompany visitors on their tours of the site, retelling their personal experiences. It was found that, the quieter the ex-prisoners imparted their stories, “the gentler and softer their memories; the more powerful the impact,” Judge Sachs remarked. Instead of anger and denouncement, this reverence provides a space for visitors’ own emotions to emerge. This intense and powerful site has become a living memory elevated into a place of healing.

After Judge Sachs visited the National Women’s Memorial in Bloemfontein some years ago, he came to an acute realisation as he read the stories, experienced the grief, and saw the small relics that imprisoned commandoes from Ceylon and St Helena sculpted. “It’s so like us,” he thought, “our people on Robben Island making a saxophone out of seaweed, our people carving little things. It was so like us. It was another form of inhumanity to human beings in another period.”

The Constitutional Court

The Constitutional Court next to the Old Fort Prison is also a profound site of trauma and healing. Bricks from the awaiting trial lock-up were built into the court chambers. “We don’t suppress it, we don’t say let’s move on. We acknowledge the pain of the past. We live in it, but we are not trapped in it. We South Africans are capable of transcending, of getting beyond it,” Judge Sachs said.

Transforming swords into ploughshares

Judge Sachs had great praise for Prof Gobodo-Madikizela’s research project on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past. “You convert and transform the very swords, the very instruments, the very metal in our country. In a sense, you almost transform the very people and thoughts and dreams and fears and terrors into the ploughshares; into positivity.”

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