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22 July 2021 | Story Ruan Bruwer | Photo Roger Sedres
Can Wayde van Niekerk repeat his amazing feat from the 2016 Olympics – now five years later – at the next Games?
It is a year later, but the Tokyo 2020 Olympics finally started on Friday, 23 July 2021. In team South Africa, a couple of the athletes and management, many of them medal contenders, call themselves Kovsies.

From 1 August, the progress of the country’s golden boy, Wayde van Niekerk, will be closely followed when he tries to hold on to the title as Olympic 400 m champion – he is still the world record holder (set at the 2016 Games). The final of the 400 m is scheduled for 5 August.

One of only five female athletes in the South African team, Gerda Steyn will compete in the marathon on 7 August. This is her first time at the Olympics. 

She is in red-hot form. In April, she broke a 25-year record in Italy when she ran the fastest-ever marathon by a South African woman, finishing in 2:25:28. She is the defending Comrades and Two Oceans champ.

Protea hockey player, Nicole Erasmus, will become a fourth-generation Olympic contender in her family. Her mother, Lynne Walraven (née Tasker) was a Zimbabwean swimmer, her great-uncle, Anthony Tasker, was a member of the South African rowing team, and her great-great-uncle, Frank Rushton, was a South African hurdles athlete. 

From 26 to 28 July, the South African sevens rugby team, with former Shimlas Chris Dry as a team member and Neil Powell as head coach, will aim to improve on their bronze medal achieved in 2016. Powell was also the head coach at the time, and another former Kovsie, Philip Snyman, captained the Blitzboks.

Kate Murray (formerly Roberts), head coach and high-performance manager of Triathlon South Africa, will act as the SA triathlon coach. She is a double Olympic participant, having raced for South Africa at the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games.

 


News Archive

Max du Preez on South Africa’s leadership vacuum
2011-08-29

 

Present at the CR Swart Memorial Lecture was, from the left: Prof. Hussein Solomon, senior Professor in our Department of Political Science; Prof. Theo Neethling, Head of our Department of Political Science; Max du Preez and Prof. Lucius Botes,Dean of our Faculty of Humanities.
Photo: Stephen Collett

“Much has been going wrong in South Africa in the last few years and it’s all due to a lack of strong, visionary leadership. South Africans deserve better and should demand more integrity, courage and vision from the present political leadership,” veteran journalist and author Max du Preez told the audience at a packed Wynand Mouton Theatre at our university, on 25 August 2011.

Delivering this year’s CR Swart Memorial Lecture on the topic “Of Jacob, Julius, Jimmy and the Dancing Monkey”, Du Preez told the audience to look with much more critical eyes at the political leadership and decide who is doing the obvious, following his or her basest instincts or simply trying to play to the gallery. “Why look at a man like Julius Malema and let him upset us, why listen to Floyd Shivambu with his crude manners and let them define us?” Du Preez asked the more than 300 people attending the memorial lecture. The CR Swart Memorial Lecture, the 41st hosted by the UFS, attracted one of the largest crowds ever for a public lecture, with some people sitting on the steps inside the auditorium of the Wynand theatre.
 
Telling the story of African philospher Morena Mohlomi, who acted as a teacher to Basuto king Moshoeshoe, Du Preez told the audience that the country needs counter-intuitive leadership like the two leaders had demonstrated. Calling Mohlomi southern Africa’s first Pan Africanist, Du Preez said the extroadinary thing about Morena Mohlomi and his student was their gift of counter-intuitive leadership, leadership that was daring and visionary, leadership that did not simply do the obvious. Pointing out other visionary leaders like Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Beyers Naude and Van Zyl Slabbert, Du Preez urged the audience to question “the quality of leadership of Cosatu, the Democratic Teachers Union that is messing up our education, the Communist Party, the Democratic Alliance, the Freedom Front Plus and Solidarity. If they don’t live up to our expectations, why do we still tolerate them?” Du Preez asked.
 
Du Preez also commended Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Vice Chancellor and Rector of the UFS, for his counter-intuitive leadership regarding the Reitz Residence incident and said Prof. Jansen’s solution, as controversial as it was, brought a much better outcome.
 
Please find attached the full speech of Max Du Preez.

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