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Quality education, gender and the economy

04 October 2021 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath

The University of the Free State, in partnership with the Charlotte Mannya-Maxeke Institute, will be hosting its annual Charlotte Maxeke Memorial Lecture titled, Quality education, gender and the economy. This year, the event will take place virtually.

Date: Wednesday, 27 October 2021

Time: 17:30-19:00

RSVP: Alicia Pienaar, Pienaaran1@ufs.ac.za, by 25 October 2021 after which a link will be shared

Gender equality is a global priority and a South African concern. Among other interventions, it requires an approach that ensures people of all genders have access to and are empowered through education. Globally, large gender gaps exist in accessing, completing, and continuing with schooling and with higher education studies. These global disparities are evident in South Africa. Gender injustices in education hinder a global majority (including women and members of the LGBTQIA+ communities) from fully participating in and benefiting from education. Indeed, gender injustices still mean that women and girls continue to be plagued by lower levels of success in mathematics, science, and technology compared to males. The gender injustices that hinder success in the education of women and girls relate to a myriad of factors, such as gender-based violence, unjust practices related to pregnancy, and gender roles that often burden women with unpaid care-giving roles. These obstacles also exist within universities that face unique challenges in advancing the gender agenda.

This year marks 150 years since the birth of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke, whose heroic life as South Africa’s first black female university graduate is a beacon for gender equality. Celebrating this 150-year milestone is an opportune moment to recognise that strong interventions are needed to remove systemic and cultural barriers that violently perpetuate inequality in every sphere of the economy, particularly those that marginalise women and girls.

Biographies of Programme Director and speakers:

Prof Joy Owen (Programme Director)

Prof Joy Owen is an academic, mother, and Head of the Department of Anthropology at the University of the Free State. Formerly head of department and deputy dean (the Humanities) at Rhodes University, Prof Owen spent some time as a visiting lecturer at the University of Münster (Germany) in 2016, and as a TORCH Global South visiting professor at the University of Oxford (UK) in 2019.

Prof Owen’s primary research love is African transnational migration. Her monograph, titled ‘Congolese social networks: Living on the margins in Muizenberg, Cape Town’ detailed the lives of transnational Congolese migrants residing in Muizenberg in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Her work homes in on the complex ways in which African transnational migrants create and maintain belonging in post-apartheid South Africa. Focusing particularly on social networks, Prof Owen demonstrates how contingency, strategy, love, and habitus support onward migration (or not).

A second research flirtation is embodied in critical pedagogy that recognises students as knowledge holders and producers through their experiences prior to and during higher education. Students are critical teaching and learning collaborators in classroom spaces, however defined. As an invisible pioneer, ‘Just Joy’ – as described by one of the students she supervises – merges both head and heart in her teaching, as she encourages students to become critically conscious of the world they have inherited and are creating, and the ways in which all forms of oppression can and need to be collectively addressed.

Prof Owen’s work, including her research, teaching, and administrative work, unobtrusively pulls apart academic and social binaries, making the world safer for the appreciation and celebration of difference – the primary marker of humanity.

Ms Zubeida Jaffer (Keynote speaker)

Zubeida Jaffer is a multiple award-winning South African journalist, and the first woman in Africa to have won the coveted foreign journalist award from the National Association of Black Journalists in the USA. An author and activist, Ms Jaffer’s work has earned numerous local and international awards. These include the Muslim Views Achiever Award as well as the Honor Medal for Distinguished Service to Journalism from the University of Missouri in the USA.

In her memoir titled, Our Generation, Ms Jaffer eloquently tells the story of her emotional journey through the years of South Africa’s turbulence into a new democracy. Her second book, Love in the Time of Treason, has been described as a ‘tour de force’ and has been republished internationally under the title On Trial with Mandela. In her third book, Beauty of the Heart: The Life and Times of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke, Ms Jaffer tells the story of South Africa’s first black female graduate who was a feisty leader at the turn of the century, stretching from 1871 to 1939. The celebration of 150 years of her birthday took place in April 2021.

A graduate of both UCT and Rhodes University, Ms Jaffer holds a master’s degree from Columbia University in New York, where she earned the award for best foreign student. Until recently, she was Writer-in-Residence in the Department of Communication Sciences at the University of the Free State. She continues to hold the position of Research Fellow at the UFS. She is the publisher of two websites – her own at www.zubeidajaffer.co.za and a second site called The Journalist at www.thejournalist.org.za. The Journalist serves as a knowledge bank providing context and history to students, academics, and other thoughtful South Africans.

Ms Madiepetsane Charlotte Lobe

Madiepetsane Charlotte Lobe is the Acting Chief Operations Officer in the Department of International Relations and Cooperation. Ms Lobe represents South Africa in various capacities in the international arena. She is the focal person for Women, Peace and Security in South Africa and serves in the Global Network on Women, Peace and Security working group. She also serves on the Global Steering Committee of the Generation Equality Forum on behalf of South Africa. The Generation Equality Forum is a global multigenerational initiative aimed at dismantling gender inequalities and achieving a gender-equal world by 2030.

Ms Lobe has served as a councillor (1996-1999), a member of parliament (1999-2004), and a member of the Free State Provincial Legislature (2004-2008). She is the author of the book, My Father: My Hero, My Zero, published in March 2021. She holds a master’s degree in Politics, majoring in Governance and Political Transformation from the University of the Free State. She also holds a Diploma in Public Relations and Communication.

Prof Pearl Sithole

Prof Pearl Sithole is the Campus Vice-Principal: Academic and Research on the University of the Free State Qwaqwa Campus in Phuthaditjhaba, South Africa. She is a trained social anthropologist with an interest in governance, gender and development, politics of knowledge production, and social inequality. An alumna of the University of Durban-Westville, Prof Sithole holds a master's degree and a doctorate in Philosophy, specialising in Social Anthropology, from the University of Cambridge.

She has worked on rural development and policy management at the Human Sciences Research Council, and lectured Anthropology at the University of Durban-Westville and at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Prof Sithole has served as a member of the Ministerial Transformation Oversight Committee for Higher Education. She currently serves as a panel member on the Council of Higher Education’s National Review of Doctoral Degrees and was recently appointed by Pope Francis as an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, a Vatican-based institution created to promote the study and progress of social sciences.

In recognition of her sterling work as a social scientist, Prof Sithole received the Distinguished Young Woman in Science Award from the South African Department of Science and Technology in 2011.

Prof Sithole has published more than 20 research papers in peer-reviewed journals, and several books. Her most recent publications are, ‘Land in South Africa: A Permanent Question; thanks to History, Law and Economics’ published in 2020 as a book chapter; and the journal article, ‘Is Decoloniality Possible: A Noble Mission, A Frustrated Strategy’ also published in 2020.

News Archive

In January 1, 2003, the Qwa-Qwa campus of the University of the North (Unin) was incorporated into the University of the Free State (UFS).

2003-02-07

FREDERICK FOURIE

IN January 1, 2003, the Qwa-Qwa campus of the University of the North (Unin) was incorporated into the University of the Free State (UFS).

While this is merely the beginning of a long and complex process, it does represent a major milestone in overcoming the apartheid legacy in education, realising the anti-apartheid goal of a single non-racial university serving the Free State.

The incorporation is also part of the minister's broader restructuring of the higher education landscape in South Africa - a process which aims to reshape the ideologically driven legacy of the past.

In contrast to the past educational and social engineering that took place, the current process of incorporating the Qwa-Qwa campus of Unin into the UFS is informed by three fundamentally progressive policy objectives, clearly outlined in the education white paper 3: (A framework for the transformation of higher education):

To meet the demands of social justice to address the social and structural inequalities that characterise higher education.

To address the challenges of globalisation, in particular the role of knowledge and information processing in driving social and economic development.

To ensure that limited resources are effectively and efficiently utilised, given the competing and equally pressing priorities in other social sectors.

Besides informing the way the UFS is managing the current incorporation, these policy objectives have also informed the transformation of the UFS as an institution over the past five years.

In 2001, former president Nelson Mandela lauded the success of the UFS in managing this transformation, by describing the campus as a model of multiculturalism and multilingualism. This was at his acceptance of an honorary doctorate from the UFS.

Indeed our vision for the Qwa-Qwa campus as a branch of the UFS is exactly the same as it is for the main UFS campus - a model of transformation, academic excellence, community engagement and financial sustainability, building on the histories and strengths of both the Qwa-Qwa campus and the UFS (Bloemfontein campus).

Realising this vision will be a giant leap forward in establishing a unified higher education landscape in the Free State.

In more concrete terms, the UFS is working towards this vision by focusing on the following areas of intervention: access and equity; academic renewal; investment in facilities; and sound financial management.

These interventions are being made not to preserve any vestiges of privilege or superiority, but precisely to increase access for students from poor backgrounds and to promote equity and representivity among all staff.

The current growth phase of the UFS has seen student enrolment almost double over the past five years, in particular black students, who now constitute approximately 55 percent of the student population of nearly 18 000 (including off-campus and online students).

But it has not just been a numbers game. Our approach has been to ensure access with success.

Our admissions policy, coupled with the academic support and "career preparation" programmes we offer, have resulted in significant successes for students who otherwise would not have been allowed to study at a university.

This will be continued at Qwa-Qwa as well.

Our academic offerings too have undergone dramatic change. We have become the first university in the country to offer a degree programme based on the recognition of prior learning (RPL).

This is not just a matter of academic renewal but of access as well, especially for working adults in our country who were previously denied a university education.

As for the sound financial management of the UFS (including the Qwa-Qwa campus), this is being done not for the sake of saving a few rands and cents, but for the greater value to our society that comes from having sustainable institutions.

It is sustainable universities that can make long-term investments to fund employment equity, provide information technology for students, upgrade laboratories, construct new buildings, develop research capacity, and provide a safe environment for students and staff, as is happening now at the UFS.

As a result of such management, a practical benefit for prospective students at the Qwa-Qwa campus of the UFS will be lower academic fees in some cases compared with the Unin fees.

As is the case with all these processes, there are concerns from staff and students at Qwa-Qwa and the broader community of the region that the Qwa-Qwa campus serves.

To get the campus viable and to ensure its continuation in the short term, tough choices had to be made by the minister of education regarding which programmes to offer and fund.

But we have been encouraged by the community's understanding that these concerns can be addresed over time as the campus becomes financially viable.

Meetings between the top mangement of the UFS and community representatives, staff and students at Qwa-Qwa have laid the basis for building a climate of trust in such a complex process.

We should not be captives of the past divisions but build this new unified higher education landscape that can meet our country's developmental needs.

It should be a higher education landscape that is based on broadening access, promoting equity and social justice, developing academic excellence, and the effective and efficient management of scarce resources. This should be our common common objective.

Professor Frederick Fourie the rector and vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State (UFS)

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