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13 December 2022 | Story Lacea Loader | Photo Supplied
Prof Mogomme Masoga
Prof Mogomme Masoga, newly appointed Dean: Faculty of the Humanities.

The Council of the University of the Free State (UFS) approved the appointment of Prof Mogomme Masoga as Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities for a five-year term during its quarterly meeting on 25 November 2022. 

He is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zululand. 

“Prof Masoga has extensive and an impressive national and international research standing, established networks and partnerships, and substantive management experience. He is a visionary leader and a renowned scholar and will be able to lead and manage the faculty at academic, research, engaged scholarship, and community-service level,” says Prof Francis Petersen, UFS Rector and Vice-Chancellor. 

Prof Masoga holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of the Free State. He began his academic career with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he proceeded to complete two honours and a master’s degree. He received a second Master of Arts in Musicology from the University of South Africa.

Prof Masoga has an excellent record of research publication within the broad niche area of Oral History, Africanism, and Indigenous Knowledge System Studies. He has developed a well-grounded sense of autonomy and involvement, as he has been able to establish a number of research projects and has produced single and co-authored articles. He was able to synergise and sustain his research niche on Africanism and Indigenous Knowledge Studies, which has informed his research over the years. 

He has maintained a coherent research trajectory as a recognised NRF-rated scholar in Indigenous Knowledge System Studies. Prof Masoga’s participation in international collaborative projects has had a positive impact on his scholarly growth, as well as on other colleagues and departments in his faculty at the University of Zululand. 

“Prof Masoga will be able to sustain his existing networks and build new ones that will support research and postgraduate studies at the UFS. This will be particularly valuable in support of the university’s Vision 130, which expresses the institution’s strategic intent to position itself in the period leading up to 2034 when the university will be 130 years old. Vision 130 furthermore exemplifies our commitment to be acknowledged by our peers and society as a top-tier university in South Africa, ranked among the best in the world,” says Prof Petersen. 

Prof Masoga will assume duty on 1 March 2023.

News Archive

'Structures of Dominion and Democracy' by David Goldblatt at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery
2015-08-03

Photograph by David Goldblatt, On August 16 2012 South African Police shot striking mineworkers of the Lonmin platinum mines, killing 34 and wounding 78 within a radius of 350 metres of this koppie, where the men used to meet. Seventeen of the men, seeking shelter among boulders from police fire, were shot with seemingly lethal intent, some with their hands up in surrender, none were given medical assistance for their wounds. Beyond is the Lonmin smelter, which stood idle during the strike. Marikana, North-West Province, 11 May 2014.

The University of the Free State, in partnership with the Goodman Gallery, presents the exhibition, 'Structures of Dominion and Democracy', by renowned South African photographer David Goldblatt.  

This exhibition, which runs from 13 July to 7 August 2015 on the Bloemfontein Campus, is dedicated to the series, “Structures”, one of the major bodies of works by Goldblatt.  For over three decades, Goldblatt has travelled South Africa, photographing sites and structures weighted with historical narrative: monuments, private, religious and secular, which reveal something about the people who built them.  These sites allow us a glimpse into the everyday. Each place is a repository, a landscape containing an epic story that has involved whole communities: the experience sometimes told through the memorialising of remarkable individuals.

The exhibition, Structures of Dominion and Democracy, traverses two distinct eras in South Africa history. As Goldblatt explains: "Over the years, I have photographed South African structures, which I found eloquent, of the dominion which Whites gradually came to exert over all of South Africa and its peoples.  That time of domination began in 1660 when Jan van Riebeeck ordered a cordon to be erected of blockhouses and barriers that would exclude the indigenous population from access to the first European settlement in South Africa and its herds, lands, water, and grazing.  The time of domination ended on the 2nd of February 1990, when, on behalf of the government and the Whites of South Africa, President FW de Klerk effectively abdicated from power.  Beginning in 1999 and continuing to the present, I have photographed some structures that are eloquent of our still nascent democracy.  In the belief that, in what we build we express much about what we value, I have looked at South African structures as declarations of our value systems, our ethos.”

Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, UFS Sasol Library
University of the Free State
206 Nelson Mandela Ave
Bloemfontein

Gallery hours:  
Monday to Friday 08:30 – 16:30

Entrance: Free
Enquiries: 051 401 2706, dejesusav@ufs.ac.za

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