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Sello from Soutpan now striking in Texas

24 December 2022 | Story Jóhann Thormählen | Photo Asem Engage/Hannes Naude

Come to Kovsies and go places!’ is a motto used at Kovsie Soccer, and Sello Diphoko’s journey exemplifies this. The UFS striker’s humble beginnings and rise to the United States of America is one that inspires.

Two years ago, he didn’t even play club soccer, but he was scouted by the UFS and given an opportunity that changed his life. Diphoko recently received a scholarship at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas.

Playing street football

It all started in February 2020 when he was invited to UFS soccer trials by a friend, Lwanda Ciko, who is also from Soutpan outside Bloemfontein.

“Before I came here, I was playing street football,” says Diphoko. “I have never played in a professional or semi-professional league; I came straight from the streets.” And it took Tebogo Motsamai, UFS head coach, only 25 minutes to identify his talent.

According to Godfrey Tenoff, Diphoko was attending Motheo College and gained access to the UFS through the University Preparation Programme.

“We are totally proud of Sello,” says the Head of Soccer at KovsieSport. “He is a perfect example of preparation meeting opportunity and that opportunity creating a great opportunity.”

In 2021, his Varsity Football debut year, Diphoko was crowned Player of the Tournament and received the Golden Boot award. A year later, he can barely believe it happened. “Yoh. It is huge! But it was all about the teamwork and support I got from my teammates.”

Changing students’ lives

A few South African teams wanted to sign him up, but his education was non-negotiable. A move abroad was eventually the best for Diphoko’s career – on and off the pitch.

Tenoff says the “talent identification pathway has now been paved”. The UFS understands the processes, what it is capable of, and it shows the university can equip and prepare students for international opportunities.

“It says that KovsieSport is serious about changing the lives of the students that come into our programme. It tells me that we have the will to make a way for our students. This is a small part of what is to come in KovsieSport, Kovsie Soccer, and the UFS.”

News Archive

US author launches book at UFS on African volk

2016-10-17

Description: Dr Jamie Miller Tags: Dr Jamie Miller

Dr Jamie Miller, Postdoctoral Fellow at the
University of Pittsburgh and author of
An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime
and Its Search for Survival.
Photo: Rulanzen Martin

“I realised the importance of not just accessing the policies and political approaches of the leaders of the apartheid regime, but understanding the ideas and world views that informed them. Part of the solution to this was to learn Afrikaans.”

This is according to Dr Jamie Miller, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, on how he went about getting inside the mind of South Africa’s apartheid regime in order to complete his book, An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival.

The book was launched on 11 October 2016 by the Archive for Contemporary Affairs at the University of the Free State on the Bloemfontein Campus.

Volk refers to the Afrikaner nationalist movement
The book is an ambitious new international history of 1970s apartheid South Africa. It is based on newly declassified documents and oral histories, the majority in Afrikaans, which focus on the regime’s attempts to turn the new political climate to its advantage.

The term volk refers to the Afrikaner nationalist movement, also known as Afrikanerdom. The story of Afrikaner nationalism was the medium through which the regime gained power.

Four main messages from the book
Dr Miller says there are four main messages for his readers. Firstly, the apartheid regime looked to contest and hijack new ideas and norms that formed the postcolonial world, and secondly, that we need to start thinking more seriously about the Cold War in terms of domestic politics, not just geopolitics.

Thirdly, South Africa should be integrated into histories of the global South, and lastly, we should conceptualise the apartheid regime by looking at it not just as an imperial holdover, but also by looking at what was happening in the world in the time period in question.

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