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13 May 2022 | Story Alicia Pienaar
Prof Vetrik
Prof Tomas Vetrik.

The Dean of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, Prof Danie Vermeulen, has the pleasure of inviting you to the inaugural lecture of Prof Tomas Vetrik. 

Topic: Extremal graph theory 

Event Details:
Date: 19 May 2022
Time: 17:30
Venue: Equitas Auditorium, UFS Bloemfontein Campus

RSVP:  Ms Marinda Venter on +27 51 401 2691 or email: VenterSM@ufs.ac.za  on or before Tuesday 17 May 2022.

Light refreshments will be served after the inaugural lecture. 


More about the speaker:

Tomas Vetrik received two scholarships from foreign countries during his PhD study. He spent one semester of his PhD study at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, and two semesters at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He was the only postgraduate student from Slovakia to receive a scholarship from the Israeli government in 2006. Tomas Vetrik joined the University of the Free State in 2014, after his postdoctoral research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and working at the UniversityPretoria. His research area is graph theory. He is mainly focusing on the degree-diameter problem, graph indices, and metric dimension of graphs. He is an NRF-rated researcher and has produced about 75 research papers (approximately 25 of them as a single author).

Three PhD students and three MSc students have completed their studies under his supervision. He has presented seminar talks at 24 universities from 15 different countries. Please take note of our COVID-19 health and safety protocols (https://www.ufs.ac.za/return-to-campus ) when visiting the UFS campuses.


Please take note of our COVID-19 health and safety protocols (https://www.ufs.ac.za/return-to-campus ) when visiting the UFS campuses. 

News Archive

Renowned writer for Africa Day
2012-05-31

 

Attending the lecture were, from left: Dr Choice Makhetha, Vice-Rector: External Relations; Prof Kwandiwe Kondlo, Director of the Centre for Africa Studies;Prof. Ngugi wa Thiong'o; Prof Lucius Botes, Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities, and Prof Andre Keet, Director of the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice..
Photo: Stephen Collett
25 May 2012

Photo Gallery

Lecture: THE BLACKNESS OF BLACK: Africa in the World Today

Audio of the lecture

Profile of Professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o (pdf format)

“Flowers are all different, yet no flower claims to be more of a flower than the other.” With these words Kenyan writer and one of the continent's most celebrated authors, Prof. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, delivered the tenth annual Africa Day Memorial lecture on 25 May 2012 in the University of the Free State's (UFS) Odeion Theatre on the Bloemfontein Campus. The lecture was hosted by the Centre for Africa Studies.

Long before Prof. wa Thiong’o was led inside the venue by a praise singer, chairs were filled and people were shown to an adjoining room to follow the lecture. Others, some on the university's Qwaqwa Campus, followed via live streaming.

In his speech titled the Blackness of Black: Africa in the world today, Prof. wa Thiong’o looked at the standing of Africa in the world today. He highlighted the plight of those of African descent who are judged “based on a negative profile of blackness”.

Prof. wa Thiong’o recalled a humiliating experience at a hotel in San Francisco in the United States, where a staff member questioned him being a guest of the hotel. He shared a similar experience in New Jersey, where he and his wife were thought to be recipients of welfare cheques. He said this was far deeper than overt racism.

“The certainty is based on a negative profile of blackness taken so much for granted as normal that it no longer creates a doubt.”

Prof. wa Thiong’o said the self certainty that black is negative is not confined to white perception of black only.

“The biggest sin, then, is not that certain groups of white people, and even the West as a whole, may have a negative view of blackness embedded in their psyche, the real sin is that the black bourgeoisie in Africa and the world should contribute to that negativity and even embrace it by becoming participants or shareholders in a multibillion industry built on black negativity.”

“Africa has to review the roots of the current imbalance of power: it started in the colonisation of the body. Africa has to reclaim the black body with all its blackness as the starting point in our plunge into and negotiations with the world.”

Prof. wa Thiong’o concluded by saying that Africa must rediscover and reconnect with Kwame Nkrumah’s dreams of a politically and economically united Africa.

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