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17 May 2022 | Story Lunga Luthuli | Photo Supplied
University of Limpopo visits UFS Protection Services
Staff from the University of the Free State Department of Protection Services pictured with the delegation from the University of Limpopo during their benchmarking visit.

The University of the Free State Department of Protection Services hosted a delegation from the University of Limpopo on Friday, 13 May 2022 as part of benchmarking best protection service practices. 

During the visit, discussions included the management of student protests, gender-based violence, fire emergency responses, and challenges experienced with the Campus Protection Society of Southern Africa.

The visit by the University of Limpopo follows similar benchmark visits by the Central University of Technology, Sol Plaatje University, and the University of Johannesburg.

Noko Masalesa, Senior Director: Protection Services, said: “The visit by the University of Limpopo was used to take them through our vision 2024, to show them some of the advanced CCTV cameras that the UFS has installed, the policies, and organisational structure. Part of that strategy is to enhance the university’s security technology in line with the best practices.”

Masalesa said: “The UFS has a good model to manage all the different functional areas of the Department of Protection Services, and most universities are impressed with the new CCTV cameras that we rolled out and the other advances made in the development of protection services over the past five years.”

To remain among the leaders in protection services within the higher education, the department also visited Stellenbosch University, the University of Cape Town, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, and the University of Nairobi and Kenyatta University – both in Kenya.

Mampuru Mampa, Director: Safety and Security at the University of Limpopo, said: “Like other institutions, the University of Limpopo is dealing with crimes affecting students on and off campus, as well as student protests. Fostering collaboration and benchmarking will assist our protection service departments to develop and implement a standardised approach to improve safety on our campuses.”

On lessons learnt during the benchmarking tour, Mampa said: “We have learnt about security system integration, investigation systems approach, off-campus security, and student protest management.”

Mampa believes “it is important for protection service departments across the higher education sector to develop standardised security measures to improve safety, and benchmarking assists in closing gaps in protection services”.

News Archive

Dialogue between Science and Society series looks at forgiveness and reconciliation
2013-03-24

 

Taking part in the discussion on forgiveness and living reconciliation, were from left: Olga Macingwane, a survivor of the Worcester bombing of 1993; Dr Juliet Rogers, a Scholar on Remorse from the University of Melbourne in Australia and Dr Deon Snyman, Chairperson of the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process.
Photo: Mandi Bezuidenhout
24 March 2013

How do you, as a mother who lost her only daughter, forgive the man who claimed responsibility for the attack that killed her?  How do you forget his crime while travelling with him across the world?  

These were some of the questions posed to Jeanette Fourie at a Dialogue between Science and Society series on forgiveness and living reconciliation. Jeanette, whose daughter Lyndi was killed in an attack on the Heidelberg Pub in Cape Town in 1993, was one of three people telling their stories of forgiveness while dealing with traumatic experiences. 

Sitting next to Letlapa Mphahlele, the man who owned up to the attack that killed her daughter, Jeanette spoke about their story of forgiveness traveling the world together, spreading the message of forgiveness and conciliation. 

"Don't ever think you can forget, because that’s not possible. What you do with the pain is to find peace, and that's what forgiveness does. Forgiveness allows you to stop all the dialogue in your head on why he did it. You don't forget, you confront it and you deal with it." 

Letlapa, Director of Operations of Apla, the military wing of the PAC at the time of Lyndi's death, spoke about dealing with the response to his crime. "Sometimes you wish that you were not forgiven, because now you have the great burden of proving that you are worthy of forgiveness."

Also telling her story of forgiveness was Olga Macingwane, a survivor of the Worcester bombing of 1993 in which four people were killed and sixty-seven others injured. Four people were sent to prison. In 2009 Olga met one of the perpetrators, Stefaans Coetzee, and what came out of that meeting, is her story. 

"When I met Stefaans I was very angry, but when you sit down with somebody and listen to him or her, you find out what the reasons were that made him or her do something. I can say that I forgave him." 

Facilitating the conversation, Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Senior Research Professor on Trauma, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, said the seminar was meant to get in touch with the truth that forgiveness is possible. 

"Before we had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa, the experts always said that forgiveness was not possible in these stories of the past. And then the TRC came into life as a response to mass atrocities. For the first time in the history of these traumatic experiences, of political traumas, we witness something that we have never seen.  Even us on the TRC, although it was framed as reconciliation, we never imagined there would actually be stories of forgiveness emerging out of that process, and then we witness that this too is possible." 

Others who took part in the two-hour-long seminar, were Dr Juliet Rogers, a Scholar on Remorse from the University of Melbourne in Australia and Dr Deon Snyman, Chairperson of the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process. They spoke about the dynamics behind the processes of engagement between victims/ survivors and perpetrators. 

The Dialogue between Science and Society series was co-hosted by the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice. 

 

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