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11 November 2022 | Story Edzani Nephalela and Dr Nomalungelo Ngubane | Photo iStock
Language
The UFS and UKZN have formalised an agreement on a Language Collaboration Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to advance the development of the Sesotho and IsiZulu as academic languages.

The University of the Free State (UFS) has forged an exciting new partnership with the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) to promote the two provinces’ most widely spoken languages, Sesotho and IsiZulu.  

This historic collaboration will see these institutions employing their skills, expertise, and resources to advance the development of the Sesotho and IsiZulu as academic languages through the development of terminology for various disciplines and research collaborations among other activities. 

The UFS formalised the agreement by signing a Language Collaboration Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with UKZN. The MOU process, facilitated by Dr Nomalungelo Ngubane, Director of the UFS Academy for Multilingualism, and Nikile Ntsababa, UFS Registrar, was sealed by Dr Engela Van Staden, UFS Vice-Rector: Academic. 

The objectives of the collaboration are to: 

• allow the UFS open access to all the UKZN isiZulu materials and UKZN open access to all UFS Sesotho language terminology, corpus materials, terminology banks, and applications for various disciplines; 
• develop the Sesotho terminology for various disciplines;
• assist in identifying and closing any gaps in the UFS’s development of isiZulu terminology and in the UKZN’s development of isiZulu, and further develop the relevant language terminology of various disciplines in order to fill any existing gaps;
• share expertise through hosting webinars, seminars, colloquia, and workshops on Sesotho and isiZulu terminology development;
• explore research opportunities regarding the development of Sesotho and isiZulu terminology for various disciplines; and 
• share expertise and resources in all human language technology development initiatives.

“The UKZN has championed the intellectualisation of IsiZulu over the years. We do not want to reinvent the wheel,” Dr Ngubane said. “Our focus now is on the acceleration of the development of Sesotho. Our vision and mission is to be the hub for the advancement of Sesotho at regional, national, and international levels. Collaboration with UKZN is instrumental in achieving this mandate.”

The Academy for Multilingualism said it considers this collaboration historic and groundbreaking because resources will now be invested in the development of Sesotho.

News Archive

UFS Council unanimously approves two senior appointments
2014-11-24

The Council of the University of the Free State (UFS) unanimously approved the appointment of Dr Lis Lange as Vice-Rector: Academic and Prof Sechaba Mahlomaholo as Dean: Education during its meeting on Friday 21 November 2014.

Dr Lis Lange is currently Acting Vice-Rector: Academic at the University of the Free State, where she holds a substantive position as Senior Director heading the Directorate for Institutional Research and Academic Planning (DIRAP). Prof Mahlomaholo is Head of the School of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Technology Education at the UFS.

“These are two exceptional and trusted academics with international stature and I am delighted to welcome them as part of the senior leadership of the UFS. Dr Lange’s skills set pertaining to academic management and quality assurance make her one of only a few people with similar skills in the country, while Prof Mahlomaholo is a leading expert in community-based education,” says Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the UFS.

Dr Lange joined the UFS in 2011. Before this, she was the Executive Director (2006-2010) of the Higher Education Quality Committee of the Council of Higher Education (CHE), and Acting CEO of the same organisation between August 2007 and April 2008. She has been involved in the development and implementation of science and technology and higher education policy in South Africa for a decade and a half, working in different capacities in the Human Sciences Research Council, the National Research Foundation and the Council on Higher Education. Dr Lange has served as a member of the board of the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) and has participated in several international initiatives on quality assurance. She is the editor of an academic journal focused on the humanities, Acta Academica.

She has undertaken research and published in the fields of history, higher education and quality assurance. Her major concern in both research and practice is the role of higher education in the development of democratic societies, based on social justice. Dr Lange studied in Argentina, Mexico and South Africa, where she obtained a PhD in South African history from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Prof Mahlomaholo is a graduate of the Universities of the North, Western Cape and Harvard University in the United States. He is a National Research Foundation (NRF)-rated Professor of Education.

Before joining the UFS, he worked at six other universities where he was Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Education (UNIN-QwaQwa), Head of Professional Education (Vista University), Professor and Director of Research and Postgraduate Studies (MEDUNSA), Professor and Director of Curriculum Development (Central University of Technology), and Research Professor (North-West University).

His research interests lie in designing strategies mounted on Bricolage, Participatory Action Research and Critical Emancipatory Research as theoretical bases. He leads the NRF-sponsored project on the creation of Sustainable Learning Environments in schools. In this Participatory Action Research project, 28 PhD and 22 MEd students participate under the guidance of 15 academics. The project has relationships with the Global Network project (St Petersburg University), the Post-Colonial Education project (West Indies University) and the Discourse, Power, Resistance project (Plymouth University and now University of London). He has served as guest editor in the following ISI-indexed, peer-reviewed and accredited journals: the South African Journal of Higher Education (2010 and 2014), the South African Journal of Education (2011), Communitas (2012), the Journal of New Generation Sciences (2012), the Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa (2013) and the Journal of Education Studies (2013).

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