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22 November 2022 | Story Gerda-Marié van Rooyen
Antjie Krog at UFS
The award-winning writer, Antjie Krog, will be the keynote speaker at the International Hybrid Conference from 24 to 26 November 2022. This conference is a joint venture of the University of the Free State (UFS) Centre for Gender and Africa Studies and the War Museum.

The award-winning writer, Antjie Krog, will be the keynote speaker later this week at an International Hybrid Conference titled, The Unsung Heroines and Youth of South Africa: Violent Histories and Experiences of South African Women and Children during Wars, Conflicts and Pandemics. This conference – a joint project of the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies at the University of the Free State (UFS) and the War Museum – starts on Thursday 24 November and will be hosted at the War Museum in Bloemfontein and broadcast online. The three-day conference overlaps with the global 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence and aims to assemble historians, academics, and other scholars researching the violent histories of not only women and children in the South African War but in other wars, conflicts, and pandemics as well.

Prof Krog, an Extraordinary Professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of the Western Cape, poet, and author of Country of my Skull (among other books), is an alumna of the UFS, where she completed a BA degree with Afrikaans, Philosophy, and English. She will deliver her keynote address, Survival, Complicity, and Race: (Im)possibilities of Narrating and Interpreting Rape in Havenga Affidavits, on the first day of the conference.

Prof Heidi Hudson, Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities at the UFS, will deliver her keynote address on Friday (25 November 2022). Prof Hudson is considered a specialist in feminist security studies. Her keynote address is titled Disciplinary and other stories: From women’s peace movements to the Women, Peace and Security ecosystem.

Several historians, academics, and scholars will either present their research or attend the conference. The conference aims to gather various stakeholders who are researching the violent histories of not only the women and children in the South African War, but other wars, conflicts, and pandemics in South African history dating from precolonial times to the World Wars, Apartheid, to the present. Each of the eight sessions over the first two days will conclude with time set aside for discussion.

The conference programme includes a visit to the art exhibition Unsung Heroes at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum on Friday after the last session. On Saturday, conference attendees can look forward to a tour of Bloemfontein. Click here for more information or send an email to vicky@anglo-boer.co.za.

News Archive

UFS and Griqua National Conference work together
2009-03-04

 

Delegates from the Griqua National Conference (GNC) and role players from the University of the Free State (UFS) recently met on the South Campus of the UFS to put the objectives of a Memorandum of Understanding into practice. Some of the objectives are research, programmes and projects focusing on economic, educational, political, cultural/heritage and socio-social matters. “Research in different fields is important for the survival of the Griqua in South Africa and the UFS gives credibility to the Griqua’s research projects,” says Mr Cecil le Fleur, Chairperson of the GNC’s Council of Chiefs. According to Mr le Fleur, the GNC wants to work with the UFS because the institution reaches out to the communities of the Southern Free State. There is also mutualistic cooperation in this area that is of benefit to both partners. “Together with the UFS we will also be investigating the feasibility of the production of a documentary film on the role of the Griqua in the central interior, its political models and the role the Griqua played in the establishment of white settlers in this area. We also want to investigate and implement other relevant points of tangency,” says Mr le Fleur. Here are, from the left: Mr le Fleur, Ms Elizabeth le Fleur, Chairperson of the Cultural Group, which is one of the focus areas of the cooperation agreement, and Rev Kiepie Jaftha, Chief Director: Community Service at the UFS.
Photo: Lacea Loader

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