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Alumna Antjie Krog keynote speaker at UFS conference

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

Juan Odendaal on his way to World Champs

2015-03-23

Juan Odendaal
Photo: BOOGS Photography, Andrew McFadden

UFS’s athletes with disabilities are currently excelling in cycling and athletics.

The UFS Para-cyclist, Juan Odendaal, will soon make his debut for South Africa at the 2015 Union Cyclist International (UCI) Para-cycling Track World Championships in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, from 26-29 March 2015.

The Championship event will provide an excellent foundation for re-building the international competitiveness of South Africa’s Para-cycling track team in the build-up to Rio 2016. In a situation where the UCI has hosted relatively few international track competitions over the past three years, the 2015 World Championships will serve as a stepping-stone to the 2016 grand season, when it is expected that the country’s top riders will reach their peak competitive condition.

As the youngest member of the South African team, Odendaal will use the opportunity of competing in the individual time trial and team sprint events to build a platform for an international career will certainly span many years to come.

Another UFS student, Musa Simelane, are excelling and was chosen for the SA Wheelchair Rugby tean, known as the "Wheelboks". They will compete in the 2015 World Wheelchair Rugby Challenge in London in October and after that head to Japan to compete in the 2015 Asia Oceania Championships.

On a local level, earlier in March this year, other UFS athletes with disabilities also performed well on the athletics track.

Blind athlete and member of the Bloemfontein Campus Student Representative Council (SRC), Louzanne Coetzee, also had a good 1500m race in the beginning of March when she qualified easily for the World Championships, which will take place in Toronto, Canada, later this year. Coetzee and her guide, Rouxné Jacobs, set up a time of 5:45.86, which is well under the required standard of 6 minutes.

The other blind UFS athlete, Danie Breitenbach, alongside his guide Marius Wessels, broke his own national record for the 800m again on Friday 6 March 2015. In November 2014, Breitenbach’s record stood at 2:15.17. This record now stands at 2:13.57. Chances now are that Breitenbach will reach his goal of running the 800m under 2:10 at the Nedbank National Championship for the Physically Disabled at the end of March 2015.

The other Kovsie stars who will be participating at the Nedbank National Championship for the Physically Disabled are as follows:

Athletes:
• Dineo Mokhosoa
• Louzanne Coetzee
• Danie Breitenbach
• Juanré Jenkinson
• Diederich Kleynhans
• Jacques de Bruyn

Swimmer:
• Johann van Heerden

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