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20 October 2022 | Story Gerda-Marié van Rooyen
Gali Mokgosi
Gali Mokgosi uses her passion for students and films to promote conversations about mental health and how campus life inside and outside the classroom – including residence life – affects and is affected by the physical, mental, and spiritual health of its students.

Using her experience in theatre and her passion for students, Gali Mokgosi, Residence Head of House Madelief, helps students explore and implement skills to cope with the demands of university life. A Health and Wellness coordinator for residence life, she helps improve their lives by teaching them the value of sufficient sleep, nutrition, exercise, recreation, positive coping strategies, healthy social and sexual relationships, and a sense of belonging within residences.

Mentoring and supporting university students

As a former English lecturer for first-year students, this go-getter saw an urgency to mentor and support university students. In 2016, she landed a job as residence head and resigned from lecturing to focus on theatre and residence affairs. Soon after her appointment, she and her colleague, Nthabiseng Mokhethi, Residence Head of House Ardour, were asked to coordinate the Residence Life Health and Wellness portfolio at a time when there were many suicide attempts and mental health issues, and drug and alcohol abuse plagued residences.

“Our main responsibility as Health and Wellness coordinators is to support Residence Committee Health and Wellness representatives (RCHW) in their respective residences. We facilitate training for RCHW peers and help them to think broadly about how campus life inside and outside the classroom – including residence life – affects and is affected by the physical, mental, and spiritual health of its students.”

Using film to address topical issues

With an honours degree in Drama and Theatre Arts, this UFS alumna knew she had to adapt to virtual means for her portfolio to continue supporting students during COVID-19.

“There was a need for intervention, and I saw an opportunity to close this gap by helping students through their challenges using films. I wrote films that directly address the challenges students were/are facing. Being a residence head, content for my films is always under my nose, and the storyline is undeniably relevant to them.”

Mokgosi wrote and produced four films for the various student support offices, with the help of Shibashiba Moabelo, Institutional HIV/AIDS Programme Coordinator at Kovsie Health, and Pulane Malefane, Assistant Director: Residence Life. These films are, I am, Triggers, Versus me, and Monate jou lekker ding.

This scriptwriter says when students can identify themselves in a story, they tend to gravitate towards a solution as suggested by the story. Students across the University of the Free State’s (UFS) three campuses act in the films. After watching a film, students engage with each other and receive tools to explore the story and reflect on the outcomes as suggested by the film.

Proving her sensitivity for inclusiveness, she had an opportunity to be part of the art skills exchange programme in Deaf theatre at Gallaudet University, Washington, DC. She also presented a research paper in Athens, Greece.

Mokgosi is looking forward to experiment with Deaf films in 2023.

Asked how she looks after her mental health, she reveals: “I take care of my mental health through prayer and meditation. I believe the first place to prosper is through my spiritual life. God is my strength from day to day. He is my all in all. Without Him, I will fall.”

News Archive

Prestigious Helgaard Steyn Prize to be awarded to UFS composer
2010-11-08

 Hans Huyssen.

The composer Hans Huyssen, affiliated with the Department of Music at the University of the Free State (UFS), is to be the current recipient of the prestigious 2010 Helgaard Steyn Prize, the prize-winning work being Huyssen’s Proteus Variations (2006).Annually this award is administered and presented to a selected composer, painter, author, or sculptor by the Universities of the Free State and the North-West on a rotating basis. The judges for this year’s prize were Prof. Bertha Spies, Research Fellow, North-West University, and Professor Extraordinary, University of Pretoria, and Mr Noel Stockton, Senior Lecturer at the University of the Free State.

Hans Huyssen’s musical activities encompass the diverse poles of early and contemporary Western and African music, often in an attempt to assimilate the essential qualities from all these fields. His intense focus on contextuality suggests that he approaches music as a profoundly social force which has a particular role to play in our ‘new’ diversified South African society.

The Proteus Variations were commissioned by the Deutsche Welle Radio for the South African National Youth Orchestra 2006, and were premiered at the Beethoven Bonn Festival during 2006. These variations are described by the composer as “a musical representation of South Africa’s manifold Proteaceae”, named for the Greek god Proteus who, at will, was capable of assuming a spectrum of shapes and appearances. As the composer states: “It is worth noticing that a Protea is South Africa’s national flower. What could be more appropriate in providing a key to an opposite perception and understanding of the country’s diverse cultural expressions? In this regard it is my hope that the Proteus Variations may contribute a little to the wide scope of cultural responses necessary to begin to do justice to the extremely rich tapestry of our immediate cultural and natural surroundings”.

The prize of R170 000 will be awarded to Hans Huyssen by a representative of ABSA Trust, who is one of the trustees of the Helgaard Steyn Trust, in Bloemfontein on 8 November 2010.

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