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What needs to be done to POWER up South Africa?

07 September 2022 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath

2022 UFS Thought-leader webinar series: What needs to be done to POWER up South Africa?

The University of the Free State is pleased to present its third webinar titled, What needs to be done to POWER up South Africa, which is part of the 2022 Thought-Leader Webinar Series. As a public higher-education institution in South Africa with a responsibility to contribute to public discourse, the University of the Free State (UFS) will be presenting the webinar in collaboration with the Free State Literature Festival. The aim of the webinar series is to discuss issues facing South Africa by engaging experts at the university and in South Africa.

Third webinar presented on 27 September 2022

South Africa’s ageing coal power plants are the cause of massive power outages on a regular basis. A dire need exists to diversify our energy mix and to consider more renewable energy. Renewable energy is regarded far cheaper than coal and the construction of coal power plants. South Africa is well positioned environmentally, with the best wind and solar potential on the entire African continent. Economic viability and benefits accompany the exploitation of renewable energy, which will provide much-needed stability in South Africa.

Date: Tuesday 27 September 2022
Time: 12:30-14:00
RSVP: https://events.ufs.ac.za/e/2022UFSThoughtLeaderWebinarSeries by 25 September 2022.

For further information, contact Alicia Pienaar at pienaaran1@ufs.ac.za.

Some of the topics discussed by leading experts in 2021 included, among others, reimagining universities for student success; corruption in South Africa – the endemic pandemic; South African politics and the local government elections; is South Africa falling apart: where to from here; predications for 2022; and why vaccinate? This year’s webinar series commenced on 31 May 2022 with the topic Crime in South Africa – who is to blame? This was followed by a webinar held in July, which asked the question, Are our glasses half full or half empty?

Facilitator:

Prof Francis Petersen
Rector and Vice-Chancellor, UFS

Panellists:

Nthato Minyuku

Group Executive
Government and Regulatory Affairs
Eskom

Steve Nicholls

Head of Mitigation
Presidential Climate Commission

Happy Khambule

Environment and Energy Manager
Business Unity South Africa (BUSA)

Louis Lagrange

Head: Department of Engineering Sciences
Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, UFS

Bios of speakers:

Nthato Minyuku

Ms Nthato Minyuku is Eskom’s Group Executive: Government and Regulatory Affairs responsible for positioning, advocacy, shared value, and unlocking constraints to value defence and growth. She joined Eskom in 2020 as part of the new executive team recruited by GCE André de Ruyter. She has an extensive track record as executive in various sectors, including energy, maritime oil and gas, infrastructure, and urban development.

In her previous roles, Minyuku was the former Corporate Affairs Executive for Shell South Africa, former Chief Economic Planner for the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission (PICC), former President of the South African Planning Institute (SAPI), and former member of the SA Council for Planners (SACPLAN) appointed by the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform.

She is currently the Board Chairperson of the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) appointed by the Minister of Transport. Passionate about women’s participation in the energy sector, she facilitates the Unleashing Leadership Potential (ULP) Women in Energy Forum.

Steve Nicholls

Steve Nicholls is the recently appointed Head of Mitigation in South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission. In this role, he works with a range of stakeholders to reach consensus on net-zero pathways for each sector of the economy built on a strong fact base, while supporting capacity building and cooperation within the modelling community in South Africa. Understanding future competitive economies and what kind of investments are required to enhance South Africa’s economic competitiveness while creating employment and reducing inequality and poverty will be his key focus. Nicholls maintains an ongoing advisory role to the National Business Initiative, supporting its Just Transition Pathways project.

Nicholls’ past experience is in connecting climate issues with economic impact, and therefore building the strategic case for integrating climate considerations into economic planning, strategy, risk management, investment planning, policy development and implementation.

Prior to joining the PCC, Nicholls led the Environment and Society programmes at the National Business Initiative. In this role, he ran the programmes that harnessed the collective effort of South African business across the areas of energy, climate change, and water. Nicholls has worked in the consulting industry in the United Kingdom and South Africa and has worked on projects in Europe and Southern and East Africa. He has worked across several sectors, including mining, telecommunications, government, electrical energy, oil and gas, financial services, and retail.

Happy Khambule

Khambule is the former Greenpeace Africa senior political adviser on climate and energy. He studied law at the University of Johannesburg and was recognised by the British Council as a Global Changemaker and International Climate Champion in 2008 and 2010. In 2013, he was selected as one of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans. Khambule is an official party delegate to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and negotiates various issues, such as Paris Agreement implementation and response measures. He serves on the Paris Agreement Compliance Committee and is a non-executive director in Mansa Advisory. He serves on various boards, including the Earthlife Africa board and the CleanCity SA board, as an independent non-executive board chairperson.

Khambule is part of the inaugural President's Coordinating Commission on Climate Change (PCC) and is Business Unity South Africa's Head of Environment and Energy.

Louis Lagrange

Louis Lagrange is an agricultural engineer, who is specialised in project management, food process engineering, and energy engineering. Lagrange is currently leading a team at the University of the Free State that has successfully established a new degree in Engineering Sciences. The establishment was followed by new research in energy efficiency. Lagrange is also leading the establishment of a new full Engineering degree in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, specialising in energy engineering, food process engineering, and environmental biosystems engineering.

Prior to joining the UFS, Lagrange spent seven years at the University of KwaZulu-Natal as Senior Lecturer in the School of Bio-resources Engineering and Environmental Hydrology. Here he focused on energy conversion through tractors, combine harvesters, and implements and developed the new food process engineering subjects.

Lagrange’s passion for education is also prevalent through the facilitation of strategic and scenario planning for groups and boards of directors, including the facilitation of certified energy manager, certified energy auditor, business efficiency professional, certified lighting efficiency professional, and fundamentals of energy management training over the past 12 years for Energy Cybernetics, the Energy Training Foundation, and currently for the Institute of Energy Professionals Africa. He also co-developed and is the trainer of the new Energy Audit Technician and Energy Performance Certificate training courses for South Africa.

In his previous roles, Lagrange was project manager: research and development and portfolio manager: food processing for Agrele, a subsidiary of Eskom. Here, he focused on the development, marketing, and implementation of innovative methods to utilise and stimulate the additional use of electricity in agriculture.

News Archive

Situation on the Bloemfontein Campus, and letter to parents

2016-02-28

Letter to parents from Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the UFS

Statement by Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the University of the Free State (UFS) about the situation on the Bloemfontein Campus

1.   As all of you know, last night we witnessed a really tragic event at Xerox Shimla Park on the Bloemfontein Campus on the occasion of the Varsity Cup rugby match between NMMU (FNB Madibaz) and UFS (FNB Shimlas).
2.   The game started at 18:30 and about 17 minutes into the match, a group of protestors sitting on the north-eastern side of the stadium decided to invade the pitch and disrupt the game in progress.
3.   After a short while, some of the spectators also invaded the field, chasing and brutally beating those protestors whom they caught.
4.   As a university leadership we condemn in the strongest terms possible the vicious attack on the protestors. Nobody, repeat nobody, has the right to take the law into their own hands. While the protests were illegal and disruptive, it did not harm to the physical well-being of the spectators.
5.   The reaction from the group of spectators, however, not only opened old wounds, it trampled, literally and figuratively, on the dignity and humanity of other human beings. This we condemn in no uncertain terms, and no stone will be left unturned to find those who acted so violently on what should have been a beautiful occasion that also brought families and young children together to enjoy an evening of sport.
6.   I cannot over-emphasise our level of disgust and dismay at the behaviour of the spectators. It is NOT what the University of the Free State (UFS) is about and we are working around the clock to gather evidence on the basis of which we will pursue both charges and, in the case of students, also disciplinary action on campus.
7.   At the same time, the invasion of the pitch is also completely unacceptable and we will seek evidence on the basis of which we will act against those who decided to disrupt an official university event.
8.   Clashes between students occurred afterwards on campus and members of the Public Order Policing had to disperse some of them. The situation was stabilised in the early hours of the morning.
9.   Disruption continued this morning (23 February 2016) when students damaged some university buildings, a statue, and broke windows. Additional reinforcements from the South African Police Service were brought in to stabilise the campus. Additional security has also been deployed.

Broader picture
10.   We are very aware of the national crisis on university campuses and the instability currently underway. While the UFS has been largely peaceful, we have not been spared this turmoil, as last night’s events showed.
11.   We are also conscious of the fact that even as we speak, various political formations are vying for position inside the turmoil in this important election year. In fact, part of the difficulty of resolving competing demands is that they come from different political quarters, and change all the time.
12.   We are therefore learning from reliable sources that the Varsity Cup competition is, in fact, a target of national protests in front of a television audience.
13.   And we are aware of the fact that these protests are not only led by students but also by people from outside who have no association with the university. Just as the violent spectators involved on Monday night also included people from outside the university.

The demands
14.   My team has worked around the clock to try to meet the demands of contract workers demanding to be in-sourced. In fact, this weekend past, senior colleagues sat with worker leaders in the township to try to find ways of meeting their demands. We were hoping that such an agreement would be finalised by Monday afternoon (22 February 2016), but on the same Monday morning workers and students were arrested after moving onto Nelson Mandela Avenue, after which the South African Police Service (SAPS) took over as the matter became a public safety concern outside the hands of the university. Since then, it was difficult to return the workers to settle on a possible agreement.
15.   The fact is that the UFS has been in constant negotiation with contract workers to provide our colleagues with a decent wage and certain benefits. In fact, towards the end of last year we raised the minimum wage from R2 500 to R5 000. We were in fact hoping that the continued negotiations would improve that level of compensation even as we looked at a possible plan for insourcing in the future. We made it clear that if we could insource immediately, we would, but that the financial risk to the university was so great that it threatened the jobs of all our staff. Those negotiations were going well, until recently, when without notice the workers broke away and decided to protest on and around campus.
16.   While these negotiations were going on, the Student Representative Council (SRC) on Monday 22 February 2016 also decided to protest. While the vast majority of our 32 000 students were in classes and determined to get an education, a very small group led by the SRC President decided to protest; some invaded the UFS Sasol Library and the computer centre, and with the President eventually made their way to Xerox Shimla Park on which route they confronted the police, interrupted traffic and in fact injured some of our security staff as well as police officials.
17.   The university is definitely proceeding to collect evidence on these illegal and violent acts and will also act firmly against students involved in these protests.

Summary
18.   The events of Monday night represent a major setback for the transformation process at the UFS. While we have made major progress in recent years—from residence integration to a more inclusive language policy to a core curriculum to very successful ‘leadership for change’ interventions for student leaders—we still have a long way to go.
19.   One violent incident on a rugby field and we again see the long road ahead yet to be travelled. As I have often said before, you cannot deeply transform a century-old university and its community overnight. We acknowledge the progress but also the still long and difficult path ahead. We will not give up.
20.   We have 32 000 students on our campuses; the overwhelming majority of them are decent and committed to building bridges over old divides as we have seen over and over again. So many of our students, black and white, have become close and even intimate friends working hard to make this a better campus and ours a better community and country. Like all of us, they are gutted by what they saw on Monday, but the hundreds of messages I received from parents, students, and alumni this past 20 hours or so said one thing—keep on keeping on. And we will.

The Big Read: An assault on transformation (Times Live kolom deur Prof Jonathan Jansen: 25 Februarie 2016)

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