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Celebrating Africa Month

06 April 2023 | Story Cornelius Hagenmeier

Theme: Promoting and appreciating knowledge in and from Africa

On 25 May 2023, Africa will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now the African Union (AU). In continuance of the University of the Free State's (UFS) long tradition of commemorating Africa Day and the ideas underpinning it, the UFS will once again celebrate Africa in 2023 by organising diverse commemorations. The commemorations will highlight African indigenous knowledge and its relevance for higher education in South Africa and beyond. The interpretation and transfer of African indigenous knowledge will be celebrated through music and dance.

Africa Day memorial lecture

The highlight of the celebrations will be the Africa Day memorial lecture, hosted by the university's Centre for Gender and Africa Studies on Wednesday 24 May 2023. The speaker is Prof Motlatsi Thabane, formerly of the National University of Lesotho. The title of his presentation is Friendship in the Search for Justice in Mohokare Valley in the Nineteenth Century. The departure point of Prof Thabane’s lecture is the early 19th century.

He demonstrates that a community of white settlers fleeing British rule in the Cape Colony was added to African communities living in the Mohokare Valley at the beginning of the 1830s. As a result, complex relations developed between African and white settler communities in the Mohokare Valley. Central to those relations was occupation and ownership of land. Driven by different motives and influences, some African communities threw in their lot with incoming white settler communities, while others resisted the alienation of land they regarded as theirs.

Moshoeshoe I and his followers were among the latter groups. Consequently, relations that developed between Basotho and white settlers were characterised by deep mutual mistrust, tension, and conflict. White settlers were not a monolithic group, however, and among them were individuals who regarded the alienation of Africans’ land as unjust. Josias Philip Hoffman was one such individual. Concerned about the welfare of the Basotho and opposed to the unjust manner in which fellow settlers seized their land, he formed a friendship with Moshoeshoe I, and lent a hand to Moshoeshoe I’s resistance against the alienation of the Basotho’s land. The purpose of the lecture is twofold; first, to celebrate the friendship between these two men, and second, to ask questions about whether we can learn something from this friendship today.

Africa Month book launch

The memorial lecture will be preceded by a book launch on 22 May. The UFS Library and the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies will facilitate the launch of the book titled, Decolonizing The Mind: A guide to decolonial theory and practice by Sandew Hira, Secretary of the Decolonial International Network (DIN). The book attempts to offer a comprehensive, coherent, and integral theoretical framework that draws on different contributions in the resurgent and insurgent decolonial movement. Hira will use the book launch to make a clarion call for a new world civilisation anchored in the decolonisation of the mind.

The Africa Month Dialogue, slotted for 26 May and facilitated by the Office for International Affairs, will carry the same theme as the memorial lecture, namely, ‘Promoting and appreciating knowledge in and from Africa’. Together with the Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Prof Francis Petersen, and international partners, we will discuss the meaning and value of African indigenous knowledge, the importance of being creators and co-creators of knowledge in and from Africa, and the importance of African knowledge on the international stage. Of importance is the idea of African ways of being, knowing, and relating. In the engagement, internationalisation of African knowledge will be considered without necessarily compromising Africa’s ability to integrate and engage on a global level. The UFS’ approach to promoting African-produced knowledge and epistemological diversity and disseminating knowledge in and from Africa will be deliberated.

Hybrid format

The 2023 UFS Africa Month commemorations will once again take a hybrid format. Besides the Africa Day memorial lecture, the book launch, the Africa Day Dialogue, and various face-to-face functions on all three campuses, there will also be online content on a dedicated website. We are looking for contributions that engage with knowledge. Among others, UFS community members and its international partners are invited to make contributions centred on promoting and appreciating knowledge in and from Africa by way of contributions centred on, but not limited to the themes below:

Exploring how knowledge in and from Africa is promoted and appreciated

• The role of orality in creating new understanding and insight

• The potential of oral traditions and oral history for knowledge creation, transfer, and dissemination

• Women in African knowledge processes

• Personal biography’s position in knowledge generation

• African land tenure systems

• African languages and knowledge creation

• Indigenous healing systems and pandemics

• Memory and knowledge creation

• African conflict resolution mechanisms and practices

• Ubuntuism

• Indigenous knowledge in Africa

• The national, regional, and global impact of African scholarship

• UFS knowledge collaborations/partnerships on the African continent

• Narratives of research and student excellence associated with African unity

• Dissemination of knowledge in and from Africa

• Celebrating epistemological diversity in and from Africa.

Other forms of contributions/participation can include, but are not limited to

• recorded performing arts performances (e.g., solo music or poetry);

• virtual visual art presentations;

• written poetry;

• songs;

• short thought/opinion pieces, which can also be published in mainstream media;

• topical academic writings;

• face-to-face events; and

• live-streamed events (with links to the Africa Month webpage).

Please share a brief written proposal explaining your planned contribution by 12 May 2023. The proposal should not exceed 300 words and should be emailed to Bhekumusa Zikhali at zikhalibn@ufs.ac.za / Africadaycommemoration@ufsacza.onmicrosoft.com.

News Archive

Address by the first Inaugural President of the Central SRC

2005-08-03

The UFS Central SRC

Address by the first Inaugural President of the Central SRC of the University of the Free State, Mr Tello Motloung on Wednesday 3 August 2003

The Chairperson of the UFS Council, Judge Faan Hancke,
The Vice-chancellor and Rector of the UFS, Prof Frederick Fourie
The Vice-Rector Student Affairs of the UFS, Dr Ezekiel Moraka
The Presidents of the main campus SRC and the Vista campus SRC
Colleagues in the Central SRC, campus SRCs, students and fellow South Africans

Please receive my heartfelt revolutionary greetings

Vice-chancellor and rector what I bring here with me assisted by facts, is just the work of my imagination. Like a love letter addressed to a sweetheart miles away, even though you do not know how she feels, what she wants to hear, and do not even know what she looks like.

I value speech as just an honest intimation, that’s why I got into a habit of establishing a dialogue with people, looking at each other’s face, and persuading one another of what we are saying.

Vice-chancellor, today marks an important milestone in the history of the existence of the UFS. Today reflects the confidence and trust that students of the UFS have placed in us. They are confident that the Central SRC has both the will and the capacity to take our university forward as we confront the challenge of transformation.

Students are confident that they are correct to trust the Central SRC as the principal agent of change in our university that is genuinely committed to the objective of building a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic university. We need to frankly ask ourselves, as CSRC members, whether are we up to all these challenges?

All Central SRC members have to understand this fully, internalize it, and ensure that everything we do, does not betray the confidence and trust of students, or disappoint their expectations. I say this knowing that all Central SRC members have committed themselves to serve the students of the UFS, black and white, and no one among us (CSRC) needs any special lectures about this central commitment.

The UFS should be an omnibus, welcoming everybody on board. But we should be a bus with a clear direction. We will certainly lose our way if we, as an institution, don’t have a clear road map spelling out where we are heading to.

There should be clear guidelines on the role of students in the transformation process. Students should also be viewed as role players in transformation along with the University management, and not just opposing forces. There is no right time, other than this one, to move away from the politics of opposition to politics of transformation.

However, we need the support of management to do so. The University should value the role and contribution of student leaders, hear our legitimate claims and consider them as part of political and policy decision making.

Vice-chancellor and Rector, it remains our task to ensure that the UFS is transformed into an institution that is seen to be playing a vigilant role in developing students academically, intellectually, socially, culturally, politically and otherwise. The process of transformation is not ending tonight, it is just beginning tonight.

Judge Hancke, Prof Fourie, Dr Moraka, fellow students and fellow South Africans, I lead students at this university with a sense of pride and duty, and I know very well that I lead men and women, students who are all determined that we reach our destination safely and on time.

A navy divided within its ranks will be destroyed and vanquished by the enemy, but the navy united in purpose and action, loyalty and commitment will not sink but sail on to victory.

It is befitting to mention that every drop of my blood is telling me that the UFS is my home. I firstly became a student here, I became the SRC treasurer in my first year here, I became the deputy president here, and I became the first president of the Central SRC of the UFS.

Therefore you should never doubt my commitment towards the transformation of this university. To paraphrase what was said by students at another institution, “If there is no UFS in heaven, then I am not going.”

Let me conclude by thanking my ancestors for teaching me that even if I wined and dined with kings and queens, I am not a king myself, so I should not turn my back on people who made me what I am today.

Most importantly, I would like to thank the Almighty God and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ for giving me time and power to lead this university.

It will be theoretically irresponsible if I ended my speech without indicating that “Only a Kovsie knows the feeling”.

I thank you.

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