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25 August 2023 | Story Supplied | Photo Supplied
Prof Pamila Gupta
Prof Pamila Gupta delivered the 2023 Biennial Gendered Worlds Lecture titled, ‘Landscaping South Africa’s Gendered Hinterlands’ presented in digital format in collaboration with the UFS Art Gallery exhibition.
In commemoration of Women’s Day, 9 August, the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies at the University of the Free State (UFS) presents the Biennial Gendered Worlds Lecture every second year to reflect on gendered dynamics across a range of fields and topics. The 2023 Biennial Gendered Worlds Lecture by Prof Pamila Gupta titled, ‘Landscaping South Africa’s Gendered Hinterlands’ is presented in digital format in collaboration with the UFS Art Gallery exhibition, Eureka, by artists Prof Janine Allen and Dr André Rose which showed at the Stegmann Gallery from 10 July-11 August 2023.

Prof Gupta was appointed Research Professor at the UFS, taking up her position on the 1st January 2023 at the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies. In her lecture she traces the concept of the hinterland, as a crucial tool for understanding the global and planetary present, as a time defined by the lasting legacies of colonialism, increasing labour precarity under late capitalist regimes, and looming climate disasters. 

South African case studies

Traditionally seen to serve a (colonial) port or market town, the hinterland defined here becomes a lens to attend to the times and spaces shaped and experienced across the received categories of the urban, rural, wilderness or nature. Her lecture is based on her contribution to the forthcoming book titled, ‘Planetary Hinterlands꞉ Extraction, abandonment, and Care,’ (Eds. Pamila Gupta, Sarah Nuttall, Esther Peeren, and Hanneke Stuit, Palgrave, 2023). In this work, Prof Gupta considers South African case studies, namely Jeremy Foster’s evocative description of South Africa’s landscape as one ‘washed with sun’ (2008), to reflect on the shifting spatial thematics of two contemporary male South African non‑fiction writers and academics, Rob Nixon (Dreambirds, 1999) and Jacob Dlamini (Native Nostalgia, 2009). She considers what happens when we view certain locations described in their respective gendered works (a small desert town, Oudtshoorn vs a township, Katlehong) through the prism of hinterlands. 

Prof Gupta argues that the concept of hinterland offers a framework for a new understanding of those places inflected by the rural and urban, helping us to see the small town and township as operating within the same time/space configuration of apartheid South Africa. It highlights also  the importance of human/non‑human relations, with Nixon and Dlamini operating as each other’s hinterland. She suggests the potential of the concept of the hinterland for showcasing  the practice of writing as caught between a reflective self and other; one where Nixon and Dlamini (and she) use landscaped memories of gendered hinterland childhoods to say something about political becoming, and the past in South Africa today.

Prof Gupta, formerly Full Professor based at WiSER at the University of the Witwatersrand (2008-2022), holds a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. Her research and writing interests include Portuguese colonial and Jesuit missionary history, in India; diasporas, islands, tourism, heritage, and design in the Indian Ocean; photography, tailoring and visual cultures in East Africa; and architecture, infrastructure, and effect in South Africa. 

Eureka

The lecture is considered alongside Eureka, a transdisciplinary art exhibition by Dr Andrè Rose and Prof Janine Allen, presented by the UFS Art Gallery. Eureka explores the complex multidimensional narrative of artisanal mining in Kimberley in the Northern Cape, and when viewed through the scope of the concept of hinterland it opens provocative pathways for interrogating the intersections and interactions of psycho‑social‑economic and environmental challenges in this artisanal mining community. The artworks narrate the complex multidimensional narratives of the artisanal miners in a post‑colonial neoliberal world. This forms the basis of a rich dialogue, between Prof Gupta and the artists following the lecture, to explore the synergies between the exhibition and the concept of gendered hinterlands. 

Watch the Biennial Gendered Worlds Lecture below.

News Archive

Fight against Ebola virus requires more research
2014-10-22

 

Dr Abdon Atangana
Photo: Ifa Tshishonge
Dr Abdon Atangana, a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute for Groundwater Studies at the University of the Free State (UFS), wrote an article related to the Ebola virus: Modelling the Ebola haemorrhagic fever with the beta-derivative: Deathly infection disease in West African countries.

“The filoviruses belong to a virus family named filoviridae. This virus can cause unembellished haemorrhagic fever in humans and nonhuman monkeys. In literature, only two members of this virus family have been mentioned, namely the Marburg virus and the Ebola virus. However, so far only five species of the Ebola virus have been identified, including:  Ivory Coast, Sudan, Zaire, Reston and Bundibugyo.

“Among these families, the Ebola virus is the only member of the Zaire Ebola virus species and also the most dangerous, being responsible for the largest number of outbreaks.

“Ebola is an unusual, but fatal virus that causes bleeding inside and outside the body. As the virus spreads through the body, it damages the immune system and organs. Ultimately, it causes the blood-clotting levels in cells to drop. This leads to severe, uncontrollable bleeding.

Since all physical problems can be modelled via mathematical equation, Dr Atangana aimed in his research (the paper was published in BioMed Research International with impact factor 2.701) to analyse the spread of this deadly disease using mathematical equations. We shall propose a model underpinning the spread of this disease in a given Sub-Saharan African country,” he said.

The mathematical equations are used to predict the future behaviour of the disease, especially the spread of the disease among the targeted population. These mathematical equations are called differential equation and are only using the concept of rate of change over time.

However, there is several definitions for derivative, and the choice of the derivative used for such a model is very important, because the more accurate the model, the better results will be obtained.  The classical derivative describes the change of rate, but it is an approximation of the real velocity of the object under study. The beta derivative is the modification of the classical derivative that takes into account the time scale and also has a new parameter that can be considered as the fractional order.  

“I have used the beta derivative to model the spread of the fatal disease called Ebola, which has killed many people in the West African countries, including Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, since December 2013,” he said.

The constructed mathematical equations were called Atangana’s Beta Ebola System of Equations (ABESE). “We did the investigation of the stable endemic points and presented the Eigen-Values using the Jacobian method. The homotopy decomposition method was used to solve the resulted system of equations. The convergence of the method was presented and some numerical simulations were done for different values of beta.

“The simulations showed that our model is more realistic for all betas less than 0.5.  The model revealed that, if there were no recovery precaution for a given population in a West African country, the entire population of that country would all die in a very short period of time, even if the total number of the infected population is very small.  In simple terms, the prediction revealed a fast spread of the virus among the targeted population. These results can be used to educate and inform people about the rapid spread of the deadly disease,” he said.

The spread of Ebola among people only occurs through direct contact with the blood or body fluids of a person after symptoms have developed. Body fluid that may contain the Ebola virus includes saliva, mucus, vomit, faeces, sweat, tears, breast milk, urine and semen. Entry points include the nose, mouth, eyes, open wounds, cuts and abrasions. Note should be taken that contact with objects contaminated by the virus, particularly needles and syringes, may also transmit the infection.

“Based on the predictions in this paper, we are calling on more research regarding this disease; in particular, we are calling on researchers to pay attention to finding an efficient cure or more effective prevention, to reduce the risk of contamination,” Dr Atangana said.


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