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UFS PhD student’s team wins Durban leg of prestigious Students Reinventing Cities competition

15 August 2023 | Story Anthony Mthembu | Photo Supplied

Ndumiso Mbuthuma, a PhD student at the University of the Free State (UFS), was part of a team that won the Durban leg of the Students Reinventing Cities competition. “It was a beautiful experience and an opportunity to not only be a student again but to contribute to the greater good,” Mbuthuma said.

The Students Reinventing Cities competition is coordinated by C40, a global network of nearly 100 mayors of the world’s leading cities who are united in action to confront the climate crisis.

The Umgeni Interchange Team, which consisted of Mbuthuma, who is a student in the UFS Centre for Development Support, three students from the University of Cape Town, and one from an institution in France, participated in the Durban leg of the competition, which began in April 2023.

After deliberations by C40 and city representatives, the team was informed on 13 July 2023 that they had been selected as the winners of the regional Durban competition.

The Students Reinventing Cities competition provides a platform for students and academics to work with cities around the world to formulate plans to combat climate change. This year the competition took place in 12 cities, including Barcelona, Durban, Rome, Melbourne, and Milan, among others. “The aim of the competition is to find ways in which we can begin to build cities that are climate change-friendly,” Mbuthuma said.

The winning presentation

The Umgeni Interchange Team was allocated four hectares of land by the eThekwini municipality to come up with a development idea. The team members, who specialise in various fields, had to rely on each other to create a winning project. Their proposal entailed the development of a mixed-use, commercial, retail, and affordable-housing block.

“We wanted to ensure affordable housing not just for the rich but even for those who aren’t,” Mbuthuma explained. His PhD, which focuses on floods and disasters, provided guidance on ensuring that the housing block was resistant to floods and other disasters. The proposal also suggested sustainable resource use, including the use of solar panels to generate energy in order to reduce the impact of loadshedding.

Even though a victory in the competition is a great feeling, Mbuthuma is more appreciative of the opportunity to have been active in the battle for a more sustainable future. “To hear that policymakers are interested in hearing what I have to say is a big deal to me.”

Future endeavours

Although there has been a concerted effort globally to combat climate change, Mbuthuma believes that in countries such as South Africa there hasn’t been adequate discourse around how development will take place in a future defined by climate change and the resulting disasters expected. As such, he is committed to working towards normalising these conversations.

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Kovsies to celebrate excellence at 2014 December Graduation Ceremony

2014-12-02

Live streaming: http://apps.ufs.ac.za/ufslivestreaming/

On Thursday 11 December 2014, the University of the Free State (UFS) will award degrees and qualifications during our Summer Graduation Ceremony at the Bloemfontein Campus.

The graduation will take place during two ceremonies in the Callie Human Centre, where master’s and PhD degrees will be awarded during the first ceremony at 09:30. Diplomas, certificates and undergraduate qualifications will be awarded to students from the School of Open Learning and the Faculty of Health Sciences at 14:30.

Radio personality, Redi Thlabi, and cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr Susan Vosloo, will address the graduates.

Apart from her radio show on 702 and CapeTalk, Thlabi has also hosted local television news shows and anchored for international broadcasters like SKY and the BBC. In addition, she has presented two of her own TV shows: ‘Redi’ on Mzansi Magic and ‘South to North’ on Al-Jazeera.

Her first book, Endings and Beginnings (Jacana) received popular acclaim and is currently being turned into a screenplay for a movie.

Dr Susan Vosloo, a Kovsie alumnus, graduated in 1980. She completed her internship in Pretoria and spent the following year in Critical Care Medicine at Universitas Hospital, Bloemfontein, before starting her surgical training in Johannesburg.

She is currently in independent private practice at the Netcare Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital in Cape Town, having also worked from 1998 – 2012 at the Vincent Pallotti Hospital in the same city.

Dr Vosloo maintains close ties with our university and has quite a number of addition roles to that of surgeon:

• member of the Council of the UFS;
• UFS Council Representative in the Senate;
• member of the Standing Advisory Committee of the School of Medicine, UFS;
• member of the Provincial Department of Health;
• Africa representative for the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society; and
• founding member of the World Society for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery.

Prof Boelie Wessels will also be awarded his 10th academic degree from the UFS since 1974. Adding his Honorary Doctorate degree to the list, it will make this his 11th degree. Prof Wessels is 84 years old and has 18-plus academic qualifications from various institutions – a phenomenal achievement.

Furthermore, Moses Lubinga and his wife, Stellah, will be the first married couple to be awarded their PhDs at the same graduation ceremony at the UFS. Mr Lubinga will receive his Doctorate in Agricultural Economics, while Mrs Lubinga’s PhD is in the field of Economic and Management Sciences.

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