Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items

UFS publisher receives feather in her literary cap

20 February 2023 | Story Gerda-Marié van Rooyen | Photo Supplied

Nthabiseng (JahRose) Jafta, a Publishing Coordinator at African Languages Press in the Library and Information Services at the University of the Free State (UFS), recently received the Silver Medal Award and other accolades at the Eurasian Literary Festival held in Egypt. Jafta, an MA scholar (Creative Writing) at Rhodes University, describes herself as an international performing poet, artpreneur, teacher, festival curator, content developer, and creative strategist born in the Free State.

Being an introvert, she says her love for writing gives her a voice. “I can echo my thoughts and colour my grey sky,” she explains poetically. She feels writing is as natural to her as breathing. She is comfortable writing anywhere and anytime. “There’s no physical area needed. We type on WhatsApp in the taxi. We catch brainwaves whenever they appear.” Jafta's creative juices seem to be overflowing, as she confessed to even getting an idea while contemplating her love for writing. “Life throws you prompts from all spheres, but you have to be present to recognise its call. And sometimes the piece decides if it wants to be happy, erotic, or sad.”

Her literacy cap serves Jafta's career as a publisher and her creative writing when time allows. “I read and write. Publish what I read or write. I also happen to recite, read, and sing what I write. It’s all in alignment.” This Deputy President of the National Writers Association of South Africa and founder of the Poetic Blues Virtual Festival writes in her mother tongue, Sesotho, and English. She also has additional experience in the poetry industry, as she was previously the Curator of the Macufe Poetry Festival. She also attended the International Writing Centre at Beijing Normal University part time. Her poems have also been translated into Mandarin and published in Chinese literary magazines.

Jafta says besides the growing catalogue of more than 40 publications, she also has an upcoming multilingual poetry compilation featuring Spanish, Danish, Mandarin, Arabic, KiSwahili, IsiZulu, and Sesotho translations from English. This poet believes poetry is a gift that feeds lyrics to melodies. “And that song carries us to humanity's highs and lows. Prose is how we navigate that gift daily. They are rainbows on melting clouds, events plants rejoice on their rhythmic drops.”

News Archive

The challenges of local governance highlighted at the JN Boshoff Memorial lecture

2014-08-26

Mr Kopung Ralikontsane
Photo: Jerry Mokoroane

The annual JN Boshoff memorial lecture was hosted by the Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences in conjunction with the Department of Public Management on 21 August 2014. Mr Kopung Ralikontsane, Director-general of the Free State Provincial Government, presented the keynote address, ‘Challenges Facing Local Government in Service Delivery’.

In his opening remarks, Mr Ralikontsane gave the background of the South African municipal structures, the legal framework within which they operate and the challenges they are currently facing. He added that “local government is a sphere at the coalface of service delivery and if this sphere fails, South Africa would have failed to be a developmental state.”

He said the Free State provincial government has made great strides in developing local communities, with millions of rands invested in various development projects such as water and sanitation, electrification, roads and storm water structures, community facilities and solid waste disposal.

Local government is still faced with other challenges, though. He pointed out that public employees are subject to greater scrutiny and increased demands from citizens. As a result, they have to provide better services, but within stricter limits on resources. Conflict arises due to changing relationships between public servants and citizens, downsizing, restructuring and contracting out of government services and activities.

Despite the various structures implemented by local government, municipalities are serving an ever-growing population in an economic decline. Regulations have been put into place to devise credible Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) to improve municipal infrastructure, build competent management teams and strong operations and increase technical capacity for effective delivery of services.

Mr Ralikontsane invited students to join local government in crafting innovative solutions. “We know the problem, but we need to encourage you to join forces with your local government and tackle them.”

Mr Kopung Ralikontsane has served in local government for two decades and also serves as Head of Administration of the Free State Government and as Cabinet Secretary.

Back

Economic and Management Sciences

Education

Health Sciences

The Humanities

Law

Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Theology and Religion

Open Distance Learning

Business School

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept