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UFS hosting national Global Change Conference

18 January 2023 | Story Edzani Nephalela | Photo Henco Myburg

Free State MEC for Agriculture and Rural Development, Thembeni Nxangisa, representing Minister Barbara Creecy during the Fifth Global Change Conference at the University of the Free State

From 30 January to 2 February 2023, the University of the Free State is hosting researchers, members of industry and government, businesspeople, funders, and foreign diplomatic missions for the fifth National Global Change Conference.

The purpose of the conference is to share and debate current local research and development initiatives that form part of the Global Change Grand Challenge (GCC5), one of the focus areas developed under the Department of Science and Innovation's Ten-Year Innovation Plan.

The GCC5 supports knowledge generation and technological innovation to enable South Africa, Africa, and the world to respond to global environmental change, including climate change, in an informed and innovative way.

The four-day event is taking place on the Bloemfontein Campus of the UFS under the theme: ‘Research and innovation accelerating transformations to global sustainability’. It is jointly organised by the Department of Science and Innovation, the National Research Foundation, the South African Global Change Science Committee, and the UFS.

Topics on the conference agenda include the state of the southern oceans; the role of physics in power grids; climate and health, water resources, and global crises; and agriculture in a changing environment, among other topics.

For more information on GCC5, kindly click here.

Follow the discussion on UFS social media platforms.

News Archive

Inaugural lecture by Prof Kwandiwe Kondlo

2011-08-26

Present at the inaugural lecture of Prof Kwandiwe Kondlo were from the left: Prof. Lucius Botes, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities; Prof. Kwandiwe Kondlo and Prof. Teuns Verschoor, Vice-Rector: Institutional Affairs
Photo: Stephen Collett

Can the South African Communist Party (SACP) ever become a viable option for the ANC or has it become just a flat spare-tyre of the ruling party? Is there more to expect from the SACP or has it run full cycle? These are some of the questions that were brought up by Prof. Kwandiwe Kondlo at his inaugural lecture at our university on 24 August 2011.

Prof. Kondlo, head of our Centre for Africa Studies, told the audience that the current SACP (unlike pre-1994) is a party in which theory and intellectual reflection were being eclipsed by politics of pragmatism and warned that self-interest and ambition have become a problem. Delivering his lecture on the topic The South African Communist Party and the Dilemma of the National Democratic Revolution in South Africa, 1994 to date, Prof. Kondlo warned that he may ruffle feathers amongst those with ideological commitments and said that as an intellectual it was his job to irritate.

Prof. Kondlo told the audience his lecture would re-open old debates telling them that old questions are making way to the fore, for example the nationalisation debate.

Please find Prof. Kwandiwe Kondlo’s full inaugural lecture in the attached document.

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