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11 July 2023 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Supplied
iKudu Coil Chevon Slammbee
Chevon Slambee says the COIL approach connects students and educators from different cultural backgrounds through online platforms, allowing participants to engage in cross-cultural learning and collaboration.
Internationalisation of the curriculum has been mandatory for institutions of higher education since 2020, according to the National Policy Framework for the Internationalisation of Higher Education in South Africa.

The iKudu project, an Erasmus+Capacity-Building in Higher Education (CBHE) co-funded project, which aims, among others, for universities to include internationalisation and decolonisation dimensions to transform their curricula, recently published the document: Considerations for enabling guidelines, strategies, and policies for internationalised curriculum renewal for universities with a focus on the diverse South African contexts. 

The University of the Free State (UFS) Office for International Affairs (OIA) played a key role in the publication of this document.

In his editorial of the document, Dr Cornelius Hagenmeier, Director of the OIA, states that in the spirit of the iKudu values – which include Ubuntu, trust, and equality – the project stakeholders have developed a document that will serve as a repository of ideas from which all consortium member universities can intelligently borrow when developing their institutional guidelines, strategies, and policies for curriculum renewal, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), or other forms of virtual exchange.

He says they are publishing this document to make the ideas available to the broader higher education community, in the hope that they will contribute to further debate on internationalised curriculum renewal processes.

The iKudu project is one of the few major EU-funded capacity-building projects coordinated by a South African university.

UFS coordinates iKudu

According to Chevon Slambee, iKudu Project Manager in the UFS OIA, the consideration document serves as a guiding document for all universities, but specifically focuses on South African universities, taking into account the unique and diverse contexts of South Africa’s higher education landscape and how these contexts influence the curriculum renewal processes.

Slambee explains that the COIL approach connects students and educators from different cultural backgrounds through online platforms, allowing participants to engage in cross-cultural learning and collaboration within the existing curriculum. 

Through joint projects, shared courses, and virtual exchanges, it aims to foster intercultural competence, global awareness, and mutual understanding among students. Moreover, the initiative creates inclusive opportunities for all students who take part in COIL, as the inequalities due to financial resources are factored out. “It expands the classroom beyond classroom borders, and grants students the opportunity to engage in a digital international world,” says Slambee. 

The five participating South African universities – the UFS, Durban University of Technology, University of Limpopo, University of Venda, and the Central University of Technology – together with the five European universities – the University of Siena (Italy), Coventry University (England), The Hague University of Applied Sciences (The Netherlands), Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (The Netherlands), and the University of Antwerp (Belgium) – have implemented 51 of their target of 55 COIL programmes, with almost 10 months remaining in the project. “For us, this is a milestone in the iKudu journey,” says Slambee. 

Sharing COIL experiences

One of the UFS lecturers who completed a COIL project is Prof Mariette Reyneke, Associate Professor in the UFS Department of Public Law.

Prof Reyneke recently completed her second COIL experience, this time with Prof Alessandra Viviani from the University of Siena. She says one of the best aspects of this initiative is giving our students the opportunity to broaden their horizons by exposing them to peers from a different country and culture. “Moreover, one also gets to expose students from developed countries to the realities and challenges of a developing country,” she adds.

“Through this initiative, we also get the chance to teach South African students that they have valuable contributions to offer the world. In some instances, our legal solutions to problems are fascinating and enriching for international students. Our theory and implementation of human rights are also sometimes more liberal than what students from Europe experience in their own countries,” says Prof Reyneke, who believes that COIL fosters an innovative and enriching experience for students, while also enhancing academic networks.

“It was very satisfying for me to realise that the students not only enjoyed the experience, but also found it beneficial for their personal growth,” she remarks.

Moving forward, Slambee says the OIA is working closely with the Centre for Teaching and Learning and is in the process of establishing a COIL/virtual engagement hub for the university. Furthermore, the Curriculum Internationalisation Project (CIP) has been approved and is being piloted in specific departments and faculties. For more information about the CIP, contact Prof Lynette Jacobs, Slambee, or Nooreen Adam from the OIA.

News Archive

The failure of the law
2004-06-04

 

Written by Lacea Loader

- Call for the protection of consumers’ and tax payers rights against corporate companies

An expert in commercial law has called for reforms to the Companies Act to protect the rights of consumers and investors.

“Consumers and tax payers are lulled into thinking the law protects them when it definitely does not,” said Prof Dines Gihwala this week during his inaugural lecture at the University of the Free State’s (UFS).

Prof Gihwala, vice-chairperson of the UFS Council, was inaugurated as extraordinary professor in commercial law at the UFS’s Faculty of Law.

He said that consumers, tax payers and shareholders think they can look to the law for an effective curb on the enormous power for ill that big business wields.

“Once the public is involved, the activities of big business must be controlled and regulated. It is the responsibility of the law to oversee and supervise such control and regulation,” said Prof Gihwala.

He said that, when undesirable consequences occur despite laws enacted specifically to prevent such results, it must be fair to suggest that the law has failed.

“The actual perpetrators of the undesirable behaviour seldom pay for it in any sense, not even when criminal conduct is involved. If directors of companies are criminally charged and convicted, the penalty is invariably a fine imposed on the company. So, ironically, it is the money of tax payers that is spent on investigating criminal conduct, formulating charges and ultimately prosecuting the culprits involved in corporate malpractice,” said Prof Gihwala.

According to Prof Gihwala the law continuously fails to hold companies meaningfully accountable to good and honest business values.

“Insider trading is a crime and, although legislation was introduced in 1998 to curb it, not a single successful criminal prosecution has taken place. While the law appears to be offering the public protection against unacceptable business behaviour, it does no such thing – the law cannot act as a deterrent if it is inadequate or not being enforced,” he said.

The government believed it was important to facilitate access to the country’s economic resources by those who had been denied it in the past. The Broad Based Economic Empowerment Act of 2003 (BBEE), is legislation to do just that. “We should be asking ourselves whether it is really possible for an individual, handicapped by the inequities of the past, to compete in the real business world even though the BBEE Act is now part of the law?,” said Prof Gihwala.

Prof Gihwala said that judges prefer to follow precedent instead of taking bold initiative. “Following precedent is safe at a personal level. To do so will elicit no outcry of disapproval and one’s professional reputation is protected. The law needs to evolve and it is the responsibility of the judiciary to see that it happens in an orderly fashion. Courts often take the easy way out, and when the opportunity to be bold and creative presents itself, it is ignored,” he said.

“Perhaps we are expecting too much from the courts. If changes are to be made to the level of protection to the investing public by the law, Parliament must play its proper role. It is desirable for Parliament to be proactive. Those tasked with the responsibility of rewriting our Companies Act should be bold and imaginative. They should remove once and for all those parts of our common law which frustrate the ideals of our Constitution, and in particular those which conflict with the principles of the BBEE Act,” said Prof Gihwala.

According to Prof Gihwala, the following reforms are necessary:

• establishing a unit that is part of the office of the Registrar of Companies to bolster a whole inspectorate in regard to companies’ affairs;
• companies who are liable to pay a fine or fines, should have the right to take action to recover that fine from those responsible for the conduct;
• and serious transgression of the law should allow for imprisonment only – there should be no room for the payment of fines.
 

Prof Gihwala ended the lecture by saying: “If the opportunity to re-work the Companies Act is not grabbed with both hands, we will witness yet another failure in the law. Even more people will come to believe that the law is stupid and that it has made fools of them. And that would be the worst possible news in our developing democracy, where we are struggling to ensure that the Rule of Law prevails and that every one of us has respect for the law”.

 

 

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