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18 October 2023 | Story Anthony Mthembu | Photo Charl Devenish
UFS Book Discussion
From left to right: Prof Wahbie Long, Prof Premesh Lalu, Prof Saleem Badat, and Prof Sarah Nuttall.

The University of the Free State (UFS) recently hosted three authors for a discussion titled ‘Apartheid’s Legacy: Ghosts, Psyche and Trauma’. The event was aimed at exploring the lasting legacy of apartheid with academics and writers who’ve recently published books related to the topic.

The authors included Professor Saleem Badat, Research Professor in the Department of History at the UFS and author of Tennis, Apartheid and Social Justice: The First Non-Racial International Tennis Tour, 1971 (published 2023); Professor Premesh Lalu, Founding Director of the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape and author of Undoing Apartheid (2022); and Professor Wahbie Long, Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Cape Town and author of Nation on the Couch: Inside South Africa’s Mind (2021).

Professor Sarah Nuttall, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, facilitated the conversation and described the authors as “people who have been embedded in trying to undertake that post-apartheid project, as we took it then, and people who have really tried to build institutions for a different kind of future”.

The discussion took place on 12 October 2023 at the Albert Wessels Auditorium on the UFS’s Bloemfontein Campus. Professor Vasu Reddy, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Internationalisation at the UFS, described the launch as a celebratory occasion. “Books are essential to the knowledge project. They shape our teaching, learning, and research, and engage scholars,” he said.

Examining apartheid’s legacy

Prof Badat discussed his book (Tennis, Apartheid and Social Justice: The First Non-Racial International Tennis Tour, 1971), which details the first non-racial tour of Europe by black tennis players. “The book is a description of the 1971 tour by this intricate group of six young people from ages 16 to 30, who are not provided opportunities of coaching or any of that within South Africa at the time,” Badat said.

Prof Lalu’s book (Undoing Apartheid) examines unresolved critiques of apartheid by taking the reader back to 1985. “The book is an attempt to turn against my own position in 1985 – which was that we will transcend apartheid – and return to the work of study to see what we might have missed and what we squandered in our haste in overcoming apartheid.”

Prof Long said his book (Nation on the Couch: Inside South Africa’s Mind) aims to understand the problem of violence using psychoanalytic terms. “I try to give a psychoanalytic reading of violence in South Africa; not violence in its conventional and interpersonal sense, but violence broadly understood, whether I am speaking of racism, economic inequality, or gender-based violence,” he said.

In addition to discussing their books, the panel explored several themes related to the topic, including the concept of stasis through each writer’s lens, as well as the idea of non-racialism and what it means to them.

News Archive

Launch of the Africa office of the IIDE
2006-05-25

Attending the launch of the Africa office of the IIDE were from the left Prof Sytse Strijbos (Chairperson of IIDE Europe), Rev Kiepie Jaftha (Chairperson of the IIDE in Africa’s Board of Directors and Chief Director: Community Service at the UFS) and Prof Frederick Fourie (Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS).

 

Attending the launch were from the left Prof Lucius Botes (Director: Centre of Development Support at the UFS), Dr Samuel Kareithi (Head: Community Development at the Cornerstone Christian College, Cape Town), Rev Kiepie Jaftha (Chairperson of the IIDE in Africa’s Board of Directors and Chief Director: Community Service at the UFS), Prof Sytse Strijbos (Chairperson of IIDE Europe) and Dr Ezekiel Moraka (Vice-Rector:  Student Affairs at the UFS).

Africa office of IIDE launched on UFS main campus 

The Africa office of the International Institute for Development and Ethics (IIDE) was today (26 May 2006) launched on the Main Campus of the University of the Free State (UFS) in Bloemfontein.

“The IIDE specialises in the studying and research of general questions of developmental theory and practices and provides services and support in education, strategic planning, policy formulation, advocacy and capacity building of development agencies,” said Rev Kiepie Jaftha, Chairperson of the IIDE in Africa’s Board of Directors and Chief Director: Community Service at the UFS.

According to Rev Jaftha the IIDE in Africa will focus on the conceptual and normative aspects of developmental processes in Sub-Saharan Africa.  “We want to foster local and international partnerships with various relevant role-players in civil society, the private sector and public sector in the SACD region and later expand our operations to the rest of Africa,” said Rev Jaftha.

The IIDE in Africa cooperates with a similar foundation in Europe, functioning as the IIDE Europe.  This institute was founded in 2003 and its head office is situated in the Netherlands.  The UFS is a funder of the IIDE in Africa together with the Paul Foundation and private sponsors from the Netherlands.

“We have already started with various projects which are in various stages of implementation,” said Rev Jaftha.  Some of these projects include, among others, the broadening of the master’s degree in Christian Studies of Science and Society (MACSSS) which is currently housed at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam to tertiary institutions in South Africa such as the UFS, the University of Stellenbosch and the Potchefstroom Campus of the Northwest University.

“Another project is an investigation into the possibility of initiating a broad development initiative in the poverty stricken Qwaqwa area.  This initiative will attempt to concentrate on issues like the training and empowerment of prospective entrepreneurs in the region, the identification of prospective entrepreneurs for the rendering of development support and the monitoring of the impact of information and communication technology on local communities during the implementation of sustainable development initiatives,” said Rev Jaftha.

“The establishment of the Africa office of the IIDE on the UFS Main Campus is an indication of one of the aims of the UFS to play a role in South Africa and Africa.  It also signifies our aim to contribute meaningfully to research and development and to establish links between the academe and practice,” said Rev Jaftha. 

 

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel:   (051) 401-2584
Cell:  083 645 2454
E-mail:  loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
26 May 2006

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