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Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture

26 September 2023 | Story Supplied

The University of the Free State is pleased to present the second Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture, which will be delivered by award-winning biographer and professor of English literature, Stephen Clingman. Well-known author and advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi will respond.

The lecture, titled Bram Fischer, Or What Happens When the World Becomes Inhospitable, will consider the continuing importance of Bram Fischer in a South African and global context. Bram Fischer was born in Bloemfontein in 1908 into one of the most prominent of Afrikaner families. While never surrendering his Afrikaner identity, he also transformed it by identifying with the struggle for liberation of all South Africa’s peoples. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he faced an inhospitable world, yet his commitment was to make the world more hospitable to all.

Date: Wednesday 11 October 2023

Time: 18:00 to 21:00

Venue: Equitas Auditorium, Bloemfontein Campus, UFS

RSVP here to attend this lecture by 6 October 2023.

For further information, contact Alicia Pienaar at pienaaran1@ufs.ac.za.

The Speaker

Stephen Clingman is Distinguished University Professor of English and former Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has held several fellowships internationally and written widely on a range of topics. His books include The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside, The Grammar of Identity: Transnational Fiction and the Nature of the Boundary, Birthmark (a memoir/autofiction), and William Kentridge (the catalogue of Kentridge’s exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, 2022). His biography, Bram Fischer: Afrikaner Revolutionary, was co-winner of the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award, South Africa’s premier prize for non-fiction.

The Respondent

Tembeka Ngcukaitobi is a South African lawyer, public speaker, author, and political activist. He is a member of the South African Law Reform Commission. Ngcukaitobi has authored the books The Land Is Ours: South Africa's First Black Lawyers and the birth of Constitutionalism and Land Matters: South Africa's failed land reforms and the road ahead.

News Archive

UFS awards honorary doctorates during spring graduation ceremony

2004-09-20

The University of the Free State (UFS) will award three honorary doctorates this week during its spring graduation ceremony.

The graduation ceremony will take place on Wednesday 22 September 2004 and the honorary doctorates are Dr Calvin Seerveld (D Phil (hc), Prof YK Seedat (MD (hc) and Dr Mary Seely (D Sc (hc).

“The doctorates come from a wide spectrum of specialty fields and serve as proof of the UFS’s policy to give recognition to people who stand out and make a difference,” says Prof Frederick Fourie, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS.

Dr Calvin Seerveld (D Phil (hc) will receive an honorary doctorate for his academic leadership at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto and the wide international recognition he has received throughout his career in various subject areas, eg philosophical aesthesia, the theory of art, the methodology of the description of the history of art and continental philosophy.

Prof YK Seedat (MD (hc) will receive an honorary doctorate for his extraordinary contribution to medicine in South Africa. His research in the field of hypertension in blacks received international recognition and significantly contributed to the understanding of the pathophysiology of this condition.

In the mid-eighties Prof Seedat was instrumental in supporting the bid from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of the Orange Free State (UOFS) to host the first Colleges of Medicine of South Africa examination in Bloemfontein. This started a tradition that is still being maintained. Prof Seedat is a researcher at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

The Executive Director of the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia, Dr Mary Seely (D Sc (hc)), will be honored for the impact she has made on the development of environmental management in the drier parts of the southern African subcontinent. Though her research has been concentrated in Namibia, she has affected the professional lives of large numbers of ecologists, environmental scientists and environmental managers.

According to Prof Fourie the three doctorates form part of the greater group of 18 who will be honored by the UFS during its centenary year. The last group will be receiving their honorary doctorates in October 2004.

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel: (051) 401-2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
20 September 2004

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