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23 August 2024 | Story André Damons | Photo Supplied
Thandokuhle Gama, Dr Glen Tylor and Anele Mthembu
Winners: Thandokuhle Gama (left) and Anele Mthembu (right), who were honoured with the DSI-Esther Mahlangu Master's Fellowship at the 2024 SAWiSA, with Dr Glen Taylor, Senior Director: Directorate Research Development (DRD), UFS.

Two postgraduate students from the University of the Free State (UFS) were honoured at this year’s Women in Science Awards (SAWiSA) hosted by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI).

Thandokuhle Gama, a Master of Medical Science student with specialisation in Pharmacology, and Anele Mthembu, who is working on her master’s degree in Disaster Management in the Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa (DIMTEC), are both recipients of the DSI-Esther Mahlangu Master's Fellowships.

This fellowship is awarded to women scientists and researchers who are pursuing their master’s or doctoral studies and already hold scholarships from the National Research Foundation or other DSI agencies. The fellowships for Gama and Mthembu are worth R75 000 each and can be used towards their tuition fees or to enhance academic programmes by covering the costs of attending conferences or specialised research materials and equipment required to complete their degrees.

Honouring Dr Esther Mahlangu

The prestigious 2024 SAWiSA, which honour the exceptional contributions of women to science, technology, engineering, mathematics and innovation (STEMI) in South Africa, took place on 15 August 2024 in Mbombela. The theme was “Transition towards an Innovation Economy: The Role of Women Leaders in STEM”.

This year, the awards honoured world-renowned artist, Dr Esther Mahlangu, by renaming this year's master's and doctoral fellowships the DSI-Esther Mahlangu Fellowships.

“I feel honoured and grateful for the recognition, although it's been difficult to process what it actually means. It has been an overwhelming experience. It came as a surprise, because when I applied, I was not sure what to expect because these are national awards with many other applicants,” says Gama.

She was nominated by Innocensia Mangoato, lecturer in the UFS Department of Pharmacology and a previous winner at the awards. Gama is doing research on medicinal plants that are used in traditional medicine to treat diabetes.

“Winning this award means that my work thus far is being recognised. It is all through God’s grace. I'm also grateful to everyone who has contributed towards my journey: my family, teachers, mentors and sponsors, and everyone else. It will allow me to continue to advance research in the field of diabetes treatment using traditional medicines or medicinal plants.”

Bettering lives

Mthembu, who was nominated by her mentor, Dr Tlou Daisy Raphela-Masuku, a lecturer at DIMTEC, says it is a fantastic feeling winning this award. “Before the awards, Dr Raphela-Masuku and I dreamt I could win the SAWiSA. But before then, I was surprised and grateful for being acknowledged by DSI as a finalist; I focused on being a DSI finalist, and that winning would be a bonus,” she says.

She continues: “It means a lot to me to win the DSI Master’s Fellowship, as it is a testimony of God’s grace in my life. It is the destiny for helpers God has placed in my life, including my mentor, supervisor, and the DIMTEC postgraduate school. We all won!”

Mthembu is working her master’s thesis on the integration of risk-informed development (RID) and nature-based solutions (NbS) into sustainable human settlements in eThekwini Municipality, KwaZulu-Natal.

“The overarching aim is to evaluate the integration of both these concepts into human settlements’ strategic planning to offer eThekwini Municipality innovative and ecosystem-based approaches to achieving sustainable and resilient human settlements and achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 on building resilient cities.

“I hope to publish my findings and contextualise the enabling environments for RID (EE4RID) Framework in eThekwini Municipality so they can make risk-informed decisions on development and human settlements to achieve SDG 11,” explains Mthembu.

Gama says the aim with her research is to determine if these medicinal plants can treat diabetes by stimulating stem cells to differentiate and become insulin-producing cells. She hopes that through this research diabetes treatment can advance from a level where it is being continuously managed, to a level where we can cure the disease.

News Archive

IRSJ marks five years of championing social justice
2016-08-12

Description: IRSJ 5 year Tags: IRSJ 5 year

Members of the Advisory Board of the IRSJ,
Prof Michalinos Zembylas (Open University
of Cyprus), Prof Shirley Anne Tate (Leeds
University, England), and Prof Relebohile
Moletsane (University of KwaZulu-Natal),
listen to a speaker on the programme.
 Photo: Lihlumelo Toyana

The Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice (IRSJ) marked its fifth anniversary with a function on 27 July 2016 in the Reitz Hall of the Centenary Complex on the Bloemfontein Campus of the University of the Free State (UFS). Earlier that day, the Advisory Board of the IRSJ, chaired by Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the UFS, hosted their annual meeting.

A new book was also launched, co-authored by JC van der Merwe, Deputy-Director at the IRSJ and Dionne van Reenen, researcher and PhD candidate at the IRSJ. It is entitled Transformation and Legitimation in Post-apartheid Universities: Reading Discourses from ‘Reitz’. The function featured not only reflections on the IRSJ, but a four-member panel discussion of the book and higher education in 2016.

The IRSJ came into being officially at the UFS in January 2011. Prof André Keet, Director of the IRSJ, said: “With a flexibility and trust not easily found in the higher education sector, the university management gave us the latitude and support to fashion an outfit that responds to social life within and outside the borders of the university, locally and globally.”

The IRSJ has not hesitated to be bold and
courageous in reforming ... traditional policies."

 

Prof Jansen went on to mention three things he finds appealing about the IRSJ: “Thanks to Prof Keet and his team’s vision and understanding of how important it is for students to have a space in which they can learn how to be, learn how to think, and learn how to contribute, the IRSJ has become a place where students can learn about things that they might not learn in the classroom. Second, it created, for the first time, a space where members of the LGBTIQ community could gather in one place. And third, it speaks to the intellectual life of the university, as evidenced by the research and publications produced over the past few years.”

Prof Jansen added: “The IRSJ will only be successful to the extent that we have safe spaces, courageous spaces, in which not only black students talk to themselves, but where black and white students talk together about their difficulties. If you’re entangled, you can’t get out of [that] unless you speak to the other person.”

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Prof Michalinos Zembylas of the Open University of Cyprus and member of the Advisory Board, said of the IRSJ: “The works produced by the institute in this short time have been valuable to this community and beyond, because they recognise the complexities of education, ... while pushing the boundaries of how to translate theoretical discussions into practical, everyday conditions. ... For example, the IRSJ has not hesitated to be bold and courageous in reforming some traditional policies in this university—remnants of an ambivalent past that reproduced inequality and disadvantage.

In reflecting on how the IRSJ came into being during her opening remarks, Dr Lis Lange, Vice-Rector: Academic at the UFS, said that it has always been “dedicated to transformation.” She added that it “gathered the energy and creativity of some of our most promising student leaders.” She concluded: “For me, the greatest success of the Institute, besides publications and local and international networks, is the fact that something that started in the margins is being asked today to come closer to the centre, to play a larger role in the structural transformation of the university.”

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