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17 July 2024 | Story Prof Danie Brand

The University of the Free State, through its Free State Centre for Human Rights, is pleased to present an online panel discussion titled, The Gaza crisis: How should South African universities engage with ‘pressing and urgent injustices’?   


Click to view document Join the Panel Discussion

Following the killing of 1 143 people and the taking of 247 hostages by Hamas during an armed incursion in Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel mounted an invasion of the Gaza Strip. In the ensuing bombardment and ground offensive – which is continuing ten months after the Hamas attack – Israel armed forces have killed more than 38 000 people. Hamas’ killing and continued holding of hostages and Israel’s sustained offensive – described as an ‘unfolding genocide’ and a ‘massacre’ – confront universities with an enduring question: how to engage as institutions ‘with pressing and urgent injustices’?


Join us for an online panel discussion where pertinent questions emerging from the current crisis will be discussed. Should a university such as the University of the Free State formulate an institutional response to the Gaza crisis? If so, what form should it take? Is a statement, as has already emanated from several other South African universities, appropriate and sufficient? How to deal with current ties with Israeli universities, businesses, and individual academics? Can the UFS remain silent?

Event details
Date: Monday 22 July 2024
Time: 15:00-17:00
Venue: Ms Teams
Click to view documentClick here to RSVP before 22 July 2024. 
A Microsoft Teams link will be shared for the online event.

For South African universities, the Gaza crisis is a particularly apt lens through which to consider this question. Firstly, because Israel’s invasion of Gaza also manifested as a ‘scholasticide’: a large-scale destruction of schools, universities, and other places of learning in Gaza and the killing of Palestinian teachers and academics. Secondly, because of the strong historical and current links between South Africa, Palestine, and Israel: Israel’s past collaboration with the South African apartheid regime; the South African liberation movement’s enduring relationship with Palestinian liberation; and the many uncomfortable congruences between South Africa’s history of racially determined injustice and the current ethno-/racial social, political, and geographical segregation in Israel/Palestine.

Moderator

Prof Francis Petersen: Vice-Chancellor and Principal, UFS. 

 

Speakers
Prof Kistner has held teaching positions in Comparative Literature at Wits University, Modern European Languages at Unisa, and Philosophy at the University of Pretoria and is an extraordinary professor in the University of the Free State Department of Public Law. She is currently working on intersections between political philosophy, social theory, jurisprudence, and psychoanalytic theory.

Prof Nieftagodien is the NRF South African Research Chair in Local Histories and Present Realities and is the Head of the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he also lectures in the Department of History. He is the co-author – with Phil Bonner – of books on the history of Alexandra, Ekurhuleni, and Kathorus, and has also published books on the history of Orlando West and the Soweto uprising, and co-edited a book on the history of the ANC.

Prof Gillespie is a political and legal anthropologist with a research focus on abolition in South Africa, particularly concerned with the ways in which criminal legal processes become vectors for the continuation of apartheid relations. She joined the Department of Anthropology/Sociology at the University of the Western Cape in 2018, prior to which she worked for a decade at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). In 2008, she co-founded the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism (JWTC), an experimental project tasked with recrafting the work of critical theory beyond the Global North. She writes and teaches about urbanism, violence, sexualities, race, and the praxis of social justice. 

News Archive

Census 2011 overshadowed by vuvuzela announcements
2012-11-20

Mike Schüssler, economist
Photo: Hannes Pieterse
15 November 2012

Census 2011 contains good statistics but these are overshadowed by vuvuzela announcements and a selective approach, economist Mike Schüssler said at a presentation at the UFS.

“Why highlight one inequality and not another success factor? Is Government that negative about itself?” Mr Schüssler, owner of Economist.co.za, asked.

“Why is all the good news such as home ownership, water, lights, cars, cellphones, etc. put on the back burner? For example, we have more rooms than people in our primary residence. Data shows that a third of Africans have a second home. Why are some statistics that are racially based not made available, e.g. orphans? So are “bad” statistics not always presented?”

He highlighted statistics that did not get the necessary attention in the media. One such statistic is that black South Africans earn 46% of all income compared to 39% of whites. The census also showed that black South Africans fully own nearly ten times the amount of houses that whites do. Another statistic is that black South Africans are the only population group to have a younger median age. “This is against worldwide trends and in all likelihood has to do with AIDS. It is killing black South Africans more than other race groups.”

Mr Schüssler also gave insight into education. He said education does count when earnings are taken into account. “I could easily say that the average degree earns nearly five times more than a matric and the average matric earns twice the pay of a grade 11.”

He also mentioned that people lie in surveys. On the expenditure side he said, “People apparently do not admit that they gamble or drink or smoke when asked. They also do not eat out but when looking at industry and sector sales, this is exposed and the CPI is, for example, reweighted. They forget their food expenditure and brag about their cars. They seemingly spend massively on houses but little on maintenance. They spend more than they earn.”

“On income, the lie is that people forget or do not know the difference between gross and net salaries. People forget garnishee orders, loan repayments and certainly do not have an idea what companies pay on their behalf to pensions and medical aid. People want to keep getting social grants so they are more motivated to forget income. People are scared of taxes too so they lower income when asked. They spend more than they earn in many categories.”

On household assets Mr Schüssler said South Africans are asset rich but income poor. Over 8,3 million black African families stay in brick or concrete houses out of a total of 11,2 million total. About 4,9 million black families own their own home fully while only 502 000 whites do (fully paid off or nearly ten times more black families own their own homes fully). Just over 880 000 black South Africans are paying off their homes while 518 000 white families are.

Other interesting statistics are that 13,2 million people work, 22,5 million have bank accounts, 19,6 million have credit records. Thirty percent of households have cars, 90% of households have cellphones and 80% of households have TVs.
 

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