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28 June 2024 | Story Carmenita Redcliffe-Paul
Global Citizen Invitation Prof Thuli Madonsela 4 July 2024

The University of the Free State (UFS) and the South African Chamber of Commerce United Kingdom (SACC UK) are pleased to present a Global Citizen Series conversation, South Africa’s Future in Focus: the post-election impact on social justice, service delivery, higher education, and the economy, from the perspective of Prof Thuli Madonsela, Director of the Centre for Social Justice in the Faculty of Law at Stellenbosch University and Professor of Law in the Law Trust Research Chair in Social Justice Studies.

As part of the Global Citizen Webinar Series, Prof Madonsela – a member of the International Anticorruption Advisory Council and Global Justice Leaders – will join UFS Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Prof Francis Petersen, and SACC UK Chairperson, Sharon Constançon, for a conversation that explores what the future holds for social justice, service delivery, higher education, and the economy in South Africa.

After thirty years of democracy, South Africans once again made their mark on 29 May 2024 in one of the most pivotal elections since 1994. Join us in person during the Free State Arts Festival or online as we explore South Africa’s Future in Focus: The post-election impact on social justice, service delivery, higher education, and the economy.

Date: Thursday 4 July 2024
In-person event SA time: 18:00-20:00 SAST, Centenary Complex, UFS Bloemfontein Campus
Webinar SA time: 18:30-19:30 / UK time: 17:30-18:30

The livestream link will be shared with those who RSVP

Enquiries: Tebello Leputla - leputlatb@ufs.ac.za +27 51 401 3966

About Prof Thuli Madontsela

Prof Thuli (Thulisile) Madonsela is the Director of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) in the Faculty of Law at Stellenbosch University and Professor of Law in the Law Trust Research Chair in Social Justice Studies. She is the founder of the Thuma Foundation for Democracy Leadership and Literacy and a member of the African Academy of Sciences. She was recently appointed to the UN Scientific Advisory Board and as Chairperson of Cities Alliance. She is a member of the International Anticorruption Advisory Council and Global Justice Leaders.

The former Public Protector of South Africa and full-time Commissioner in the South African Law Reform Commission was one of the 11 technical experts who helped draft the South African Constitution, and is a co-architect of several constitutionally mandated laws, including the Equality Act, Employment Equity Act, and the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act. She has an extensive background in applied constitutional, social justice, and administrative law principles, mainly based on her years of public service and her investigation of improper conduct in state affairs as Public Protector. A regular sought-after keynote speaker, Prof Madonsela has written, taught, presented papers, and published on these matters and ethical leadership, good governance, and gender mainstreaming for decades.

Prof Madonsela helped draft several international human rights instruments at UN, AU, and SADC levels, as well as country reports on such matters. She currently teaches Constitutional Law, Social Justice Law, Administrative Law, and Constitutional Governance and Ethical Leadership. She holds eight honorary law doctorates, in addition to two law degrees, a Harvard Advanced Leadership Certificate, and other postgraduate qualifications.

Named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2014, Prof Madonsela’s global recognition includes more than 70 awards, including Rotary’s Paul Harris award, the Commonwealth Lawyers Truth and Justice award, and the global ACFE’s Cressy award. Prof Madonsela is a mother of two, a philanthropist, and an avid mountaineer who has summited Mt Kilimanjaro twice under the #Trek4Mandela-#Caring4Girls anti-period poverty campaign and the Musa Plan for Social Justice, and regularly hikes for the #Action4Inclusion campaign, a quest to end student debt.

News Archive

The universal power of music and song to convey the unspeakable
2015-05-07

Philip Miller
Photo: Johan Roux

Spotlight photo: John Hodgkiss

Philip Miller, award-winning composer and sound artist, recently delivered the second instalment of the Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture Series on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past on the Bloemfontein Campus. This lecture series forms part of a five-year research project led by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela. The series focuses on how the creative arts represent trauma and memory, and how these representations may facilitate the healing of historical wounds.

Disrupting the Silence: The Past and Transnational Memory
In Miller’s lecture, ‘Disrupting the Silence: The Past and Transnational Memory’, he discussed the creative process – and the far-researching effects – of his composition: ‘REwind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony’. The production consists of 4 soloists, an 80- to 100-member choir, a string octet, combined with gripping projected images and audio of victims testifying during the Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) hearings.

While listening to those raw recordings, Miller would rewind continually and listen again. In between the sounds of the tape stretching and spooling, sighs, gulps for air, and moments when the speakers lost their speech, a hidden sound world revealed itself. And within these silences lay an entrenched trauma far more profound than the actual words spoken.

Communal remembering
When Miller asked Nomonde Calata how she felt about his using the recording of her heart-rending cry during her TRC testimony, her reply was poignant. For Calata, her cries – taken over by the voice of Sibongile Khumalo during the cantata – were a living memorial to her loving husband. “And it almost felt like a soothing balm to her traumatic loss,” Miller said.

“I believe that a collective body of people singing is a unique symbolic act of communal remembering. But more than that, it is a deep form of identification of our humanity, and allows for some form of catharsis for those testifiers who have attended the live performances. Just as a parent sings a lullaby to calm a crying child, the choir singing reaches those of us who continue to mourn.

“Music and song – and the arts in general – can convey the powerful stories of our nation without fearing to engage with the subject matter,” Miller said. “This I believe is the universal power of music and song: to convey a spiritual dimension to what perhaps is sometimes too graphic and painful to comprehend fully.”

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