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07 March 2024 Photo Lunga Luthuli
Simphiwe Kunene and Prof Francois Strydom
Prof Francois Strydom, Senior Director at the Centre for Teaching and Learning and Simphiwe Kunene, the first African DREAM scholar and a master’s student from the Faculty of Education.

The University of the Free State (UFS) received recognition for its commitment to student success at the 2024 Achieving the Dream (ATD) conference which celebrated its 20-year anniversary. Simphiwe Kunene, an Education master's student originally from the Qwaqwa campus, was selected to represent South Africa as the first DREAM scholar from Africa as part of the conference.

The Achieving the Dream network of over 300 institutions, which is one of the largest movements in US higher education aims to transform colleges and universities so that students of colour and a lower socio-economic status are supported to earn a degree. The UFS is a leading partner in the Siyaphumelela Network, which has been working for 10 years with ATD to enhance the success of students in South Africa. Prof Francois Strydom, Senior Director at the Centre of Teaching and Learning (CTL), accepted the award on behalf of the institution.

Prof Strydom said that collaboration with the ATD and Siyaphumelela institutions has helped the UFS to develop cutting-edge approaches to “level the playing field” and support Kovsies to earn their undergraduate degrees.

The first African DREAM scholar

Kunene was selected as the first African DREAM scholar from the Siyaphumelela network. To select the DREAM scholar, each Siyaphumelela partner institution nominated one student as a preferred candidate. From the proposed candidates, the DREAM scholar was selected by the South African Institute for Distance Education (Saide) based on the following: demonstrating resilience, academic excellence, and a deep commitment to making a positive difference in universities and personal communities.

He addressed the conference of over 2 000 delegates and shared with them his hopes and dreams. Many members of the South African delegation said Simphiwe did his country proud. He had the following to say about his opportunity to be a DREAM scholar: “Being a DREAM scholar was life changing for me, exposing me to an array of opportunities I never knew were possible and available for me. It was as if, for a moment, the world had stopped to just listen to what I had to say."

The way forward

The UFS will continue its work as a partner of the Siyaphumelela network for the 2024-2026 cycle. The multi-stakeholder project team is focused on enhancing undergraduate students’ time, and to position the UFS as a thought and research leader in the area of student success as part of Vision 130.  

News Archive

“We relied on outsiders to document our histories.” – Zanele Muholi delivers Women’s Day Lecture
2014-08-13

 

Zanele Muholi
Photo: Stephen Collett

“Our society is decaying because of hate crimes against LGBTI groups. You can’t say it does not affect you, because each of us is at least connected to one person [of LGBTI orientation].”

These words by Zanele Muholi, photographer and visual activist of LGBTI rights, who delivered the Women’s Day Lecture. The event commemorated Women’s Day and took place on Thursday 7 August 2014 at the Bloemfontein Campus. The lecture was hosted by the Centre for Africa Studies, as part of their Gender Studies Programme.

Muholi screened photographs featuring lesbian couples and recounted their all-too-real life stories. Her work emphasises the importance of queering the normative gaze by representing black lesbians in ‘straight’ portraits in a collection of works titled ‘Faces and Phases’. By focusing on lesbians in her work, Muholi shows that women in same sex relationships are just women, with the same dreams and aspirations as their heterosexual sisters.

But lesbian women carry an additional, grave fear – that of corrective rape. Muholi speaks on this topic in the video, ‘We live in fear’, which she screened during her talk. The documentary features the lives of lesbian women in Kwa Thema township in Johannesburg. Shockwaves spread through this settlement in 2008 after the brutal killing of a lesbian woman and the ensuing series of hate crimes against the LGBTI community.

Zanele describes her work as “documenting our own stories. For years we relied on outsiders to document our histories. We should do it ourselves.”

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