Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
26 August 2025 | Story Precious Shamase | Photo Teboho Mositi
From the left: Dr Grey Magaiza, Deputy Director of CGAS; Prof Vasu Reddy, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Internationalisation; Prof Cias Tsotetsi, Campus Vice-Principal: Academic and Research; and Prof Jared McDonald, Assistant Dean of the Faculty of The Humanities.

The Centre for Gender and Africa Studies (CGAS) on the University of the Free State (UFS) Qwaqwa Campus recently hosted the Biennial Gendered Worlds Lecture. The series focuses on the meaning and interpretation of the social, cultural, and political environments where gender is constructed, experienced, and contested. The recent lecture featured a captivating address by Prof Vasu Reddy, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Internationalisation. Titled The Taste(s) of Intimacies: Reflections on the Trifecta of Food, Sexuality and Love in Gendered Worlds, this lecture invited the audience to explore the complex, interconnected nature of these three domains.

Prof Reddy opened his talk by describing food, sexuality, and love as ‘grammars of intimacy’ – a powerful metaphor suggesting that these elements encode cultural scripts, regulate bodies, and create opportunities for resistance and transformation. He intentionally used the term ‘trifecta’, borrowed from horse racing, to highlight the synergistic yet sometimes incompatible relationship between these three elements. He explained that this trifecta provides a profound framework for understanding how intimacy is experienced, negotiated, and theorised within different cultural and gendered contexts.

The lecture was structured in several parts, beginning with a personal reflection on Prof Reddy’s upbringing. He shared an intimate image of himself and his grandmother, explaining how her kitchen was not just a domestic space for cooking and nurturing. He motivated that his grandmother’s kitchen was a site of ‘gendered and feminist pedagogy’. He described it as a space not just for nourishment, but also for learning. This is where he learned about nurturing and care through observation and storytelling. This personal anecdote set the stage for a broader discussion on the socio-political dimensions of food, which he described as a ‘mode of enquiry and practice’ and an ‘object of power’. He noted that food preparation is a form of gendered labour and highlighted how apartheid structured food along racial lines, turning dishes such as ‘chakalaka’ from symbols of struggle and survival into commodified examples for elite consumption.

Moving on to sexuality, Prof Reddy argued that, like food, it is a domain where intimacy meets regulation. He referenced the work of Zanele Muholi, a renowned visual activist, whose photography in projects such as Somnyama Ngonyama (‘Hail the dark lioness’) confronts histories of colonialism and gendered violence by asserting the visibility and dignity of black and queer bodies. This aspect of the lecture emphasised how sexuality is not merely personal but is deeply shaped by cultural and political scripts.

In another component of this lecture, Prof Reddy delved into the complex nature of love. He proposed that love, though often idealised as apolitical, is deeply structured by cultural norms and power relations. Drawing on the work of scholar Sara Ahmed, he described love as a ‘sticky emotion’ that adheres to certain bodies and relationships, shaping how people are nourished, touched, and recognised. He highlighted that love is often a struggle – a messy, unpredictable, and transformative process.

Prof Reddy also discussed the ‘affective dimension’ of these matters, explaining that emotions are not just personal feelings, but social forces that shape bodies, spaces, and politics. He linked this to the concept of ‘taste’, suggesting that it is not only a sensory experience, but also an affective one, laden with social context, pleasure, and sometimes shame.

Throughout the lecture, Prof Reddy emphasised the entanglement of the private and public realms, asserting that intimacy is not confined to the bedroom but is shaped by public politics and collective norms. He concluded by presenting resistance and liberation as central to the discussion, positing that food, sexuality, and love can be sites of radical acts. He cited bell hooks, who argued that intimacy can be a powerful force for healing and self-definition in the face of systemic oppression.

For Prof Reddy, gendered worlds are not just sites of oppression, but also spaces of possibility that prompt further questions to make sense of ourselves.

In his closing remarks, he invited the audience to consider the profound questions his lecture posed: What does intimacy taste like? Who gets to taste it? And how is that taste shaped by gender, power, and history? He encouraged everyone to critically engage with these questions – not just intellectually, but personally – to reimagine intimacy as a public, relational, and transformative practice for building a more equitable world.

News Archive

The mysterious origins and problematic significance of the Postamble
2014-10-20



Prof André du Toit (UCT) and Prof Pieter Duvenhage (UFS)
Emeritus professor from UCT’s Department of Political Studies, Prof André du Toit, delivered a presentation at the Bloemfontein Campus on 14, 15 and 16 October 2014 respectively. His presentations gave an in-depth exploration of the Postamble as founding text of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

This event was hosted by the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice, in collaboration with the Department of Philosophy.

Prof Du Toit’s papers were entitled:
•    A Need for Truth: Amnesty and the Origins and Consequences of the TRC Process.
•    Tracking down a belated and inconclusive amnesty pact: The obscure origins and problematic significance of the 'Postamble' as founding text of the TRC process (Part 1 and 2).

In his presentations he explored how the text of the Postamble came to be written. He also scrutinised the respective contributions of those who were involved in drafting the text. The significance of the Postamble – as it is understood in its historical context – was also a point of discussion.

Prof Du Toit raised some thought-provoking questions during the three days. What is the relation of the amnesty provision of the Postamble with the subsequent TRC amnesty process? How did a text without any particular reference to a truth commission come to function as founding text and discursive framework for the TRC?

He also investigated some of the main problems with the history and significance of the Postamble, as well as its mysterious origins. In addition, Prof Du Toit conducted a critical analysis of a set of newly-identified drafts of the text.

One of Prof Du Toit’s most substantive inquiries, though, was into the question: Was the amnesty provision of the Postamble the product of an underlying amnesty ‘pact’ between the NP government and the ANC?


We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept