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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

School of Medicine expands to provide quality tuition
2015-04-20

 

The School of Medicine at the University of the Free State (UFS) has recently extended various training platforms to provide continuous quality tuition to students.

Not only does the school boast a world-class dissection hall but now has plans for additional training facilities at two more hospitals.

The new dissection hall was completed in January 2015 with some final finishing touches that will be done shortly. The hall is newly built as the previous dissection hall has been used for undergraduate anatomy training since 1972.

Dr Sanet van Zyl, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Basic Medical Science, says owing to a prospective growth in the number of medical students as well as changing methods in teaching and learning, the need for a new dissection hall became evident to ensure that students get an optimal learning experience during dissection tuition.

“The new spacious dissection hall is equipped with special lighting and modern equipment for the training programme for second-year medical students. The hall is further equipped with modern sound and computer equipment. A unique camera system will allow students to follow dissection demonstrations on ten screens in the hall. Dissection demonstrations can also be recorded, enabling lecturers to put together new materials for teaching and learning.”

In addition to anatomy teaching for under- and postgraduate medical students, the Department of Basic Medical Science also offers anatomy teaching to under-graduate students from the School of Nursing, the School of Allied Health Professions as well as students from the Natural and Agricultural Sciences (such as students studying Forensic Science). The old dissection hall will still be used for the anatomy training of these students.

“The dissection programme for medical students is of critical importance, not only to acquire anatomical knowledge, but also for the development of critical skills and professionalism of our students. As already mentioned, these modern facilities will enable us to be at the forefront of current development in this field. This will benefit both present and future generations of medical students.”

At the same time, Prof Alan St. Clair Gibson, Head of the School of Medicine, announced that lecturing facilities are being developed at the Kimberley Hospital Complex. There are also plans for study facilities at the UFS’s Qwaqwa Campus and Bongani Hospital in Welkom. The UFS’s planning is also well underway for lecturing and residential facilities for students in Trompsburg, where students will receive training at the Trompsburg Hospital.

“We are very privileged to have these facilities and they will help us to provide world class training for students in the School of Medicine,” Prof St. Clair Gibson says.

 

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