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UFS Drama Department triumph: ‘Ons wag vir Godot’ sweeps kykNET Fiësta Awards

18 March 2025 | Story Litha Banjatwa | Photo Supplied

Fiesta winners 2025 — Ons wag vir Godot shines at the 2025 kykNET Fiësta Awards, winning three major accolades and cementing UFS’s reputation for world-class theatre excellence.

Ons wag vir Godot, a groundbreaking stage production from the University of the Free State (UFS) Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, was one of the biggest winners at the 2025 kykNET Fiësta Awards, which celebrate the best of Afrikaans theatre.

The awards ceremony was held at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town on 27 February 2025.

Ons wag vir Godot, an Afrikaans translation of Irish writer Samuel Beckett’s celebrated 1953 play Waiting for Godot, won three of its four nominations: Best Director for Dion van Niekerk, Best Translation for Naomi Morgan, and Best Supporting Actor for Gerben Kamper. This haul positioned Ons wag vir Godot as the second biggest winner of the evening, and marked an unprecedented achievement for a Free State production at the Fiësta Awards.

This success builds upon the play’s earlier triumphs at the Free State Arts Festival, where it received accolades for Best Director, Best Translation, Best Supporting Actor (Peter Taljaard), and Best Ensemble.

Director Dion van Niekerk said what set Ons wag vir Godot apart was its unique origin: it is the first Afrikaans translation of Beckett's masterpiece directly from the French original. Securing the translation rights was no small feat, requiring a special appeal to the notoriously selective Samuel Beckett Estate.

“The production’s greatest challenge lay in making the play accessible to a South African audience,” Van Niekerk said. “We aimed to find a stage language with visual imagery that would situate the play within a recognisable South African context."

This was achieved through Naomi Morgan’s “immaculate translation work, which captured the existential concerns of the play with precisely the right Afrikaans vocabulary and turns of phrase”. The production team further grounded the play in South African reality through the creation of characters, setting, and costuming that evoked the stark beauty of the Karoo landscape.

The success of Ons wag vir Godot has profound implications for the UFS Department of Drama and Theatre Arts. It firmly establishes the department among the nation’s leading drama institutions, showcasing its ability to contribute high-quality, meaningful work to the South African artistic landscape. “This production highlights the importance of performing translated classics,” Van Niekerk said. “Works like Waiting for Godot are part of the canon of great international theatrical works. South Africa was banned from producing this play during apartheid, and it has been rarely seen since, predominantly in English.” This production, therefore, offers Afrikaans-speaking South Africans and others a unique opportunity to engage with Beckett’s timeless work.

The impact of this success extends to the department’s students. Sibabalwe Jokani, a student cast member, shared in the nominations for Best Ensemble at both the Free State Festival and Fiësta Awards. Jokani said the play’s success has inspired the student body and reaffirmed the department’s commitment to high standards and industry access.

When asked about the future of Afrikaans theatre, Van Niekerk said, “This production will hopefully inspire others to continue to reconsider the value that great theatrical works that have been created in other languages might have in a contemporary Afrikaans context.”

News Archive

UFS sets trend for higher education institutions

2005-09-21

The University of the Free State (UFS) offers more service-learning courses than any other higher education institution in the country and has the highest number of students enrolled for these service-learning courses.

This was the research findings on higher education institutions conducted between 2001 and 2004 by the Joint Education Trust (JET) into service-learning courses. These are courses which seek to integrate service to the community into the academic core of higher education institutions.

The results of this research indicated that the UFS is one of the few higher education institutions in South Africa that have made progress in integrating community engagement into the mainstream academy.

According to the findings 2 233 students at the UFS participated in service-learning courses supported by JET, while 858 students at the University of Transkei (UNITRA), 636 students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and only 600 students at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) participated in service-learning courses.

In total there were 6 930 students participating in service learning courses supported by the JET at 10 institutions throughout the country.

The research also found that out of a total of 182 service-learning courses supported by JET countrywide, the UFS had the highest number of such courses at 42, followed by WITS with 28, the University of Kwazulu Natal with 26, UWC 24 and UNITRA with 22.

Nationally, most of the service-learning courses at higher education institutions are offered in the human sciences (62), followed by health sciences (37), education (26), agriculture (14), and economic sciences (11).

According to leading academics, service-learning is a credit-bearing, educational exercise in which students participate in an organised service activity that meets identified community needs and helps the student to gain a deeper understanding of course content and a sense of civic responsibility.

Reacting to the research findings, the Rector and Vice-chancellor of the UFS, Prof Frederick Fourie, said the university feels strongly that there should be integration of service-learning into the academic core of the institution.

“Through service-learning modules the UFS can give expression to its role of service to the community as an institution of higher learning, producing quality graduates who understand the communities in which they will have to function for the rest of their lives,” Prof Fourie said.

According to Mr Jo Lazarus, the project manager of the Community-Higher Education – Service Partnership (CHESP), which falls under the JET, a number of institutions have identified community engagement as a strategic priority and have allocated significant resources from their central budget towards its implementation.

Mr Lazarus said most students have an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards service learning.

“A large percentage of students surveyed indicated that their service-learning course helped to improve their relationship skills, leadership skills and project planning abilities. As significant is the fact that these courses also benefited them in terms of their awareness of cultural differences and opened their eyes about their own cultural stereotypes,” said Mr Lazarus.

“The key challenge still hampering the integration of service-learning as a core function of academic activity is that some institutions still see service-learning as an add-on, and nice-to-have activity,” he said.

According to Mr Lazarus higher education must demonstrate social responsibility and commitment to the common good by making available expertise and infrastructure for service-learning as a form of community engagement.

Media release
Issued by:  Lacea Loader
   Media Representative
   Tel: (051) 401-2584
   Cell: 083 645 2454
   E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
   20 September 2005

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