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Kovsies secure fourth place at 2025 USSA Track & Field Championships

09 May 2025 | Story Vuyelwa Mbebe and Onthatile Tikoe | Photo Hannes Naude

Mthi Mthimkhulu from the University of the Free State, finishing first in the men’s 400-metre race, surpassing NWU runners-up.

The University of the Free State (UFS) athletics team secured a top five slot at the 2025 University Sports South Africa (USSA) Track and Field Championships, earning fourth place at the event, hosted at the Pilditch Stadium in Pretoria from 1 to 3 May.

University athletes from across South Africa gathered for the championships, which is a key fixture on the USSA calendar. After delivering stellar performances across a broad spectrum of events, UFS went up against 21 other participating universities in various track and field categories.

The standout female athletes at this year’s event were Gabriella Marais, Nicola Gibbon, Lizandré Mulder, and Tyla Wasmüth. Marais scored a first-place finish in the women’s 100-metre race and came second in the women’s 200-metre category. Gibbon, who participated in the women’s 400-metre category, scored third position. Mulder took third and first place in the 5 000-metre and 3 000-metre women’s steeplechase categories respectively. Wasmüth placed in the top three in the women’s shot put and discus throw.

The male athletes who stood out by grabbing first-place wins in their respective categories were Mthi Mthimkhulu in the men’s 400-metre race, Molifi Mohlomi in the men’s 800-metre race, and Wernich van Rensburg in the men’s 400-metre hurdles. Dumisani Motloung took third place in the men’s 1500-metre category, and Samkelo Dlamini took second place for the long jump field sports category.

KovsieSport’s Kesaoleboga Molotsane, UFS Sport Manager for athletics, said the UFS coaching staff need to be kept motivated, as they are the first point of contact with their sports stars. “Unlike team sports, we work with individual athletes who require different and various attention. We only need to motivate the athletes to continue working hard, to study hard, and balance out their responsibilities.” She added that individual performances and athlete placements all helped UFS achieve its overall fourth place at the USSA Championships.

Kovsies can look forward to seeing Mthi Mthimkulu at the World Athletics Relays championships, taking place in China this weekend (10 and 11 May). He’ll be representing South Africa and will be the only Kovsie attending.

Mthimkhulu, Marais, and Van Renburg have also qualified for the upcoming World University Games, to be held in Rhine-Ruhr, Germany, in July. Molotsane encouraged fellow Kovsies to support these and other UFS athletes, whose journeys reflect the spirit of Kovsie athletics.

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Department of Political Studies and Governance involved in regional seminar on peace and security in Southern Africa

2012-09-26

Attending the Lusaka seminar was from the left: Prof. Hussein Solomon; Prof. Virgil Hawkins from Osaka University and main organiser of the seminar; and Prof. Theo Neethling.
26 September 2012

Two staff members from the Department of Political Studies and Governance, Prof. Hussein Solomon and Prof. Theo Neethling, were recently invited by the Osaka University in Japan to participate in a regional seminar in Lusaka, Zambia, on multinational peacekeeping and peace enforcement in Southern Africa.

The seminar was organised by the Southern African Centre for Collaboration on Peace and Security funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Prof. Solomon presented a paper on the establishment of the Southern African contingent of the African Union’s African Standby Force, while Prof. Neethling presented his paper on United Nations peacekeeping operations in the war-ravaged eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The participation of Prof. Solomon, Senior Professor, and Prof. Neethling, Head of the Department of Political Studies and Governance, comes from a cooperation agreement between Osaka University’s School for International Public Policy (OSIPP) and the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Free State. The agreement covers issues like joint collaboration projects, the exchange of staff and senior students and joint conferences. One of the key joint areas lay in the Southern African Centre for Peace and Security Studies, a consortium of several Southern African universities with Osaka University and the University of the Free State as its key pillars.

Other universities include the University of Zambia, Zambian Open University, University of Dar es Salaam, Mozambique-Tanzania Centre for Foreign Relations. Academics from other universities in the region, like Nzuzu University in Malawi, University of Botswana, University of South Africa, Stellenbosch University, University of Zimbabwe, are all in the network.

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