Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items

Dialogue sparks conversations on bathroom safety and inclusion

19 September 2025 | Story Tshepo Tsotetsi | Photo Tshepo Tsotetsi

During Women’s Month in August, the University of the Free State’s Unit for Institutional Change and Social Justice hosted a dialogue titled ‘How Safe Are You in the Bathroom?’. The event provided a platform for staff and students to reflect on safety, dignity, and inclusivity in one of the most ordinary yet contested spaces: public bathrooms.

Bathrooms are often spaces where fears, anxieties, and discrimination intersect. In South Africa, where gender-based violence remains alarmingly high, many cisgender women understandably see bathrooms as places of potential danger. At the same time, transgender and gender-diverse people frequently encounter exclusion and “quiet violence” when accessing these facilities, making bathrooms symbolic battlegrounds in broader debates about gender and safety.

Reimagining the bathroom

Chelepe Mocwana, Acting Director of the Unit, explained the motivation behind hosting the dialogue by drawing from everyday experience in his own office, where colleagues share a gender-neutral bathroom. “It made us think deeply about how people negotiate safety and comfort in these spaces. Following our benchmarking visit to the University of Pretoria, we realised the importance of engaging our own community, especially students, because they are the key stakeholders. We wanted to ask them directly: How safe do you feel in the bathroom?”

Mocwana stressed that inclusivity at the university must be grounded in equity and social justice, not just policy. “Transformation requires the active participation of both staff and students. Everyone must understand the anti-discrimination policies and the offices responsible for transformation. Our intention with this dialogue was not only to talk but also to raise questions, challenge assumptions, and embed social justice into the daily life of the university. Inclusivity must be something that everyone can feel and practise.”

Building on this, Dimakatso Mokoaqatsa, Assistant Researcher in the Unit and coordinator of the event, reminded the audience that bathrooms are “seemingly an everyday place that somewhat goes unnoticed. Everyone goes in and out of the bathroom every day. But most people don’t think about safety – the safety of the minorities, those discriminated against and denied the chance to be themselves in these spaces.”

Sharing her lived experience, Katleho Mabula, a transgender woman and student, reflected on the uncertainty she faces outside the university. “I only feel safe on campus,” she said, recalling how she was once expelled from a nightclub because of her identity. “My experiences as a transgender woman are nerve-racking, because I don’t know what to expect. Today, they might treat me right. Tomorrow, I can get kicked out or even killed.”

Kgomotso Sekonyane, a student leader, noted the paradox of bathrooms as both refuge and risk. “Growing up, my primary answer to what I’d do if intruders broke into our home was always to lock myself in the bathroom. For many of us, the bathroom is really a safe haven,” she said. She urged the audience to reimagine bathrooms as “microcosms of the constitutional promise”, citing Sections 9, 10 and 12 of the Constitution.

Building solidarity

Panelists emphasised that inclusivity requires more than symbolic gestures. Dr Dionne van Reenen, a lecturer in the UFS Centre for Gender and Africa Studies who previously worked in the Unit for Institutional Change and Social Justice and was involved in shaping the university’s early inclusive bathroom policies, highlighted that inclusive bathrooms were introduced at the university as far back as 2016. But, she added, progress must go beyond policy: “If you’re going to speak about solidarity, you need to pull everyone into conversation, policy, and action. Solidarity cannot coexist with irreconcilable differences of identity politics.”

Similarly, Brightness Mangolothi, Director of the Centre for Diversity, Inclusivity and Social Change at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, stressed that inclusion must be intentional: “Solidarity can only take place when we are aware of others’ experiences. Sometimes people become oblivious because of the privileges they have. Inclusion is not a nice-to-have – it is a necessity, a right.” She added that the conversation should not be about designing bathrooms for marginalised groups but with them: “Nothing about us without us.”

Mokoaqatsa closed the discussion by echoing a reminder she had shared throughout: “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are different from my own.”

News Archive

Research by experts published in Nature

2011-06-02

The members of the research group are, from the left, front: Christelle van Rooyen, Mariana Erasmus, Prof. Esta van Heerden; back: Armand Bester and Prof. Derek Litthauer.
Photo: Gerhard Louw

A research article on the work by a team of experts at our university, under the leadership of Prof. Esta van Heerden, and counterparts in Belgium and the USA has been published in the distinguished academic journal Nature today (Thursday, 2 June 2011).

The article – Nematoda from the terrestrial deep subsurface of South Africa – sheds more light on life in the form of a small worm living under extreme conditions in deep hot mines. It was discovered 1,3 km under the surface of the earth in the Beatrix Goldmine close to Welkom and is the first multi-cellular organism that was found so far beneath the surface of the earth. The worm (nematode) was found in between a rock face that is between 3 000 and 12 000 years old.

The research can shed some new light on the possibility of life on other planets, previously considered impossible under extreme conditions. It also expands the possibilities into new areas where new organisms may be found.

These small invertebrates live in terrestrial soil subjected to stress almost for 24 hours They live through sunshine, rain, scorching temperatures and freezing conditions. Through time they developed a means to cope with harsh conditions. Terrestrial nematodes (roundworms, not to be confused or related to earthworms) are among those very tough small invertebrates that deal with those conditions everywhere. After insects they are the most dominant multi-cellular (metazoan) species on the planet having a general size of 0,5 to 1 mm and are among the oldest metazoans on the planet, Nature says in a statement on the article.

They inhabit nearly every imaginable habitat form the deep seas to the acid in pitcher . Some nematodes simply eat bacteria and these are the ones we study here. Terrestrial nematodes have developed a survival stage that can take them through hard times (absence of food, extreme temperatures, too little oxygen, crowding, and more).

At the head of the research was Prof. Gaetan Borgonie of the Ghent University in Belgium and a world leader in the discipline of nematode research. He was brought into contact with the South African research leader, Prof. Esta van Heerden, who set up a cooperation agreement with the University of Ghent and Prof. Borgonie. Prof. Van Heerden manages the Extreme Biochemistry group at the UFS and the research was funded by several research grants.

The search for worms began in earnest in 2007, but it was soon clear that the sampling strategy was insufficient. A massive sampling campaign in 2008-2009 in several mines led to the discovery of several nematodes and the new nematode species Halicephalobus mephisto. It is named after the legend of Faust where the devil, also known as the lord of the underworld is called Mephistopheles.

Nature says special filters had to be designed and installed on various boreholes. Unfortunately, there is no easy way of finding a magic formula and designs had to be adapted by trial and error; improving existing designs all the time. The work of the UFS Mechanical Workshop, which manufactured, adapted and helped design it, was crucial in this respect. Filters were left on the holes for varying periods, sometimes for a few hours and sometimes for months. Prof. Derek Litthauer from the UFS played a big role in sampling, filter designs and coming up with ideas for names for the new nematode with Prof. Borgonie.

Research showed that the nematodes can live in the deep for up to 12 000 years. Three students – Armand Bester, Mariana Erasmus and Christelle van Rooyen from the UFS – did the work on this.

The importance of multi-cellular animals living in the ultra-deep subsurface is twofold: The nematodes graze on the existing bacterial population and influence their turnover. Secondly, if more complex multi-cellular organisms can survive in the deep subsurface on earth, this may be good news when looking for life on other planets where the surface is considered too inhospitable (e.g. Mars). Complex life forms can be found in ecosystems previously thought to be uninhabitable. Nature says this expands the possibilities into new areas where new organisms may be discovered.

Future research will focus on selective boreholes to look for more metazoans, so that a better idea of the complexity of the ecosystems there can be obtained. It will also look for metazoans in the deep subsurface on other continents to determine similarities and differences.

Back

Economic and Management Sciences

Education

Health Sciences

The Humanities

Law

Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Theology and Religion

Open Distance Learning

Business School

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