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Museum survival during the pandemic

Katherine Weber

As the pandemic has continued to rage on, many different sectors and institutions in our society were hit, including UP’s own UP Museums. With the loss of contact lessons, the UP Museums lost their engagement with the public, forcing them to expedite their plans to increase their digital presence. Due to this loss, regaining any kind of contact with the greater public has been their number one priority, which was done through opening the museum during times sanctioned by the government during the periods of 1 February to 14 June and 1 October to the present day. Museum visits are currently managed by appointment only when the museum is open, which is from Monday through to Friday from 08:00 to 13:00, and can be booked through their website.

However, during times where physical contact was prohibited, UP Museums took to online platforms to continue engaging with the public. They posted articles, online puzzles and artworks all throughout last year, but with the move to 2021, they shifted their tactics to more immersive ones, including digital presentations on platforms like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom.

One of the museum’s goals was to expand their Mapungubwe exhibition. The exhibition, which has been spoken about at length by the museum’s interpretive officer, Nicole Hoffman, is located at the UP Museums as UP is the official steward of the collection. The museum hoped to expand the exhibition to include a bead gallery but was unfortunately delayed due to financial reasons. However, with all this need to shift to a digital platform, the museum became the first African museum to make its collection available online for the exploration of the greater public via the Google Arts and Culture platform on 11 August.

Once the university opens again, the UP Museums hopes to continue physical engagement with the public, both in the university and out, and to work with the university’s disability unit again to offer a quality experience to all staff and students with special needs.

Political parties and their candidates

Tumelo Lesufi

All political parties have ambitions for their chosen candidates to run for office in the SRC. Its importance for the political parties concerned results in parties pulling out all the stops to campaign for their chosen candidate. This inevitably comes with an implicit faith in the candidate by the party that the candidate embodies the principles and values of their party. This is evident by the responses given by political parties when faced with this question. As said by EFFSC UP chairperson, Fikile Sibanda, “This question is similar to asking how important it is for a tree to be rooted to the soil or for a fish to swim in water, this is to say it is of utmost importance that the person deployed to a particular portfolio in the SRC must carry the ideology of the party, must be able to represent, articulate, apply and serve through our policies, guidelines and schools of thought which are also our ideological tools of analysis viz Marxism-Leninism and Fanonism”.

Similar sentiments were echoed by DASO chairperson, Chardonnay Arendse, to the same question - “It is of utmost importance that our candidates carry the party’s political ethos and principles. It is however equally important that they display an eagerness to serve the students as that is evidently our main concern.”

Political parties therefore carefully select their candidates that will run under their banner. Arendse explained the DASO processes of selecting and eventually backing their running candidates as follows: “We select candidates to run for the SRC by posting on our group. Anyone who is interested gets into contact with the DASO chair or secretary. Thereafter we have a selection panel that includes both EC members (in the instance that they are not running for SRC) as well as representatives from the Motherbody DA to determine whether the candidates will cater to the needs of the students while upholding the political ethos of the party.”

EFFSC UP has a variation of a similar method. “Candidates are selected based on a criteria that is developed by the incumbent leadership structure. The Branch Student

Command Team (BSCT) or a task force which is appointed by the BSCT ensures that well equipped members who are in good standing are deployed by the EFFSC UP to the SRC structure. They also ensure that they will be able to further champion what the EFFSC advocates for through whatever means available [at] their disposal in the SRC once they are elected into office. We also work tirelessly to deploy trusted forces to specific and strategic portfolios within the SRC based on relevant capabilities. The criteria is amended annually, if necessary, by

This may place a burden on parties when they have a candidate that they believe will represent their organisation well but who does not have the required GPA. the leadership so that it fits into the current dynamics at play in the institution”. With these different methods of selecting candidates to run for SRC office comes with what political parties have in their policy. However, political parties running for office in the SRC are bound by the

Constitution of Student Governance (CSG) that applies to all student structures. There is a regulation that demands running candidates to achieve a GPA score of 60% in their academics. This implies that running candidates, irrespective of what their political parties think of their leadership credentials, will not be eligible to run for office if they do not meet the prescribed GPA score. This may place a burden on parties when they have a candidate that they believe will represent their organisation well but who does not have the required GPA. In such events some political parties opt to cheat the system by putting forward candidates that are not even members of the political parties so that they have candidates running for office. The IEC does not have a responsibility to background check if political parties have fielded a member in good standing with their party. This implies that voters run a risk of voting for candidates that are not members in good standing of the political party concerned.

“Yes, as previously mentioned above we only select members in good standing to run for SRC elections deployed by the EFFSC UP. To avoid rallying behind political nonstarters we only select those who are ideologically fit to handle the responsibility of serving students through our policies and will be able to do so effectively and diligently. Political parties aren’t bandwagons for parasitic students to use to gain SRC offices and blazers; afterwards they abandon them, so we are very careful on who we rally behind even in the pool of branch members,” said Sibanda.

But this is not always absolute as she further explained that “yes, previously the leadership before us had given opportunities to members who had just joined closer to election and sometimes this may be a risky move as the members are often not on the same page with the vision of the EFFSC at large ideologically and otherwise. I know of a [candidate], who was recruited a month before SRC elections and he went on to do very well and always advocated what the organisation stands for even without a briefing.We will admit this strategy has not always bore great fruits and that is why this year we took the approach of only deploying members in good standing for a fairly longer period prior [to] elections - in addition to ideological sanity in the standards of the EFFSC UP”.

The 2021 election season is over but there is are elections each year and the student population has a responsibility to make a choice for credible leadership. Voters need to understand the dynamics that come with having candidates running under a political banner. There is a burden of responsibility on voters to be aware and make informed choices.

Intervarsity News

Prof. Lis Lange announces the recipient of the 2021 UCT Open Textbook Award

The University of Cape Town (UCT) Open Textbook recognises excellent textbooks written by UCT staff and students that are responsible for advancing the UCT social justice and transformation memorandum. For the year 2021, Prof. Lise Lange announced that the award for the UCT Open Textbook goes to an Associate Professor, Professor Maria Keet. This was for her book titled, An Introduction to Ontology Engineering. This book is the first of its kind globally in the Department of Computer Sciences. The book addresses South African student context issues such as localisation, multilingualism, disability access and technical innovation.

University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) Food Security Programme

UKZN is running a food security programme to ensure that every student at UKZN is food secure. The university will also hold a virtual event to tell the history of UKZN’s food security journey. For more information about this Food Security Programme, visit the UKZN twitter page @UKZN.

University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) Westville Campus reopens vaccination site

UKZN has reopened its vaccination site for first and second jabs at the UKZN Westville Campus. Any students, staff or residents that wish to be vaccinated in the area are now welcome to vaccinate on the Westville Campus. All persons are required to bring their Identity Documents with. For more information, visit the UKZN twitter page @UKZN.

Wits University to enhance the training of surgeons in South Africa

Wits officially opened its Advanced Surgical Skills Lab on 12 October. The Lab comprises of the latest technologies and teaching facilities. This puts the Wits surgical training as one of the best in the globe. This Lab will cater for the interdisciplinary training needs of disciplines in surgical studies such as nose and throat, general surgery, orthopaedics, gynaecology, ear, cardiothoracic, urology, maxillofacial, and more. It will also include the training of nurses, doctors and specialists. This new Lab serves as the Wits Century Campaign Project to celebrate the 100 years of academic and research excellence at the University Department. For more details, visit https://wits100.wits.ac.za