Founded in 1904, Rhodes University is a well-established University located in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
It is a small research intensive university which enjoys the distinction of having amongst the best undergraduate pass and graduation rates in South Africa, outstanding postgraduate success rates, and the best research output per academic staff member.
The University takes pride in its motto, Where Leaders Learn, and in producing graduates who are knowledgeable intellectuals, skilled professionals, and critical, caring and compassionate citizens who can contribute to economic and social development and an equitable, just and democratic society.
For more than 100 years South Africa’s ruling ANC and its leaders have often been able to speak to and for the nation with resonance and moral authority, their words matching actions. Not any more.
William Kentridge art exhibition in Beijing. Kentridge is one South African artist who has made commercial success worldwide.
EPA/How Hwee Young
South Africa’s art market has seen substantial growth in the past few years. But investing in art remains risky and produces limited returns.
The skylines of Alexandra township and Sandton City. Decolonising education involves helping students understand how different experiences shape our world.
Reuters/Kim Ludbrook
South Africa’s universities are in a state of upheaval. Academic developers must rethink their own purpose and how they work with academics in this environment to foster positive change.
A boy in the Ivory Coast practises reading his letters. Children can learn a lot about reading from each other during the “School Game”.
EPA/Legnan Koula
The benefits of learning through play are well documented. In rural communities in South Africa, “playing school” produces passionate lifelong readers.
What sets brilliant university lecturers apart from their more average peers?
Omar Faruk/Reuters
Many universities in East and West Africa lost their autonomy during the 1980s and 1990s and became handmaidens of the state. What insights can their experiences offer for South Africa?
Gabriel Kenny, aged five, gets to grips with Mandarin characters as part of a US school program.
Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
There is a new potential coloniser on South Africa’s linguistic block. From 2016, Mandarin will be taught in schools – and this will see African languages bumped even further down the pecking order.
South Africa’s university students – and academics – are coming out of the shadows to share their stories and change the system.
Nic Bothma/EPA
An academic who has marched alongside students during university fee protests in South Africa explains why their demands resonate with her and so many others.
Students protest outside one of the University of Cape Town’s main administration buildings.
Imraan Christian
Students and academics are fed up with the situation at South Africa’s universities. One way to improve conditions is for universities to be run as institutions of learning – not big businesses.
University students are protesting various issues related to transformation on campuses across South Africa.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings
There is enormous potential for long term and genuine change if universities change their approach to dissent – and reinvent themselves as more agile institutions.
The debate on whether animals should be kept in captivity or not continues to rage on.
Reuters/Muhammad Hamed
Completing a PhD is a process that takes years. There are several ways to make this a happy, productive time rather than a period of endless misery.
Unemployment is the main concern for about half of South Africa’s poor population while the other half is concerned about low earnings or the poor quality of work.
Reuters/Jon Herskovitz
One in five workers in South Africa is poor. The plight of the working poor has wide implications. Employers have a responsibility to ensure a minimum level of decent wages.
Megamelus scutellaris insects fighting aquatic weeds.
Philip Weyl
Biological control is the best way to combat aquatic weeds in African water.
South Africa’s Oppikoppi music festival in the town of Northam, Limpopo has come to represent the aspirations of a generation which embraces the diversity of the country’s peoples and their respective music.
Nikita Ramkissoon/The Conversation
The Oppikoppi Music Festival, one of the biggest and most popular in South Africa, holds on to the musical memories of the past and provides a musical map to the future.
For every student who knowingly steals other people’s words and ideas, there are 10 who are not trying to be dishonest.
From www.shutterstock.com
For every student who intentionally steals others’ work and passes it off as her own, there are ten who don’t yet know how to build academic knowledge. They need our help, not condemnation.
The issue of nutrition among South Africa’s youth is complex and has elements of both under and over nutrition that need to be tackled.
shutterstock
There’s a fierce debate underway about changing university curricula in Africa and the UK to be less Eurocentric. Three academics offer their suggestions for a decolonised reading list.
Thomas Sankara remains a revered figure in Burkina Faso long after his death.
Reuters/Joe Penney
Many African countries continue to creep along a predetermined path that takes them away from any real possibility to defend their sovereignty and meet the needs of their people.