Unsilence_UFS

25/07/2017

Details of the memorial service of the late Philela Mpikozomzi Gilwa to be hosted at the University of the Free State (UFS) are as follows :

Date. : 26/07/2017 (Wednesday)
Time. : 12:00
Venue. : Conlaures Residence

Philela Gilwa lives!!!!

24/07/2017

Comrades,friends, and family. As tribute to the late "Philela Mpikozomzi Gilwa" we are compiling a book to celebrate his life and time with us. The book will be given to the family as a token of appreciation for sharing their son with us.

We would like you to part take in this project by sending through messages of support for the family, tributes, and sharing memories of this legend of our time.

We ask of you to send these messages to [email protected] before Friday the 28th (28/07/2017). Dont forget to sign them with your names at the end.

Please share and distribute widely. Keep the tributes coming!!

Philela Gilwa lives!!!!!!
Izwe Lethu!!!!

30/03/2017

ON CONVERGENCE

We want to clarify to students that the management of this institution is resolute on deregistering students.

If the student populace has resolved on allowing themselves to be subjected to processes and procedures, so be it.

We as the Unsilence UFS will stand down as requested by the voice of students on the ground and allow the SRC to advance its negotiations with management.

Students are resolute that they want to allow SRC processes to unfold.

We have heard.

Issued on behalf of UnsilenceUFS by
Liza Mfana
Spokesperson.

29/03/2017

THE TRUTH BEHIND THE POLITICAL UNREST AT UFS

Black collective

Today a group of students and ground forces of the UFS gathered to advance a program of disruption. The reason for this was the fact that we, as the black collective, have been subjected to systematic violence for the longest time without any response from our side.

Today, we converged at the Student Lekgotla where we had a lengthy discussion regarding the deregistration process. Students raised their views profoundly, with the frustration of feeling helpless and having no control. Students further articulated that they are tired of endless discussions and meetings with a management that has resolved in excluding us from UFS, on financial basis. The colletive agreed that it is nothing but a futility to attempt to engage management, the same management that is responsible for the victimization of our brothers and sisters in the Qwa-Qwa campus. We resolved that we are done talking and need to get to a stage when we express the anger and frustration that we are all carriers of on a daily basis.

We proceeded in song to the library and computer labs, where we attempted to get solidarity from other students. From there we proceeded through the bridge, the other side of which, the yellow brigade-SASCO-was waiting. They proceeded to demobilize the student collective, by advancing the articulation of their regular anti-EFF rhetoric due to the fact that there were Student Command soldiers within the said collecctive. Irrespective,we proceeded to main building where we got an opportunity to converge and devise a way forward. The following issues were resolved on:
1) As students, we need to take charge of our struggle independently of political squabbles and that we should reject any attempts by populist student movements to use our plight of deregistration as a means to advance their own self-centered ambitions.
2) Clothing of political parties should not be worn by students when we are advancing a collective struggle such as deregistraton.
3) We can neither be reduced to the reactionalism of waiting until Friday to act on this issue, nor depend on the management of this institution to produce solutions for our problems. It is upon us.
4) We should converge tomorrow morning between 9-10am at Thakaneng Bridge to mobilize the general student populace behind the clarion call of fighting deregistration.

Of course, we are aware that the reactionary forces in our campus are intent on delaying the coming student resistance through tactics of processes, engagements and meetings. As UnsilenceUFS we want to warn the student populace against trusting self-centred individuals who are using our genuine struggles to advance their own selfish agendas. We want to draw the attention of students to the existance of Media popstars amongst our ranks, who use their political influence to not only advance themselves financially, but to coerce female students into compromising positions to fullfil their own barbaric desires.

Black collective, there's a lot of issues that are being advanced in your name but not to your benefit.
As students, we need to learn from history and realize who is for us and who is for themselves.

We remain commited and resolute to not only the fight against deeregistration, but to our initial call for Free Decolonized Education and no amount of delay tactics by any structure or student will deter us.

To hell with the exploitation of students by opportunists masquerading as leaders!

Students have the capacity to lead themselves, and this is exactly what we will do.

Come hell or high waters, we will defend the dignity of the black child from this systematic castration.

Let us converge at the bridge tomorrow from 09:00-10:00, because if we wait for Friday, we might just as well pack our bags in preperation to go home.




ISSUED ON BEHALF OF UNSILENCE_UFS by:

Liza Mfana
Spokesperson

28/03/2017

BREAKING THE SILENCE ON DEREGISTRATION

Black Collective

The day of reckoning is almost upon us, and the end of our academic aspiration soon approaching. The management of the Institution under the the instruction of Senate and Council are resolute. They are not compromising and are resolved in advancing the systematic castration of young black futures.

As the progressive collective of UnsilenceUFS, we have decided to initiate a defiance campaign against the oppressive practice of exclusion that the management looks to advance.

As a result, we are hosting a student picket to kick off our defiance campaign against deregisstration under the following conditions:
Date: 29 March 2017
Time of Convergence: 09:00-10:00
Place of Convergence: Thakaneng Bridge
Route: Thakaneng Bridge to Main Building

Find a box and a permanent marker and share your black pain experience on a placard as you wish.
Let us hit Social Media in our numbers under the following hashtags, and .

It is upon us, as a generation, to advance our struggle for not only access, but unhindered access, for the black collective.

"Hide nothing from the masses of our people, and claim no easy victories."- Amirca Cabral

A way forward as to how we proceed with the defiance campaign beyond this picket will be communicated on the ground.

We want to study!

We will no longer be silent.

[PLEASE NOTE: We have changed the date and time due to logistical issues. Let us invade all platforms of the Media.]

13/10/2016

ATTENTION!!!! We urgently need assistance with regards to locating all students who were arrested at the University of the Free State this morning.

Currently the are 27 known students who have been arrested (there could be more), only 20 students are accounted for and being held at Parkweg Police Station, at this point in time we don't know were the rest are held and police wont reveal to us.

If you have any information regarding arrested students who are not being held at Parkweg Police Station please inbox us ASAP. We view this as being apartheid tactics by SAPS and Is tantamount to abduction. please SHARE widely!!!!!!

26/09/2016

Free Education Movement – UFS

Update - 26/09/2016

The Free Education Movement protesters at the University of the Free State (UFS) have taken a decision to continue shutting down campus until the government come with a clear time frame commitment. This is amidst the University’s decision to resume academic project tomorrow. We are defying this decision and have thus committed to enforce a shutdown.

We appeal to the labour and civic movement around Mangaung to join the protest. We will continue to liaise with CUT FEM leadership to intensify the struggle Free Education within Mangaung and beyond.

Forward we go!

31/08/2016

Adv Loyiso Makapela speaks for herself through DESTINY magazine. The rot in the University of the (un)Free State is deplorable!!



http://www.destinyconnect.com/2016/08/31/former-ufs-lecturer-sued-university/

DESTINY Magazine - Former University of the Free State lecturer Advocate Loyiso Makapela has accused the institution of overlooking her for a promotion, while her less-qualified white counterparts were promoted

29/08/2016

As UnsilenceUFS, we are deeply inspired by the actions of the young black girls from Pretoria Girls High who have assumed the responsibility to confront white supremacy head on in their institution.

We view Pretoria Girls High no differently from the University of the Free State , North West University , Stellenbosch University, and University of Pretoria, as they all serve as ivory towers of whiteness. The struggle of the young black girls from Pretoria Girls High is one which should never be relegated to only their hair, We view these young fallsits as being on a decolonial project against an anti black school! Their actions will no doubt have a lasting impact on all former Afrikaner Universities as it is these schools which breed young white racists (and forces blacks into assimilating to whiteness) whom later come to these universities to re-enforce them as whites only universities .

We hope their actions will also inspire more Model C school populis around the country to take a stand against these schools which demonises everything about the black body and also embark on a decolonial project in their respective schools.

27/08/2016

Meet Adv Loyiso Makapela, the latest victim of a very hostile system towards young black academics! If we don't defend black academics how will we ever decolonise the curriculum???



http://200ysa.mg.co.za/loyiso-makapela/

At just 27, Advocate Loyiso Makapela is the youngest lecturer at the University of the Free State’s faculty of law. She also has two master’s degrees under her belt — one in international economic law, and the other in law, development and governance (the latter she acquired with merit at the Univer...

27/08/2016

The month of August has be a very long month for black people (students, outsourced workers and lecturers) at the University of the (un)Free State, and seemingly there's no end at sight as the purging, humiliation and exclusion of black people sponsored and supported by the racist management continues unabated.

We have learnt with utmost disgust how Adv Loyiso Makapela, who was a lecturer at the UFS law faculty, was treated and continues to be treated by the racist UFS management for merely standing her ground against racial discriminations in terms of employment. Even though she held a Master's degree, she was constantly overlooked for promotion from junior lecture to lecturer, this was made even worse when she came back from London in 2014 with a second Master's degree and yet she remained a junior lecturer, while less qualified white people were promoted and being appointed as lecturers.

Throughout this period she questioned this and made the likes of Prof Jonathan Jansen, the HOD and Dean of the Law faculty aware of her plight, which they had no justifiable reasons or explanations. It was only after she asked for an internal investigation she was eventually, and reluctantly, promoted and appointed as a lecturer. When this happened, the environment was so toxic as she was being threatened and intimidated that in June (2016) she opted to resign and rather focus on her PhD, she also took the University to CCMA seeking compensation for all the time she was underpaid, earning less than people less qualified than her, whom all happened to be white. The commissioner called the university out for their bu****it and encouraged the University and Adv Makapela to reach a settlement, to which both parties agreed too in principle. In a turn of events, it turns out the University was just buying time, she is now being sued for R800 000 by the university, which according to them is the money they wasted on her by giving her a scholarship to London.

We view this as absolutely disgusting, in essence, the University of the (un)Free State views the education and awarding of a scholarship of a young black woman as a waste of time and money. We are aware of many black academics who are constantly overlooked and frustrated in various departments at the UFS. We view this no differently from the incident of a black security guard being thrown with urine on the face by white people, that is also the reflection of how young black academics are treated at the UFS.

We call for the entire UFS community - students, lecturers, academics, workers, aluminus - to show support and solidarity to Adv Loyiso Makapela, subsequent to that, we also call for all black academics in a similar predicament to expose the University for what it is, a racist Afrikaner University. the silence must be suffocated!!!!!!

21/07/2016

We can only come to the conclusion that there's nothing progressive about South African courts, these are the very courts which have criminalized our struggle by way of granting court orders interdicting students protesting for a noble cause in various Universities, these are the very same kangaroo courts which have ruled in favor of UCT in banning certain members of movement from their respective campuses. This ruling then comes as no surprise to us.

We are not deterred in anyway, we will continue to revolt! Our generational mission will not be fulfilled nor destroyed in South African "neo-colonial" courts and our generational mission to decolonize the University of the (un)Free State will not be betrayed.



http://m.news24.com/news24/SouthAfrica/News/breaking-afriforum-wins-language-case-at-university-of-free-state-20160721

The High Court in Bloemfontein has ruled in favour of AfriForum to stop a proposed change to the University of Free State's current language policy.