In a two-day virtual colloquium, the Rhodes University Political and International Studies Department collaborated with Nelson Mandela University Centre for Women and Gender Studies and the University of Cape Town’s Historical Studies Department to bring together the voices and stories of women who participated in the armed struggle in South Africa.

Called “S’obashaya ngamatye”: Women and 60 Years of the Armed Struggle in South Africa, the event started on national Women’s Day 9 August 2021 and commenced on 10 August 2021.

Rhodes University student and programme chairperson Zikho Dana began the session by giving a brief introduction on the purpose of the day. Rhodes University Vice-Chancellor, Dr Sizwe Mabizela, issued an official opening and welcoming address. In his speech, Dr Mabizela said the colloquium provided everyone with the rare and valuable opportunity to spend time with and learn from some of the most remarkable women who made an immense contribution and selfless sacrifices in the liberation struggle. He acknowledged the significant role some of the guests played in the armed political struggle, honouring those who laid down their lives and gave their all to the cause. He added that it was an opportunity to document the history of the speakers’ contribution to a just society.

Dr Mabizela noted that by interacting with the veterans of our struggle, the youth could learn about the histories and gendered histories that will inspire and shape their future roles as researchers, practitioners, and future leaders of our society. “This platform allows us to learn from our elders, as they share their memories and the values that guided them as they prosecuted our liberation struggle,” he said.

Rhodes University senior lecturer and organiser, Dr Siphokazi Magadla, briefly introduced the keynote speaker, Honourable Thandi Modise. Honourable Thandi Modise left South Africa for Botswana as a teenager in 1976 to join the African National Congress (ANC). Modise was transferred to Angola, where she received her military training. Magadla noted that Modise was the first to return to South Africa to organise the women in the townships after receiving military training with uMkhonto we Sizwe. She was arrested in 1976 and received an eight-year jail sentence which she served at Kroonstad prison. “By the end of this colloquium, we hope to generate a systematic and connected archive of women’s lives, roles and techniques of leadership in the armed struggle in Southern Africa,” said Dr Magadla.

Minister of Defence and Military Veterans Thandi Modise began her keynote address by expressing her gratitude to the organising committee for their incredible work to give women a platform to tell their stories and shine a light on this crucial issue.

Modise applauded the organising committee for the initiative, expressing her disappointment with the deliberate efforts to blot out the contribution of women to the liberation of the nation in the past. She also honoured her “mother”, Ruth Mompati, who had paved the way for women in the struggle.

Modise then went on to give personal accounts and descriptions of her experiences in the armed struggle. She told stories of journeys to foreign lands and the struggles women like her had to endure in an organisation where they were the minority. She highlighted the many significant roles played by women in the history of South Africa.

Modise put great emphasis on the importance of giving credit to all those who played a role in the struggle, no matter how trivial it may have seemed.

“We must also thank those whose job during the armed struggle was just to ferry messages,” she said. So often, the stories that never get told are those of women.”

“We must also remember that in every armed struggle, the women were not just on the curbside; they were involved. Sometimes they were involved on both sides of the struggle,” she added.

Modise thanked the women who had come before her, saying: “We thank them for their courage to stand.”

She honoured the likes of mam’ Charlotte Maxeke for being at the forefront of educating women and leading from the front.

After the keynote address, attendants were allowed to ask questions. Modise responded and engaged with the questions posed, giving much insight into how platforms like this celebration and commemoration could help educate the youth about their history and hopefully pave the way to a much better future.

NEARLY 5,000 children, educators and school staff are quarantined in Mississippi after returning to classrooms at the start of the new school year, some under mask-optional policies.

The 69 outbreaks reported between Aug. 2 to Aug. 6, which was the second week of school for some districts, resulted in nearly 1,000 children and 300 teachers and staff testing positive for COVID-19, according to a weekly report from Mississippi’s Department of Health.

While many school districts adopted a mask mandate for the beginning of the school year, it was not universal throughout the state, despite pleading from the Mississippi State Medical Association last week for all districts to require students and staff to wear masks, regardless of vaccination status.

The highly contagious delta variant is ripping through Mississippi, which also has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, more than quadrupling case numbers since June and causing a deficit of ICU beds.

The state’s early start to the new school year is providing a grim bellwether for school districts set to return more than 50 million students to classrooms over the next few weeks, many under mask-optional policies.

In southern Mississippi, Lamar County School District shuttered two of its schools during the last week in July and returned students to virtual learning until Aug. 16 after a week-long staggered reopening resulted in one high school identifying six cases among staff and 41 cases among students, forcing the quarantine of roughly 100 people. Highlighting just how contagious the delta variant is, after one week of in-person learning last year, the school district recorded only five cases among staff and five among students.

Despite the early warning signs from states like Mississippi and Arkansas, where than 800 students, educators and staff from one school district were quarantined just days after they began the new school year under a mask-optional policy, a handful of Republican governors are refusing to reconsider executive orders and state laws barring school districts from requiring masks.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican governors are under increasing pressure this week as school districts defy their executive orders, some in the face of increased threats of financial penalties, and cities and counties take them to court over the matter. In Texas, school leaders in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio plan to require masks for students and school staff, as do Miami-Dade and Broward Counties in Florida.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki addressed the Republican governors blocking school districts from enforcing masks, saying the Biden administration is actively looking for ways to safeguard districts who challenge state laws and executive orders.

“We are continuing to look for ways,” she said, “for the U.S. government to support districts and schools as they try to follow the science, do the right thing, and save lives.”

“If you’re not interested in following the public health guidelines to protect the lives of people in your state, to give parents some comfort as they’re sending their kids to school,” she said, “then get out of the way and let public officials, let local officials do their job to keep students safe. This is serious, and we’re talking about people’s lives

USNEWS

Deputy President David Mabuza says without urgently resolving inequalities in society, South Africa cannot successfully build and grow as a nation.

“Without urgently and tangibly addressing inequalities in society, nation-formation becomes a statement of intention rather than a statement of fact,” the Deputy President said on Wednesday.

Mabuza was addressing the 4th Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) Summit underway at Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand.

The Deputy President addressed the summit in his capacity as Chairperson of the HRDC, a national multi-stakeholder advisory body established with the objective of improving the foundation of human resources in South Africa.

Held under the theme ‘Skills required for the 21st century’, the three-day summit aims to facilitate building the foundational knowledge to respond to the dictates of the changing world of work shaped by the realities of technological advancements.

Mabuza said the theme of the summit is relevant in the South African context to ensure that no one is left behind, as “we implement measures to rebuild and grow the economy”.

The Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan, Mabuza said, is premised on reviving the economy devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic, through investment in employment creation initiatives, building the relevant skills and training for the economy, industries and jobs for the future.

“It is encouraging that the objectives of this 4th HRDC Summit focus mainly on building the foundation and skills for a transformed economy and society, and building a capable and ethical developmental state.

“These objectives are significant since the HRDC, as a multi-stakeholder advisory body, is uniquely positioned to ensure that we capacitate the unemployed, those in workplaces and those still in our schooling system, with requisite skills that can respond to new world realities and to make South Africa globally competitive,” Mabuza said.

The Deputy President said the HRDC should use the Revised HRD Strategy to address the four broad challenges of poverty and inequality, quality of education, absorptive capacity of the economy, and social cohesion that will cumulatively contribute towards the attainment of the National Development Plan’s outcomes.

“Before deliberating further on this 4th summit, let us reflect briefly on what was agreed to in 2018 at the 3rd HRDC Summit, to ensure that we underline policy and programmatic continuity, and avoid reinventing the wheel.  As social partners, we have to ask ourselves the question whether between the period of the last summit and this one, have we sizeably delivered on equipping and capacitating our young people with practical solutions.   

“If we are to recalibrate our human resources development efforts to be skills-based, innovation-led and entrepreneurial-focused, we must be deliberate in implementing resolutions that we take at each summit. That is why at the end of this summit, we need to emerge with a concrete plan of action that will demonstrate measurable progress by the time we meet for the next summit,” he said.

Mabuza welcomed the summit’s focus on building the foundation for a transformed economy.

“We presume there will also be strategic and thematic continuity between this 4th summit and previous summits in areas of implementing pathways and partnerships between training institutions, labour and industry.”

 – SAnews.gov.za

THE University of Johannesburg (UJ) has clarified allegations contained in an article that appeared in digital platform, News24, on Tuesday, under the headline “Senior UJ officials involved in attempted embezzlement of hundreds of millions in government funding”.

The article reported that hundreds of millions of rands in taxpayers’ money from the Department of Science and Technology, the Industrial Development Corporation of SA (IDC) as well as funding from the University of Johannesburg (UJ) went down the drain as senior UJ executives colluded to embezzle the intellectual property and main assets of Photovoltaic Technology Intellectual Property (PTiP).

PTiP is a once celebrated local technology development and intellectual holding company.

UJ, in a statement, said the article referred to a series of events preceding 2017 and that none of the people or entities mentioned in the article were currently UJ employees or have any association with the University.

“As for the matter regarding two former executives – Dr Roy Marcus (former chairperson of the University’s Council) (“Marcus”) and Jaco van Schoor (the former Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Finance) (“Van Schoor”) – this is a matter dating back five years ago,” the university said in a statement.   

“The University wishes to remind the public that the matter was vigorously investigated and in this regard the Council of UJ was quick to commission an investigation by SNG Grant (SizweNtsalubaGobodo) an independent audit, advisory and forensic services firm.  Also, the University then duly laid criminal charges.”   

The university said the Criminal case is currently being handled by the Hawks. 

Civil actions were instituted in the South Gauteng High Court against Marcus, Van Schoor and 9 others to repay the monies that they defrauded the University with. 

The matter is ongoing and being actively pursued by UJ.  

UJ said it takes claims of fraud and corruption seriously and that it does not tolerate these in any form. 

“When such claims are made or emerge, the University has internal processes to investigate and act accordingly, as it did with Marcus and Van Schoor,” the university said. 

“This is an ethical and moral obligation, and the University will not hesitate to act against any of its employees found to have been involved in any acts of fraud and corruption or any other transgression.”  

Inside Education

THE country’s biggest teacher unions have formally requested an urgent meeting with Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga and senior officials of her department to discuss the proposed narrowing of social distancing at schools from the gazetted 1 meter to half a meter.

The teacher unions – I.E, NAPTOSA, NATU, PEU, SADTU AND SAOU – claim that they were not consulted in regard to the new proposed reduced social distance of 0,5m in primary schools.

This comes after Motshekga said last week that the department had requested a meeting Cabinet and the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) for the social distancing regulations to be amended so that schools can go back to teaching normally.   

The unions have questioned the rationale behind Motshekga’s proposed narrowing of social distancing at schools. 

The unions have also warned that should the NCC approve the proposal, they could turn to the courts to oppose the move. 

“It is our contention that this matter must be the subject of genuine consultations with the organised teaching profession and that it must be supported by scientific evidence that the planned reduction will not lead to further infections among learners, educators and members of the broader community,” said the teacher unions in a statement.

“No scientific evidence thus far has been provided to the unions in connection with the acceptability of such a reduction.”

The unions said this new development takes place after the publication of the new Department of Basic Education (DBE) COVID-19 Directions on July 31 2021 that determine social distance as 1m.

“But, despite warnings from the teacher unions that 1m social distancing is not possible when all primary school learners return to school, it is clear after two school days that compliance with the 1m social distancing is virtually impossible when the traditional time table is followed,” said the unions.

“Our advice to schools in the interim is that where the 1m cannot be complied with, the schools should follow the deviation provisions as contained in the Gazette and to continue with rotational timetabling. This is done in the best interest of the child, educators and the community and to ensure that schools do not become super-spreaders but rather the barriers against the transmission.”

Despite fierce criticism from the teachers unions, Motshekga insists that her department would table a proposal at the National Coronavirus Command Council to lower the COVID-19 social distancing between primary school kids from the gazetted 1 meter to half a meter.

She argued that the scientific data shows this is still safe for kids and is also practiced overseas.

In June, the department published a set of coronavirus guidelines saying that “schools are potential risk areas for the spread of the virus” and that the guidelines have been developed to mitigate the risk of the virus spreading at schools.

The department further emphasised that hygiene and physical distancing at schools need to be strictly adhered to, to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

More than 1 650 teachers died due to COVID-19 related complications between March 2020 and February this year.

Motshekga said as far as vaccination plans were concerned, the education sector had targeted 582 000 personnel in the Basic Education Sector; and that when the vaccination programme was closed, formally, they had 517 000 people, who have received the vaccines – an 89% vaccination success rate – on their books.

Motshekga said she has received information that the teachers’ unions were concerned that they weren’t consulted about the move, but added that the department still needed to engage with the Department of Health and the National Coronavirus Command Council.

“We are going to look at different measures, whether we use school halls or platooning systems or outside places,” said Motshekga.

She said the department has agreed to meet the unions and provide them with a report.

Before the department goes to Cabinet about the proposal, it needed the opinions of the Ministerial Advisory Committee and it would table the matter with the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure.

However, Sadtu’s general-secretary Mugwena Maluleke believes there is still a lack of scientific evidence.

“We do not agree because we have not been presented with any scientific evidence. While we had a meeting on Saturday, Cogta (Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs) published 1 meter, the Department of Basic Education also published 1 meter. So we do not know where the half a meter comes from,” he said.

Inside Education

ANDRE DAMONS|

IT IS time that women realise their brilliant leadership qualities. Women are more sensitive and intuitive and bring a different dimension of leadership to the workplace.

For Itumeleng Mabusa, analyst at the South African Doping Control Laboratory (SADoCoL) hosted by the University of the Free State (UFS), this is one of the ways to address the challenges that women still face. Mabusa believes the opportunities for women are not as prominent as it should be and believe that gender discrimination in the workplace still exists and should be addressed.

Mabusa, who has been a member of SADoCoL since April 2015, analyses urine samples from athletes to test for prohibited drugs in sports. Her day-to-day work involves sample extractions, running the extracts on analytical instruments such as the high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) or gas chromatography (GC) machines, and analysing the data to see if there are any performance-enhancing drugs that are prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Women still face the most discrimination in the workplace

According to her, women in South Africa and the world at large are still facing the most discrimination in the workplace. Women still have to fight to get their views across, and they are still not taken seriously because of patriarchal stereotypes. 

“In some corporate settings, women are still remunerated as well as men, regardless of both being in the same position and equally talented. It is hard enough to be equally recognised as a professional in your own field of expertise as a woman, which is exacerbated if you are a woman of colour. The other most pressing issue is the high prevalence of gender-based violence, with women holding the record for high incidents of violence against them,” says Mabusa.

Addressing the challenges

These challenges, says Mabusa, can be addressed by allowing women to do any job that a man can do. Women in leadership are often disregarded and their judgments are always questioned, she says. 

“There has to be more outreach programmes to teach young girls at a very young age that they can be leaders in absolutely any career they desire, from science, engineering, and aviation – to name but a few. Most importantly, leaders should groom the women in their organisations to one day take over the higher positions, and not always leave them for men.” 

“My opinion regarding issues of gender-based violence is that it must be addressed from an early age, in addition to teaching and preparing the girl-child to fend off danger. I think the boy child should also be empowered and taught to be self-sufficient, and not be egotistical, but respectful towards women of any age. Boys and girls should be groomed to be able to co-exist cohesively in a society where they both have equal chances of achieving greatness.” 

What is the most interesting thing to you in the field of anti-doping science?

As a WADA-certified scientist, Mabusa says the best and the worst part of her field is when she has to take part in external quality assessment scheme (EQAS). All the WADA-accredited laboratories in the world must take part in the analyses of the same samples three times a year at the same time. 

“These are both nerve-wracking and exciting all at the same time; it always reminds me of the feeling I used to get when I had to write final exams. I like comparing my statistical results with the rest of the world, for example finding out what quantitative concentration values and Z-scores the rest of the world obtained for their analysis compared to mine.” 

“It is also very interesting to find the scientific evidence and analysis you completed, led to the prosecution of an athlete due to an anti-doping rule violation. I also love doing scientific research and being able to share it with the rest of the world. Working with different analytical equipment and different software – from GC-MS and LC-MS to LC-UV – is exciting,” says Mabusa.  

Community value impacts life as a scientist and woman

Mabusa says as a woman, especially a black woman being given the chance to use her scientific skills as a WADA-certified scientist, it is an honour, as it gives everyone competing in sports in Africa a fair chance to compete. By testing these athletes, she explains, she is making sure that everyone plays fairly without their performances being influenced by any prohibited drugs. 

“Among the prohibited drugs are also drugs of abuse, including for example, cocaine and MDMA (ecstasy). By testing athletes for these drugs, I am helping the athletic community to try to stay off illegal recreational drugs.” 

Playing her part in the Olympics and coping with challenges

With the Olympic Games taking place between July and August, Mabusa says it is a great feeling to know that she is part of a team of scientists who are producing test reports that will ultimately determine whether tested athletes will be eligible or banned from representing their African countries at the Games.

According to her, they have a high volume of samples to analyse on a daily basis, because of all the sports competitions in South Africa and the continent in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics. 

Mabusa says the challenges associated with this work include the extremely strict rules of analysis, called the International Standard of Laboratories (ISL), set for all accredited laboratories to follow. The strict timelines that they all have to stick to in order to report the results to clients on time – no matter how many samples there are – is also a challenge. 

“This means analysing a large amount of data as accurately as possible in the shortest time I can. A skill I had to harness and embrace and learned to perfect over time, is the ability to pay very close attention to detail; this comes in handy when dealing with analytical work.” 

“There is also countless paperwork to fill in in order to follow a chain of custody for a sample. Each and every step gets recorded, from sample reception all the way to reporting; paying attention to detail comes in quite handy through all this,” says Mabusa.

UFS NEWS

NIEMAH DAVIDS|

A discussion that explored the “idolatry of theory: a defence of storytelling”, took centre stage during the second University of Cape Town (UCT) Vice-Chancellor’s (VC) Open Lecture for the year on Wednesday, 28 July.

The keynote speaker was internationally acclaimed author and renowned feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She presented her lecture to a virtual audience, with roughly 5 000 guests in attendance. The lecture series is hosted by UCT VC Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng.

During the lecture Adichie argued why, in her view, theory is considered a kind of idolatry. She explained how during a conversation on sexism several a years ago, a woman shared a theory based on her own lived experience. The woman said: “Sometimes, some women are their own worst enemies.” But instead of engaging her on the topic and discussing it in detail, Adichie said the rest of the group simply silenced her.

“Theory gives us a framework to think about the world. But we should not give it primacy because when we do, we start to walk backwards.”

Adichie noted that while theory is important, especially when it relates to discussions and debates on global challenges like gender inequality and sexual and gender-based violence, society is afraid to run foul of theory.  

“I suspected even then that we silenced her [the woman] because her experience and her conclusion complicated our accepted theory. Theory gives us a framework to think about the world. But we should not give it primacy because when we do, we start to walk backwards,” Adichie said.

“We go from theory to life; we start with theory and we try to make life fit our theory. We try to make the messy complicatedness of life fit into the neat and tidy confines of theory, and when life doesn’t fit perfectly, we silence those bits that stick out. We pretend they’re not there [and] we look away. Because we must preserve the sanctity of theory.”

‘A kind of idolatry’

She told the audience that society often gives theory an exaggerated and critical reference, and this is the reason why she considers theory as a “kind of idolatry”.

“If we allow ourselves to be guided too closely by theory, we will end up being blinded by it. My response to the tyranny of theory is to go to the story; go to the human story,” she said.

“It is storytelling that enables us to deal with the world in all of its glorious and complicated messiness, because life is messy.”

But what’s the point? What does it matter if society chooses to focus on theory or on storytelling, Adichie asked the audience. The point, she said, is to change the world (using storytelling) and to achieve maximum joy by creating opportunities to thrive.

“With maximum joy, we must deal with the world as it is, rather than the way we want [it to be]. That’s the only way to make real change. And it is storytelling that enables us to deal with the world in all of its glorious and complicated messiness, because life is messy,” she said. 

“It’s not so much that we should discard theory, but more that we should acknowledge its limitations.”

The power of storytelling

As a fiction writer and a storyteller, Adichie described literature as her one true love, her religion and the one thing that shapes the lenses with which she looks at the world. Therefore, she said, she “believes deeply” in the power of storytelling, because it enables real human empathy and human connection. 

That’s not all: Storytelling also creates, enables and fosters truth and beauty.

“Storytelling reminds us that we are not a collection of logical bones and flesh, and because we are emotional beings, dignity and love matter as much as bread and water,” she said.

Storytelling and history

Adichie said she first visited South Africa 10 years after the fall of apartheid, and back then, she said, she felt like “the past was not yet the past” for South Africans. Yet, South Africans displayed a “conservative and collective resolve to turn away from this truth”.

She said everyone spoke to her about the “Rainbow Nation”. But she did not entirely trust this optimism, “as well choreographed as it was. It felt to me a little too easy.”

 “An inflexible adherence to theory can make us tell incomplete stories.”

She said she began to wonder about the story the country was telling itself. After all, she added, storytelling is an integral part of how society recreates and remembers history. But it’s also considered an antidote to forgetting.

“On that visit, I wondered: If the theory is that of a Rainbow Nation, what happens to the stories that do not fit the theory? An inflexible adherence to theory can make us tell incomplete stories. It can [also] limit the options that we are willing to consider for real‑life solutions,” she said.

Imperfect stories

But not a single story has been weaved together perfectly. Stories, regardless of the subject, are always imperfect.

“As a storyteller, I do not trade in perfection. I do not trust perfection. I do not believe in perfection. If humans were perfect, stories would not exist. It’s our flaws and imperfections that lend [texture] to the stories we tell,” Adichie said.

She said many global injustices like slavery, colonialism and the Holocaust have their roots in the dehumanisation of different groups, and sadly, all of them are imperfect stories.

 “It’s impossible to have a true story that has no texture. So, in other words, it’s our imperfection that makes truth possible.”

“Slavery was possible because people who traded in enslaved people dehumanised them. Colonialism was possible because the groups of people who were colonised were dehumanised by their colonisers. The Holocaust was possible because of Hitler’s horrible dehumanising exercise of Jewish people,” she said.

“It’s impossible to have a true story that is flat and has no texture. So, in other words, it’s our imperfection that makes truth possible.”

UCT NEWS

ERIK van Rooyen won the Barracuda Championship on Sunday for his first PGA Tour title, finishing with 50 points under the modified Stableford scoring system.

“Obviously, this was, in my mind, kind of the next step for what I wanted to achieve,” van Rooyen said. “I’ve got big dreams and aspirations, and winning on the PGA Tour was certainly part of that. I’m really, really happy.”

The 31-year-old former University of Minnesota player from South Africa eagled the par-4 No. 8 and closed with a birdie on the par-4 No. 18 — after a good bounce off a tree — for a five-point victory over Andrew Putnam at Tahoe Mountain Club’s Old Greenwood Course.

Players receive eight points for an albatross, five for eagle, two for birdie and zero for par. A point is subtracted for a bogey, and three points are taken away for a double bogey or worse.

Van Rooyen had a 16-point final round, making the eagle, six birdies and a bogey.

“I just stayed so patient,” van Rooyen said. “I saw that Andrew Putnam got off to a really, really quick start. He was 45 points pretty early on. And there’s really nothing I could do about that. I’ve got to put one foot in front of the next. And I did that. And then the eagle on eight was just a massive boost.”

Van Rooyen jumped from 139th to 78th in the FedEx Cup standings, with the top 125 after the Wyndham Championship next week earning spots in the playoff opener at Liberty National.

He earned a spot in the 2022 PGA Championship but not the Masters because the event is being played opposite a World Golf Championship — the FedEx St. Jude Invitational in Memphis, Tenn.

“It’s massive. It’s massive,” van Rooyen said. “It’s been a difficult sort of 18 months for me golf-wise. I haven’t been playing well. There’s been glimpses of it the last six months. But I haven’t been able to put four good rounds together. So I was well aware of the position I was in going into the playoffs, knowing that I’ve only got eight rounds left to make that cut.

“And to win here this week, I mean, under the conditions, you know, the pressure that I was under, I’m going to take so much confidence from this.”

Putnam scored 11 points on the first four holes with an eagle on the par-5 No. 2 and three birdies, then had two birdies and a bogey on the final 14 holes. He won the 2018 event for his lone PGA Tour title.

“It was a dream start — birdie-eagle-birdie-birdie — and then just kind of hit the brakes and stalled out a bit,” Putnam said. “And just didn’t get it to happen those last few holes.”

Scott Piercy was third with 44 points after an 11-point day. Third-round leader Adam Schenk had a five-point round to finish with 43.

“It was unfortunate I didn’t have my best stuff today,” Schenk said. “I didn’t play good enough to win. He made a lot of putts, didn’t really make many mistakes. And he just deserved it more than I did, for sure.”

Putnam went from 104th to 75th in the FedEx Cup standings, and Piercy 144th to 126th, and Schenk 113 to 95th.

Clarkston’s Joel Dahmen, who held the lead after the first round, continued his downward trajectory from Thursday but still finished with his third top-10 of the season, a tie for seventhplace.

Competing in his 25th event of the PGA Tour season, the former University of Washington golfer tallied five points to finish with 38 for the tournament. He tied with Gary Woodland.

Dahmen, who won his first career PGA Tour event — the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship — on March 28 in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, finished with four birdies and three bogeys in his round that would have been a 70 under normal tournament conditions.

The former two-time Washington state high school champion began his day with three bogeys in the first five holes, with a 6 on the par-5, 631-yard No. 2 and 5s on the par-4, 383-yard No. 4 and the par-4, 484-yard No. 5.

However, Dahmen finished strong with all four of his birdies coming in the final 11 holes. The stretch started at the par-4, 357-yard No. 8 and he closed the outward nine with one at the par-4, 452-yard No. 9. Dahmen then had birdies at the par-5, 551-yard No. 12 before finishing with one at the par-4, 396-yard No. 16.

For his efforts, Dahmen earned $113,750 and currently has made $1,403,422 this season.

Dahmen next will compete in the Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, N.C. starting Thursday.

Lewis Tribune

IN many countries where many languages are spoken, English is often the language of teaching and learning in schools. Learners get their knowledge of school subjects through the use of English – be it reading and writing or speaking and listening.

Learners who are comfortable using specific English language structures, phrases and terms as they are used in each school subject have greater academic success. Some school systems therefore aim to teach language and subject content at the same time.

Organising the curriculum this way is known as Language Across the Curriculum. In South Africa – a country with 11 official languages – it’s referred to as English Across the Curriculum.

This is because English is the language of learning and teaching from grade 4, where pupils tend to be 10 years old.

The English Across the Curriculum strategy is to develop English language skills across all high school subjects, not just by studying English itself. It pays attention to how English is used for developing knowledge in other subjects such as Life Sciences, Mathematics or Geography.

Realising the importance of this approach, South Africa’s Department of Basic Education published a Manual for Teaching English Across the Curriculum in 2014. The manual provided high school teachers with subject-specific activities and lesson preparation demonstrations so they could follow the language strategy.

But in 2017, the department reported that high school teachers weren’t using this approach as was expected of them. This meant some high school learners would find it difficult to acquire subject knowledge. Subject concepts and skills can’t be understood outside the language they occur.

We decided to explore whether this problem arose from the training that teachers were getting. Our study explored how student teachers in different universities were prepared for integrating language and subject learning.

Student teachers in our study sample acknowledged the importance of developing English language in subject learning. But most of them indicated that their preparation to use the English Across the Curriculum strategy was largely incidental. Their curriculum didn’t ensure it.

Secondly, they rarely saw their own lecturers modelling the strategy.

We held several focus group discussions with 102 final year Bachelor of Education students from three universities in South Africa.

The Department of Higher Education, Science and Innovation also supports the English Across the Curriculum strategy. It states that teachers who successfully complete an initial professional qualification should be proficient in at least one official South African language as a language of learning and teaching.

We found that at University A, there were no specific English Across the Curriculum courses or activities. A course that the student teachers mentioned as coming close was academic literacy. But this was a generic course that all first-year students took to develop academic language skills. It had little to do with English Across the Curriculum.

At University B there was a well-defined curriculum for the study of English Across the Curriculum. It allowed the students to choose between two languages of instruction, namely, Afrikaans and English.

Student teachers who selected English as the medium for teaching enrolled for a number of courses in their four years of study which modelled how to infuse language and subject learning.

The student teachers seemed confident that they would be able to do this in their future classroom. But they worried that during their teaching practice, they didn’t observe the mentor teachers using the strategy.

At University C student teachers were prepared as English Across the Curriculum practitioners using one course in their fourth year.

The aim of this course was to guide student teachers on how learners acquired language skills that would develop their thought processes in subject specific content. This course focused on how student teachers could use listening, speaking, reading and writing skills in subject learning.

Overall, we found that the student teachers weren’t confident that they could create the conditions for subject learning using English as a language of instruction. They didn’t have a thorough understanding of integrating English language skills and subject learning.

Some universities, like University B, are making efforts to prepare student teachers to follow the strategy. In others, like A and C, this preparation is largely fragmented, unintentional and left to chance. It shows a mismatch between policy and practice.

There’s no perfect teaching approach guaranteed to prepare student teachers to practise English Across the Curriculum. But there are a number of opportunities that universities can use.

Based on our research, we propose a specialised language knowledge for content teaching approach. This is different from the current strategy in teacher education, where English language is used for academic activities but not meant to enhance subject-specific proficiency.

In the approach we recommend, lecturers in different disciplines across the teacher education curriculum use language to represent content knowledge in an accessible way. This goes beyond linguistic forms such as vocabulary and grammar. It looks at how language is used for communication in a specific subject.

Learning activities such as lectures, microteaching, lesson planning, portfolio development, reflection exercises and teaching practice should all be used to develop student teachers’ specialised language knowledge for content teaching.

Our study initiates an important discussion that various universities through their faculties of education can have. But planning for the simultaneous development of student teachers’ subject and language knowledge isn’t easy.

It requires a review of the teacher education curriculum, reworking the knowledge base for student teachers and providing professional development for lecturers who teach student teachers.

With creative thinking, universities and government departments can find practical solutions that should enhance the academic success of school children through quality language and subject learning.

The Conversation

THE judgment in the matter between Section 27 and the Department of Basic Education has been reserved.

The date of the judgment is expected to be announced by Judge Gerrit Mueller soon.

SECTION27 is asking the court to rule that the DBE’s and the Limpopo Department of Education’s “plan” to abolish pit toilets is unconstitutional.

Section 27 challenged the Limpopo Department of Education at the Polokwane High Court on Friday over its plan to completely eradicate pit toilets.

The civil society group says that the department has underspent on infrastructure at schools.

The state argued that it could only achieve the eradication of pit toilets at schools by March 2031.

“The judge’s office will be in touch with us to let us know when they will deliver judgement. We will certainly follow up because this case has been pending for seven years and we would like to see a final conclusion,” said Section 27.

“We have done research into the annual report of the DBE themselves, and they have said that they are underspending on their infrastructure budget.”

The case was prompted by the death of five-year-old Michael Komape who died after falling into a pit latrine at school in 2014 in Limpopo.

His father, James Komape believes they have presented a compelling case against the state.

“Today’s case went well. I am confident that Judge Mueller will rule in our favour and infrastructure will be taken to schools. There is still a lot of schools in areas like Ga-Mashashane and in Moletji that still have pit toilets,” said James Komape on Friday.

Section 27 has also asked the court to appoint an independent sanitation task team to look into the matter.

In 2018 the court ordered that the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and the Limpopo Department of Education (LDoE) must file plans to eradicate pit toilets and provide the court with an updated audit of sanitation needs at schools in the province.

Thousands of children in South Africa attend schools with filthy, dangerous toilets.

A reliable report in January said 37 Eastern Cape schools had no toilets at all, 1945 had plain pit latrines and 2585 had ventilated pit latrines.

Inside Education