Inaugural lecture by Professor Rudzani Muloiwa and other updates

Dear colleagues and students

Professor Rudzani Muloiwa will present the seventh installment of this year’s UCT Inaugural Lecture series on Thursday, 25 July 2024. Read more about this and other recent developments on campus.

1. Inaugural lecture by Professor Muloiwa

The next UCT Inagural Lecture, scheduled for Thursday, 25 July 2024 at 17:30 SAST, will be delivered by Professor Rudzani Muloiwa under the title “Human One, can these bones live? – Thirsting for the well-being of the Afrikan child in a world of becoming”.

Please note that the lecture will now be held in Lecture Theatre 2, New Main Building, Groote Schuur Hospital.

Professor Muloiwa heads the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at UCT and Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital. He is also the co-director of the Vaccines for Africa Initiative in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

He is interested in the epidemiology of infectious diseases, emphasising vaccine-preventable diseases, a topic on which his doctoral work was based. He serves as a member of the South African National Immunization Technical Advisory Group and the Regional Immunisation Technical Advisory Group for the World Health Organization’s region for Africa. What keeps him awake at night is the issue of equitable access to what would make it possible for children in Africa to live life to the fullest.

• RSVP to attend the lecture.
• Read the full VC Desk: UCT Inaugural Lecture: Professor Rudzani Muloiwa.

2. Archibus not available this weekend due to maintenance

The Properties & Services (P&S) workplace services portal, Archibus, will undergo routine maintenance and will not be accessible from Friday, 26 July 2024 at 12:00 until Sunday, 28 July 2024 at 22:00. 

P&S apologises for any inconvenience this might cause and thanks staff for their patience while this critical maintenance update is undertaken.

For any queries, please email the P&S technical support team.

If you have any maintenance emergencies during this period, please contact the maintenance and operations helpdesk at 021 650 4322/4321. 

3. Special Tribunal to host Mandela Day event

In commemoration of Mandela Month, UCT’s Special Tribunal, in collaboration with Kwanele, will host an event on Friday, 26 July 2024, to test an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbox for reporting and addressing sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) incidents.

In 2023, the Special Tribunal introduced the Kwanele app – now rebranded as Gender Rights in Tech (GRIT). The tribunal has maintained connections through social responsibility work and events external to UCT.

The project’s main focus in this collaboration is to enhance evidence gathering for better outcomes for SBGV survivors and expand the knowledge around the benefits of AI capabilities for evidence gathering and presentation.

For more information, please contact Anne Isaac.

4. Reminder: UCT Open Textbook Award

There is only a few days left before the submission deadline of 28 July 2024 for the UCT Open Textbook Award. Submissions can be made by open textbook authors or by third parties.

Now in its fifth year, the award has become a vital initiative for fostering innovative open education efforts. It addresses critical challenges related to the cost and accessibility of teaching and learning materials, curriculum change, and multilingualism at UCT.

Open textbooks, which are freely available and openly licensed, offer dynamic, collaborative approaches to textbook authorship, quality assurance, and publishing. Besides the significant cost savings, open textbooks enable student engagement as co-creators and facilitate sharing teaching and learning materials beyond the university.

• Read the full DVC Desk: UCT Open Textbook Award: call for nominations.

5. ICTS maintenance to impact UCT services this weekend

The UCT community is reminded that ICTS will perform essential data centre maintenance on Saturday, 27 July and Sunday, 28 July 2024. This work is a critical part of ICTS’s ongoing infrastructure improvement.

Internet access, eduroam, Amathuba, UCT email, Teams, and other Microsoft services will not be impacted on these days. However, all other UCT services – such as Vula and PeopleSoft – will be unavailable on Saturday from 18:30 to 22:30, and again on Sunday from 08:00 to 00:00.

If you need to use any of the affected services, please do so either before or after the maintenance.

6. UCT Language Indaba 2024

UCT will host a Language Indaba on Wednesday, 7 August 2024, at Sarah Baartman Hall. This year's theme is “Creating understanding of the language policy”. Therefore, the university community is conscientious of the UCT language policy review process that is currently under way.

The proposed UCT language policy is multilingual, considering IsiXhosa, English, and Afrikaans as the university’s official languages. Other languages for development are South African Sign Language (SASL), Kaaps, and Khoekhoegowab. The language policy review at UCT aligns with the country’s New Language Policy Framework for Public Higher Education Institutions in South Africa, promulgated in 2020 by the Department of Higher Education and Training.

During the UCT Language Indaba, various language departments and divisions will share their language policy implementation projects. In addition, external enablers have been invited to assist all universities in the country with language policy matters. They are Pan South African Language Board, the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources, and SHAKAI, which is invited to partner with UCT departments and divisions on language technologies.

Staff and students are encouraged to participate in this process to transform teaching, learning, assessments, research, and communication using technology in different languages.

The Multilingualism Education Project (MEP) located in the Centre for Higher Education (CHED) may be contacted for more details.

7. Renovations taking place in Sarah Baartman Hall

Essential renovation work is currently being done at Sarah Baartman Hall. The P&S maintenance division is replacing the flooring and doing vital waterproofing. All work is being done in cooperation with heritage professionals to ensure the integrity of the hall is preserved.

P&S is grateful for your patience and understanding. The project is on track for completion by 18 August 2024.

Updates will be provided should new information become available.

Communication and Marketing Department

Read previous communications:

• From the UCT Executive
• Campus Announcements