The University is a values-based, research-intensive university that equips its students to succeed in a rapidly changing world by providing students with inquiry-led training and learning opportunities. The University of Pretoria’s long-term Strategic Plan captures the essence of a shared vision, aiming to sustain UP’s quality and relevance as a university that is firmly rooted in Africa, and to harness its existing and future potential for diversity. UP strives to ensure that it is recognised in the global marketplace of knowledge production.
UP has nine faculties and a business school:
- Economic and Management Sciences
- Education
- Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology
- Health Sciences
- Humanities
- Law
- Natural and Agricultural Sciences
- Theology
- Veterinary Science (the only faculty of its kind in South Africa)
- the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS).
The University of Pretoria came into existence in 1908 as the Pretoria branch of the Transvaal University College. The College became a fully-fledged university in 1930 and the colloquial name Tuks, or Tukkies, was derived from the acronym TUC for Transvaal University College. UP’s current facilities portfolio consists of more than 790 buildings and structures spread over 33 sites located on six campuses that cover 1100 hectares of land. In the 106 years of its existence the University has produced more than 230 000 alumni. The University prides itself on producing well-rounded, creative graduates, responsible, productive citizens and future leaders. Great emphasis is placed on student life and support as well as the advancement of sport, art, culture and music.
Two of South Africa’s finest musicians, Johnny Mekoa and Ray Phiri, died recently. The permeable terrain between genres their careers negotiated, is being replaced by rigid marketing categories.
All over the world people who have been harmed by the conventional money systems are devising alternative currencies, challenging the centralised monetary policy approach.
Andimba (Herman) Toivo Ya Toivo remained loyal to what made him the personification of the desire to live in an independent country governed by, and for, its people.
Documents released ahead of the policy conference of South Africa’s embattled governing ANC show it hasn’t the guts or internal balance of forces, for self-correction and renewal.
Rethinking work is crucial for industrialised and emerging economies, where job losses are being felt even in the presence of substantial, although diminishing, economic growth.
Democracy is in a parlous state in many countries in southern Africa. Autocrats hold onto power, while electorates have little to choose from at the polls.
South Africa’s ANC and Namibia’s SWAPO, governing parties, enter crucial leadership elections this year, with presidents Zuma and Geingob both facing challenges.
South Africa’s Constitutional Court has the difficult task of deciding whether MPs can have the protection of a secret ballot when voting whether to fire President Zuma or not.
Oxfam’s efforts to find solutions to the world’s inequalities are welcome but its wrongful use of “human economy” and repackaging it as a concept from high up might do more harm than good.
A global approach to African history complements the radical post-colonial histories, while also asserting the role of the continent in the world’s global pasts and present.
Afrikaans is very much a black language. The apartheid government’s ploy to construct it as a “white language”, with a “white history”, denied the commonality of the language across race and class.
The middle class concept in Africa has remained vague and limited to number crunching. The minimum threshold for entering it in monetary terms was critically vulnerable to a setback into poverty.
Democracy in South Africa is meaningless if it doesn’t improve the lives of the people. To do this, the governing ANC must be led by conscientious, competent and interested leaders.
Paediatrician, Paediatric Pulmonologist, Associate Professor, Department of Paediatrics & Extraordinary Professor, Department of Immunology, University of Pretoria
Manager and NRF-rated researcher: Chromatography Mass Spectrometry - University of Pretoria and UP Institute for Sustainable Malaria Control (UP-ISMC), University of Pretoria