Africa Day 2023

The Transformation and Marketing Committee hosted an African Day Departmental Tea on Friday, 26 May 2023. The event was well attended by both academic and PASS Staff as well as postgraduate students. The Chemistry department kindly sponsored, towards the event, a few savoury platters and some sweet koeksisters and milk tarts. Staff and research groups were asked to donate African-inspired snacks and foods towards the event. Students were eager and excited to share a dish from their country/heritage.

The main aim of the event was to commemorate Africa Month – the month in which the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was founded, in 1963. At the event, Dr Clive Oliver spoke about the relevance of Africa month and the importance of celebrating the diversity within our department. It is interesting to note that amongst our postgraduate student cohort, we have representation from 10 other African countries, these being Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Lesotho, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Our Africa day celebration was aimed at creating a space where staff and students could come together and share food and music from each other’s diverse cultures. The chemistry boardroom was beautifully transformed with African décor and a variety of African-inspired snacks were available for people to eat.  Students from other parts of the world were encouraged to participate in the event. For the brave, mopane worms and termites were brought from Limpopo! While others enjoyed less-daring local South African cuisine such as Umngqusho (samp and beans cooked with bone marrow), mini boerewors rolls, samoosas, daltjies, koesisters and melktert. It was lovely to also taste traditional sweet meats from India such as barfi and jalebi; as well as semmedknödel (bread dumplings), laugenstange (bun) with quark (German cream cheese) and nürnberger bratwurst (sausage) from Germany. Some staff members and students came dressed in African-inspired attire and traditional clothes. A playlist was also created, and African music was played in the background. This created a lovely atmosphere. The tea room was buzzing with curiosity to try various foods. Students and staff were excited to try out various African instruments such as the marimba (xylophone), kalimba (thumb piano), African drums and tambin (flute).