You cannot keep a good man down. Michael Seleka, football manager and head coach of the NWU Tawana at the North-West University’s (NWU) campus in Potchefstroom, sounds dejected as he gives a recap of his team’s performance in the SAFA ABC Motsepe League. The NWU Tawana ended their 2021/2022 campaign in a disappointing seventh position.

In the 2020/2021 season, the NWU Tawana ended in a respectable fourth position on the overall log of nine teams.

It is with great sadness that the North-West University (NWU) has learned about the passing of lecturer and political analyst, associate professor Barry Rhulani Hanyane.

He died on Wednesday, 11 May at the Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg after being sick for some time.

Prof Hanyane from the Faculty of Humanities’ School of Government Studies was a revered and esteemed specialist with a keen research interest in public management and administration.

It was love at first sight. Boy meets campus. In 2019, Franco van Dijk visited the North-West University (NWU) campus in Potchefstroom as part of a tour by his school choir.

“We saw a lot of the campus – it almost felt like an open day. I really liked what I saw and decided that this was where I wanted to go,” says Franco, who matriculated from the Ligbron Academy of Technology.  

Franco, who was born in Bethal, Mpumalanga, will be turning 19 in May and is enrolled in his first year of working towards a degree in Electromechanical Engineering.

Academia’s “best kept secret” is rising like a phoenix after the pandemic. The prestigious North-West University (NWU) Business School held a Brag & Brand function in Potchefstroom on Monday, 26 April that was attended by lecturers, staff and alumni.

Prof Linda du Plessis, acting vice-chancellor of the NWU, welcomed guests and said “a good school should have legitimacy”. She boasted that the NWU Business School had achieved accreditation for another five years from the Association of MBAs.

Jacques Beukes of the MUST Deep Learning research group at the Faculty of Engineering is the 2021 winner of a North-West University (NWU) Vice-Chancellor’s Medal for his dissertation “Interpretability of deep neural networks for SYM-H prediction”. Eight vice-chancellor’s medals are awarded annually to the best master’s-degree students at the NWU. Jacques was awarded the medal for Engineering.

Bertie Jacobs

Bertie Jacobs

Oh my goodness, it is going to be a very close call. On Monday evening, 4 April the Eagles kept their playoff hopes alive in a sopping wet Bloemfontein by beating the CUT Ixias by 33–14.

Phenyo Mokgothu

Deaths from Tuberculosis (TB) have increased globally for the first time in over a decade. This is according to the World Health Organisation’s Global TB Report that was released in October 2021. The increase in deaths is due to “reduced access to TB diagnosis and treatment in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic”, the report found.

Mafumane Thlapi

Prof Leenta Grobler, an academic in the North-West University (NWU) Business School, was announced the recipient of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers’ (SAIEE’s) President’s Award during the institute’s annual award function on 11 March 2022.

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the exclusion of even more South African residents from economic activity has further weakened the country’s already fragile peace.

This is one of the conclusions drawn by North-West University (NWU) academic Dr Gideon van Riet, who recently published an article based on three years of research in the JB Marks Municipality. The research focused on investigating the link between the Covid-19 pandemic and South Africa’s fragile peace through the lens of crime.