Their senior counterparts may have left the Varsity Cup competition a bit prematurely, but the NWU Eagles Young Guns aimed to go all the way when they squared off against Tuks in Stellenbosch on Monday, 25 April. It was not to be. The team from Pretoria, doing what Pretoria-based teams seem to be doing in every conceivable rugby competition in South Africa over the past year, beat the Eagles Young Guns 22–14. 

It is not the fairy-tale ending the boys were hoping for, but the journey proved to be memorable. 

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.

For this young woman entrepreneurship is a way of life. North-West University (NWU) master’s student in chemistry, Paula Maseko, recently started her own business by producing and selling haircare products.

Paula, who hails from Lonelypark in Mahikeng, started her business in 2020 in her mother’s garage. With a few pots, bowls, a hand blender and a two-plate stove, Buhle Bomqhele hair cream and growth oil were born.

The Indigenous Knowledge System (IKS) Centre of the North-West University (NWU) has partnered with Wits University to do palaeontology research along the Karoo Basin.

The IKS Centre team comprises Prof Simeon Materechera, a senior professor and research leader for the NWU team, and Otsile Maditsi, a lecturer at the centre. They are working with the Wits team to explore the indigenous knowledge associated with palaeontology.

The IKS Centre will focus on indigenous paleo-knowledge which consists of geomythology associated with palaeontology.

Phenyo Mokgothu

By Zenoyise John

The North-West University’s (NWU’s) Facing Race Week (FRW) took place from 11 to 14 April 2022, and brought together staff and students to talk about racial inequality and to educate one another on issues of racial discrimination.

Phenyo Mokgothu

North-West University (NWU) academic in the subject group Developmental Studies, Gaopalelwe Mpolokeng says the success of the government’s District Development Model (DDM) lies in cooperation.

 Approved by the South African cabinet on 21 August 2019, the DDM is a government approach to improve integrated planning and service delivery across the three spheres of government, with district and metropolitan spaces as focal points of government and private sector investment.

Bertie Jacobs

Bertie Jacobs

The Netherlands won, but hockey triumphed. When the final whistle blew on Tuesday, 12 April, it was the Dutch fans who cheered and the players clad in orange who celebrated as the Netherlands beat Germany conclusively 3–1 in the final of the FIH Women’s Hockey Junior World Cup at the Astroturf of the North-West University (NWU) in Potchefstroom.