The University of the Free State (UFS) has appointed two vastly experienced and knowledgeable professors as the respective deans of the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Humanities.
The two appointees will take office in February and March.
Prof. Serges Kamga will assume the role of dean of the Faculty of Law on 1 February, while Prof. Mogomme Masoga will commence serving as dean of the Faculty of Humanities on 1 March.
These appointments were approved by the UFS council during its quarterly meeting held at the end of November last year. The two candidates will each serve five-year terms.
Kamga is currently a full professor of law at the Thabo Mbeki African School of Public and International Affairs (TM-School) at the University of South Africa (Unisa), and Masoga is the dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zululand (UniZulu), KwaZulu-Natal.
Kamga holds an LLD degree in Human Rights Law from the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria (UP). He has also worked as a researcher at the South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights and International Law (Saifac).
As a researcher, his works have been published in accredited journals and he has presented papers at various national and international conferences. Kamga is the co-director of the Cross-Cultural Human Rights Centre at the Free University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
In 2021, he received the prestigious Ali Mazrui Award for Scholarship and Research Excellence from the University of Texas in Austin, America.
Masoga holds a PhD in Philosophy, attained from the UFS.
He began his academic career with the attainment of a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), where he proceeded to complete two honours and a master’s degree course. Masoga received a second Master of Arts in Musicology degree from Unisa. He has an excellent record of research publication within oral history, Africanism, and indigenous knowledge system studies.
According to Prof. Francis Petersen, UFS rector and vice-chancellor, the appointments align with the institution’s strategic intent. He said both candidates would play integral supportive roles, enabling the institution to achieve its objectives that include Vision 130.
“Vision 130 furthermore exemplifies our commitment to be acknowledged by our peers and society as a top-tier university in South Africa, ranked among the best in the world,” said Petersen.
