Cape Town - The University of South Africa (Unisa) will hold its annual Feroza Adam Memorial Lecture and Women of the Year Awards today.
The programme, supported by the Unisa Women’s Forum in partnership with the South African Women in Dialogue (SAWID), is themed “Realising Women’s Rights for an Equal Future #Women Breaking the Glass Ceiling”.
This year will be the 23rd commemorative event in honour of Adam, a South African political activist who died in a car accident on Women’s Day, August 9, 1994, soon after getting elected as a member of the National government that same year.
Keynote speakers will include Small Business Development Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, South African Ambassador to Namibia Thenjiwe Mtintso, and Unisa principal and vice-chancellor Professor Puleng LenkaBula.
“The Unisa women’s month dialogue seeks to address gender-based violence in the country, racism and gender equality, the fight against the exploitation of sex workers, conversations around radical economic transformation, issues of women and migration, women refugees and xenophobia, and other processes which seek to reclaim the dignity of women in the home, at work, in communities, in society and in the economy,” LenkaBula said in a statement released.
Unisa Women’s Forum chairperson Professor Meahabo Magano said 15 nominations were received for this year’s awards. Magano said categories for the awards are Transformation, Significant Achievement, Community Service, Customer Service, and Courage in Adversity.
“The last award is the Feroza Adam award. It normally goes to women who have achieved in a number of areas and showed transformative leadership and have significant achievements – so if she is an all-rounder, we normally give that woman a Feroza Adam award.”