PsySSA Call for Nominations

The PsySSA Nominations Committee wishes to advise that the following positions on the PsySSA Executive Committee will become vacant at the forthcoming 26th AGM to be held virtually on 17 November 2021.

1. President-Elect
2. Treasurer
3. Four Additional Members

Members in good standing may propose suitable candidates for consideration by the Nominations Committee, which will duly present appropriate candidates for election at the AGM.

Nominations Guidelines for all these positions are available here.

All nominations with supporting documentation should be emailed to the Chair of the Nominations Committee, Prof Saths Cooper, at nominations@psyssa.com by 01 November 2021.

Guidelines

Please download the Call for Nominations and the Guideline Documents for each of the Executive Committee vacancies using the buttons below.  

Nomination Form

Download (PDF, 327KB)

PsySSA Congratulates Prof Peace Kiguwa on being awarded the OMT African Studies Future initiative grant 

PsySSA Congratulates Prof Peace Kiguwa (Chairperson of the PsySSA Sexuality & Gender Division) on being awarded the OMT African Studies Future initiative grant that seeks to explore alternative futures and reimagine Africa’s future developmental pathways. The fellowship provides support to rising talent in academia with potential to be leaders and advance interdisciplinary scholarship. Kiguwa will expand her research into gender and sexualities and place making where she will investigate how these intersect and manifest in society.

Meet our Presenters!

The SMU Department of Clinical Psychology is launching a Public Lecture series under the auspices of Sedibeng discourses on Epistemic Justice Discourses 

This online workshop covers various aspects of the Health Profession Council of South Africa’s Board of Psychology Examination for Educational Psychologists. Intern Educational Psychologists will get a general idea of what the oral board exam may entail, as well as the types of questions that could be asked. Attendees will also be advised on the practical application of ethics and law to psychology through practical application to two case studies. 

What is our heritage in a fractured society?

As we celebrate Heritage Day on the 24 September 2021, some important questions encourage thoughtful reflection. Given the recent politically motivated, hunger induced or impunity driven upheavals in our country, a discomfort with who we are as a people and as a nation; requires an urgent diagnosis, and more importantly, a treatment plan that includes curative and preventive interventions.

The diagnosis is clear. We have failed to embrace our diversity, the richness of our difference, while happily remaining unaccountable for our abominable apartheid past, and its toxic legacy 27 years later. The enduring socioeconomic inequality, structural violence and racist apartheid poison that festers in the hearts of South Africans, does not augur well for a healthy society and engendering well-being. A social and psychological remedy is needed. This urgent intervention requires agency, fearlessness, unity of purpose and a collective solidarity drawing on shared wisdom.

Our heritage is one of care, compassion and solidarity with the oppressed and marginalised. An adherence to social justice values, and a reclamation of the psyche that boldly claims forbidden spaces for thinking and social action in service of humanity. It is more than the trivialisation of our collective heritage, more than the ‘mix masala’ of our ethnicity or social backgrounds. And certainly more than that of a pathetically branded ‘heritage braai’, that denudes the connectedness and wisdom of our African birthright.

As PsySSA past president, Prof Saths Cooper recently remarked: South Africa can work, if we craft a viable, inclusive way forward that embraces people’s concerns. If we seriously wish to attend to this precarious situation with all its dramatic elements of conspiracy, intrigue, murder and organised chaos, then it’s time to raise our voices, not merely against, but for that change that we crave’.

Change demands action. Frederick Douglass, the freed slave and abolitionist reminds us of that change when he said that ‘power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will’.

Let us demand more from our society, its corroded leadership and of ourselves. Our voices belong in the struggles for dignity, decency and humanity. Let that be our heritage.

Author:

Mr Umesh Bawa – PsySSA Executive Member