Stellenbosch University Union for Critical Thinking Scholarship

To whom it may concern.

We are calling for applications for the Stellenbosch University Union for Critical Thinking Scholarship. We are looking for someone with experience in international debating and Union management who would be able to act as advisor and help in the management of the new Union for Critical Thinking at our university. 

If there are any questions regarding the scholarship you can contact either myself or Wynand Spruyt (spruyt@sun.ac.za). The closing date for applications is the 15th of October 2011.

We would appreciate it if you could help forward this application to anyone that you would regard as both suitable and interested. 

Kind regards,

Wiaan Visser

16199065@sun.ac.za

Stellenbosch University Union for Critical Thinking

South African NUDC 2011

About two weeks late but here are the results of the recently held South African National Championships

Champions: UCT ("Warlord")    (Matthew Butler-Adams & Daniel Kaliski)

ESL Champions: WITS ("New Moon")    (Leon Jamie Mithi & Tlhalefo Mphuthi)

Best speaker    Matthew Butler-Adams    UCT   

Best ESL speaker    Sbu Tshabalala    UFS   
Best new speaker    Tristan von Zahn    UCT    
Best judge    Mark Schoeman    UCT   
Best new judge    Fran Favero    Rhodes   
Best judging institution    Rhodes   

You can find the tab at  http://bit.ly/rcnY87

Motions:
1. TH supports Walmart's expansion into Africa
2. THW create a regulated market for rhino horn
3. TH regrets the partition of Sudan
4. THW expropriate land without compensation
5. THW prevent parents whose children have been taken into protective care from raising future children
6. THBT the AU should support NATO's stance on Libya
7. THW force abortions for foetuses at risk of terminal conditions
8. THW frack the Karoo
9. THW pay Afghani citizens NOT to fight for the Taliban
ESL Octo: THW give Constitutional Court judges life terms
QF: THW allow rate payers to opt out of any public service and form private alternatives
SF: THW join the SlutWalk
ESL Final: THW regard state sponsored cyber attacks as acts of war
Final: THBT "I was only following orders" is a legitimate defence in an International Criminal Tribunal

South African NUDC 2011

Of course while much of the focus in recent days has been on Austral-Asians in Korea we shouldn't forget that South African National University Debating Championships.  Up to the start of the PAUDC this was the largest tournament in Africa.

Motions so far:

THW create a market for rhino horn

TH regrets the partition of South Sudan

THW: Expropriate Land without compensation

THW: Prevent parents whose children have been taken into into protective society from raising future children

THBT: The AU should support NATO's intervention in Libya

THW: Force the abortion of foetus with the risk of a terminal condition

 

I'll post the break and results as soon as I get them.

 

You can follow coverage on twitter at  #NUDC2011,  @ZOLAtheSOUL or @PinkButterphly

 

 

 

 

South African Nationals Registration Update

Dear Debating Community


Please remember that early registration closes this Friday at 6:00pm. Please make sure that you have registered on the registration site (www.sa-debating.co.za), and that you have added the number of teams and judges that your institution requires. You do NOT need to fill in all of the participants' details by the close of early registration, but we request that all details are entered by the close of late registration on the 10th of June. If you are still experiencing problems with the site, please contact Paida at reg.paida@gmail.com, and he will assist you. In any correspondence (such as invoice requests) please specify which Institution AND CAMPUS you are representing, as we have had some confusion due to this issue.

Please also note that we must receive proof of payment by Friday at 6:00pm to guarantee your slots. If we do not receive your proof of payment, you will lose your slots.

Training material will be going up onto the website shortly. We are finalizing the content at the moment, and material should be available on the site as soon as we are done. For more regular updates, join the Nationals 2011 Facebook group. Just search "Nationals 2011", and you should find us!

All the best,

Stephen Thompson
Convener: South Africa Nationals 2011

SA Nationals Reg and Training Site Issues‏

Dear Debating Community
We understand that many institutions have been having problems registering and acquiring training material for Nationals 2011 on http://www.sa-debating.co.za/. We would sincerely like to apologise if you have experienced problems with the site.

As part of our sponsorship agreement, the registration and training site was contracted out to a web development company who were tasked with setting up the reg system and training portal. They assured us that the site would be functional when registration opened, however a number if unexpected errors have appeared as institutions have tried to register, and the training portal is not yet functional.

We are doing our best to highlight the urgency and importance of getting the site working as we intended, and are communicating problems to the web development team as soon as we receive them. Unfortunately, as we are not directly involved in the web development, we can only relay information on to you as we receive it from the developers, and we have been forced to wait for them to fix the errors and get back to us.

We are doing our best to ensure that the site becomes fully functional as soon as possible, and were today again assured by the developers that they were working on the last of the bugs, and that they should be sorted out very soon.

This has obviously impacted the availability of training material as we promised to provide. We have quite a bit of material ready to upload, but no site to upload to yet. This should also be rectified very soon. As we plan for the site to availible for access beyond Nationals 2011, these are are problems we should only have to deal with once.

We will do our best to keep you informed of the progress, and we are hoping that all will be fully functional soon.

Thanks again for your patience.

Stephen Thompson, Katherine Harding and Debby Nixon

Nationals 2011

JECIT Results

Justice Edwin Cameron Invitational Tournament is a round-robin for South Africa’s top teams, based on SA Nationals, Pan-Africans and applications. The tournament runs over 5 rounds with 16 teams, top 4 teams breaking to finals after round 5. Motions are generally open.

Results:
Winners: Alex de Jager and Matthew Butler-Adam (UCT) (4-3 panel split against Dan and Vivek)

Finalists:
James Wink and Anthony Hodgson (Independent)
Richard Stupart and John Stupart (Wits/Rhodes)
Daniel Kaliski and Vivek Ramsaroop (UCT)

Breaking judges: Kimera Chetty, Zikho Pali, Kyle Parkin, Piet Olivier, Alma Diamond (DCA), Alex Sloan (DCA), Claire Hawkridge (CA)

Top Speakers:
1. Richard Stupart
2. Vivek Ramsaroop
3. Daniel Kaliski
4. (tied) Alex de Jager and Matthew Butler-Adam

Best Adjudicator based on speaker and adjudicator feedback: (tied) Kyle Parkin and Kimera Chetty
Motions:
Round 1: TH rejects consensus
Round 2: TH would let the music play on
Round 3: TH is mostly harmless
Round 4: THBT the fat lady hasn’t sung until the cows come home
Round 5: (closed) TH supports the decision to try Henry Okah in South Africa
Final: THB the dark side is better (they have cookies)

Thanks to all who attended and congrats to convener Gene McAravey and her team for an excellent

South African National Universities Debating Championships

Dear Debating Community

The Tuks Debating Union cordially invites you to the 16th annual South African National Universities’ Debating Championships, dubbed “Nationals 2011,” hosted at the University of Pretoria from the 9th until the 15th of July 2011, which is proudly sponsored by Standard Bank.

Website

Both the registration and training components of Nationals 2011 will run online, and the website can be found at http://www.sa-debating.co.za/, under the NUDC portal (look for the Nationals 2011 logo). The website will function as a means of communication, as well as a means to provide you with the information you may require about the competition. The training component of the site is up and running and you can expect more content to be loaded shortly. The registration link will appear when registration opens on the dates indicated below.

Registration and Fee

Registration will be divided into two periods – Early registration and late registration. Early registration will run from the 29th of April to the 27th of May, while late registration will run from 30th of May to the 10th of June. The registration fee for early registration will be R650.00 per delegate, while the late registration fee will be R850.00 per delegate

Registration will run on an “Institutional Representative” system. Each institution will register a single representative, who will then be responsible for entering all the registration data for their institution. This process will be explained in more detail closer to the opening of registration.

WEBSITE: http://www.sa-debating.co.za/

E-MAIL: stevetchem@gmail.com  reg.paida@gmail.com

Team Slots

Each institution is guaranteed 4 team slots at the competition during early registration. The initial team cap has remained the same as previous years due to the interests of a number of new institutions in joining “Nationals 2011”. If you wish to apply for additional team slots, you can do so once registration opens by sending an e mail to reg.paida@gmail.com . These additional slots are not guaranteed and will only be allocated after the close of early registration, if there are still slots available. The additional slots will be offered one per institution, in the order for which they were applied.

Adjudicators

The “n-1” rule for adjudicators will apply. If you send n teams, you will be required to send n-1 adjudicators. We reserve the right to adjust the number of team slots available to your institution if you do not meet the n-1 requirement for adjudicators. You will be allowed to send a maximum of n+1 adjudicators to the competition. If you wish to send additional adjudicators (over the n+1 limit), you can apply by the same process as for additional team slots. These places will be awarded in the same manner as for team slots.

If you have any queries about Nationals 2011, please feel free to contact me. We look forward to seeing you in the Jacaranda City in July!

Regards,

Stephen Thompson Convener: Nationals 2011

JoziSpeak 2009 results

Results from JoziSpeak 2009 (South African Universities Champs), hosted by Wits University last week, from Richard Stupart's blog:

Winners of the EFL (English First Language) category:
Chris McConnachie and Michael Anderson from Rhodes University
Winners of the ESL (English Second Language) category:
Ayanda Siyuyu and Bonga Malewa from the University of Cape Town
Best EFL Speaker:
Daniel de Kadt from the UNiversity of KwaZulu Natal
Best ESL Speaker:
Albert Titus from the University of Namibia
Best New EFL Speaker:
Michael Anderson from Rhodes University. Incorrectly announced originally as Razina Thokan from Wits University, as the committee – in great excitement – never thought to consider that the winning team might have a first-year debater in it.
Best New ESL Speaker:
Mhlanganisi Madlongolwai from the University of the Free State
Best Public Speaker:
Leon Jamaine Mithi from Wits University
Best New Adjudicator:
Nezi Ndamasa from the University of the Free State
Best Adjudicator:
Deborah Nixon from The University of Pretoria

South Africa win ASDC

Source: Bizcommunity and Justice Motlhabani.

The third annual African Schools' Debating Championships (ASDC) sponsired by FNB was hosted recently by St John's College in Johannesburg, South Africa. 20 African schools participated in the week-long competition including South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Angola and Kenya.

16 of the schoold came from South Africa including, Clifton School, Muir College, Parktown High for Girls, Pretoria Girls High and St Andrews College. Topics ranged from "The Middle East Peace" and "Youth Vote 2009".

A number of high profile guest speakers were arranged to meet the students during the event included South African Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni, Professor Ben Turok, Constitutional Court judge Edwin Cameron, Deputy Minister of Education, Advocate Andre Gaum and Olympics gold medallist Penny Heyns were present.

However the highest profile guest was former South African President Nelson Mandela who attended the final and met the teams

There are two competitions at ASDC. One where national teams compete against each other and another where individual schools compete against each other.

South Africa beat Botswana in the final of the nations competition. A hybrid (combined) team made up of speakers from the Free State of St Dominics College and Heronbridge College won the schools championships.

The University of the Free State are African Champions

The University of the Free State from South Africa has emerged as the winners of the Inaugural Pan-African Universities Debating Championship which was held in Gaborone Botswana.

The final comprised:
The University of the Free State--B -Opening Government
National University of Lesotho--A –Closing Government
University of Namibia-C—Opening Opposition
University of Namibia-A- Opening Opposition

The Best Adjudicator Trophy was awarded to Carl Persat of Namibia
The Best Speaker for the tournament was –Ruth Mulenga of Botswana

The lists of participating countries were:
Nigeria
Ghana
Uganda
Kenya
Botswana
Lesotho
Namibia
Zimbabwe
South Africa
Zambia

The tournament also comprised debate trainers from the US, Botswana, South Korea and South Africa who trained the many virgin debaters from across the African continent.

This week long tournament was hosted at the University of Botswana main campus with the award ceremony at Phakalane Golf Estates.

The African Universities Debating Board which will facilitate the dissemination of training materials, coordinate Pan-African debating events and organize training sessions and help spread debate across the African continent was established at this ground breaking event.

The Chief Adjudicator for the tournament was Logan of Malaysia and the tournament was convened by Justice Motlhabani of Botswana.

For more information visit www.botsdebating.com

DebatingZa relaunched

The South African debating website, www.debating.org.za - the online home of the South African National Debating Council - has been relaunched with a new look and a new team. The site will carry all South African debating news, as well as hosting forums and a university debating wiki for South Africa. International users, visitors and friends are welcome to join in the fun.

For more, please visit the site http://www.debating.org.za/

JoziSpeak 2009

Wits Debating Union is proud to announce their successful bid to host the South African National Debating Championship 2009. Dubbed ‘JoziSpeak’, the Wits team plans to make Nationals 09 into a tournament on a scale not yet seen on the SA circuit. Provisional dates for the tournament are July 5 – 11, 2009, and all debating events will be hosted on Wits main campus in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

The tournament budget was especially put together to allow the tournament to expand, specifically in the ESL category. Provisions have been made for the move to octofinals, and space has been made for 350 delegates. In order to combat the problems plaguing recent Nationals regarding quality of adjudication, provisions will be made to facilitate the return of experienced judges who have left the competitive circuit. The OrgCom encourages any interested parties to make contact with the Registration team as soon as details are released.

In line with our mission to make this the most epic National championships ever, the JoziSpeak OrgCom have already secured full sponsorship of the tournament. Tournament Convener Joe Roussos has sealed a deal with Standard Bank to provide financial backing not only for this tournament, but for SA Nationals for the next three years, regardless of the host.

A website will be up soon, but for now information will be shared via the SA National Council mailing list and our JoziSpeak facebook group.

SA Nationals Results

Full results of the South African National Universities Debating Championships 2008, held in Bloemfontein at the end of June/beginning of July, can now be found here
and here

The best EFL speaker in the tournament was Daniel de Kadt (UKZN), and the best ESL speaker was Ummar Segadimo (University of Botswana). In the end, after a tense final, the EFL competition was won by Daniel de Kadt and Brandon Almeida of UKZN while the ESL competition was won by Ummar Segadimo and maswabi Maswabi of the University of Botswana.

The bid to host the tournament in 2009 was won by Wits University.

UKZN wins SA Nationals

Daniel de Kadt and Brandon Almeira from the University of KwaZulu-Natal have won the South African National Universities Debating Championships in Bloemfontein. they defeated two UCT and a Wits team in the final on the motion THW force catholic adoption agencies to allow homosexual couples to adopt

Best speaker in the tournament was Daniel de Kadt (UKZN),
Best ESL speaker was Ummar Segadimo (University of Botswana).

ESL winners: Ummar Segadimo and Maswabi Maswabi of the University of Botswana.

Best adjudicator: Brent Phillips (Rhodes).
Best new adjudicator: Pia Buckland (UCT)

WDU Masters results

The first ever Wits Debating Union (WDU) Masters tournament has been won by Eusebius McKaiser and Stuart Theobald of Rhodes (and various other places) in a closely contested all-Rhodes final.

The tournament was run as a one-day event on Saturday, 21 June 2008 with 3 rounds and a final. The event was relatively small, as was expected in its first year, with the majority of those who took part ex-Rhodes debaters. The tournament included people representing almost all of the years of SA debating history, with the oldest having debated last in 1997 (and making it to the final!).

The final was held at the yakka party and was contested by Claire Hawkridge and James Vos, Steven Grootes and Shirley de Villiers, Eusebius McKaiser and Stuart Theobald and Jak Koseff and James Rycroft. The motion was THW encourage sex tourism.

This event will hopefully become an annual one and is the first in a series of Masters events the WDU is planning. Anyone interested should contact the WDU to find out more.

WDU Masters Tournament

The Wits Debating Union will be hosting the first WDU Masters Tournament, a tournament put together specifically for hacks who have moved out of competitive debating, in June 2008. This is the first event of it's kind in South Africa. Basically, WDU realised there were a great many hacks in and around Joburg and decided to host a weekend of debating, socialising and (of course) yakka to get old friends and rivals back together

The tournament will be held on the weekend of the 21st and 22nd of June, at Wits. We're looking at three rounds on Saturday 21st, followed by a break to quarters, semis and finals on Sunday 22nd. For those in town on that night we'll do welcome drinks on Friday, followed by a break party on Saturday night and a closing function of some kind on Sunday. To facilitate it all we'll charge a fee of R150 (excluding accomodation, catering, etc.).

Considering that we're looking at debaters spanning over a decade, we're going to have to make some fairly arbitrary choices regarding some of the technical aspects of the actual debating. We also have no method for (nor particular interest in) sorting through generations of adjudicators for the most ultimate super-hack "I-once-gave-God-a-62" adjudicator to be CA (apologies if this happens to actually be you). For this reason, and because we like it best this way, we plan to be fairly relaxed about running this tournament – the main idea is to get some good debates going and enjoy getting back into it.

Any interested South African hacks should contact either of us (email stretch0109@gmail.com).

Regards,

Joe Roussos and Phil Williams

Wits Debating Union

South African Schools Debating website

Hi there

I thought you might be interested to hear that the South African Schools Debating Community now has an active website (http://www.debate.org.za/). We're trying to turn this into a portal for all SA schools debating activities, as well as a place where debaters can chat - we have forums attached.

Thanks!
Claire Hawkridge.

Task Team Chair

South African Schools Debating Board

Judge Edwin Cameron Invitational Tournament 2008

The University of Stellenbosch Debating Society (USDV) will be hosting the Judge Edwin Cameron Invitational Tournament for the second time in early May 2008. This fantastically fun tournament is a 6-round, round-robin debating event that takes place over 4 days in the beautiful university town of Stellenbosch, South Africa. The primary purpose of the event is to allow the top South African teams an opportunity to compete against each other - each of the top 4 institutions (EFL and ESL) is invited to send two teams. The remaining spots are allocated based on applications.

In 2008, the Organising Committee has decided to open applications to international teams, as well as qualified South African teams. Should anyone be interested in competing in this tournament, please contact Claire Hawkridge ( claire.hawkridge@gmail.com) for more information. Applications to take part in this tournament should include a debating CV and the details of the adjudicator who will accompany the team (each team must be accompanied by at least one qualified adjudicator). Both teams and adjudicators are invited to attend.

Please note that space at the tournament is limited in order to ensure that the quality is as high as possible and because of logistical constraints. The exact size of the tournament will depend on the quality of applications. The tournament will take place from 1-4 May 2008. Applications should be submitted asap to be considered.

Yours,
Claire Hawkridge
CA JECIT 2008

UCT win SA Nationals

Results of the 2007 South African Nationals

EFL winners - UCT D (Dave Watson & Emma Webber)
EFL best speaker - Rob Garlick

ESL winners - USDV F (Janine de Kock & Peter Koornhof)

ESL best speaker - Songezo Mabece

Public Speaking Winner - Mathew Smorenburg

Best Adjudicator - Andrew McMillan and Nick Schultz

Best New Adjudicator - Alinka Brutsch

Best New Speaker - Matthew Butler-Adams

Source: www.debating.org.za

WSDC Blog & SA Nationals

You may have noticed that I've removed the feed from the World Schools blog. The championships are over so I've decided to take down that feed but if you are looking for it then click on "World Schools" in the list of links. As other tournaments come up and if I come across (or are notified about) a blog which is providing good coverage I'll look at putting up a similar temporary feed to direct traffic to that blog.

On a similar note does anyone know any details about the South African Nationals currently going on in Rhodes? I've had a query about them but couldn't find any updates.