Ukrainian Association of South Africa Українська Асоціація в ПАР

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Ukrainian Association of South Africa Українська Асоціація в ПАР

"Ukrainian Association of South Africa" is a volunteer non-profit association ( NPO 189-705).

Ukrainian Association of South Africa (UAZA) is a collaborative association in South Africa which strives to promote Ukraine, its culture, language and interests as of independent democratic country. UAZA head office is in Cape Town, but we invite Ukrainians and Ukrainian supporters from all areas of South Africa to become members. For more details visit www.uaza.co.za or contact us on [email protected]

24/06/2026

The river has always known.
Івана Купала is one of Ukraine’s oldest celebrations, rooted in pre-Christian Slavic tradition and carried forward through centuries of suppression, war, and displacement. It honours the summer solstice and the elemental forces of water, fire, and the earth in bloom.
Traditionally celebrated on the night of July 6-7, Ukraine moved the date to June 23-24 in 2023 following the adoption of the revised Julian calendar. Both dates are still observed, and both carry the same meaning.
At the heart of the celebration: wreaths woven from wildflowers, blessed by water. Women carry them to the river and set them free, reading the future in how they drift. A ritual so old no one alive remembers its beginning.
The woman you see here is not performing for a camera. She is doing what women in her family have done for generations.
What does summer mean where you are?
-24

23/06/2026

On May 30, 1876, Emperor Alexander II signed the Ems Decree in the German resort town of Ems, a secret order that imposed a near total ban on Ukrainian literature across the Russian Empire.
It built on an earlier order, the 1863 Valuyev Circular, which had already barred Ukrainian language scientific, educational and religious texts. The Ems Decree went further. Literary works, translations, even Ukrainian song lyrics for sheet music were banned from print. Ukrainian books published abroad could not be imported. Plays could not be staged. Public readings and concerts in Ukrainian were treated as threats to the state.
The decree was drafted by Mykhailo Yuzefovych, who accused Ukrainian cultural leaders of plotting an independent republic. Its reach extended into classrooms and institutions: Ukrainian teachers were reassigned away from Ukrainian provinces, Ukrainian professors were dismissed from Kyiv University, and the Southwestern Branch of the Russian Geographical Society was shut down for the offence of proving, through its own research, that Ukrainians had a distinct culture, language and homeland.
Those who resisted paid for it directly. Mykhailo Drahomanov was dismissed from his post and went into exile in Switzerland, where he kept Ukrainian publishing alive and smuggled uncensored work back into the empire. Pavlo Chubynsky, already arrested years earlier for his ties to an anti-imperial society, had written the poem that would go on to become Ukraine’s national anthem.
The Ems Decree was never officially repealed. It simply lost force after 1905, when political freedoms were briefly restored, only for the same impulse to resurface under Soviet rule, from Stalin’s purges of Ukrainian writers to later directives mandating Russian instruction in national republics. In total, more than 200 decrees and directives were issued across the Russian and Soviet empires aimed at eroding Ukrainian language and identity.
150 years on, the pattern has not disappeared. In Russian occupied Ukrainian territory today, Ukrainian signage is removed, books confiscated and Ukrainian speakers face prosecution for the language they speak

22/06/2026

Happy Birthday to H.E. The Ambassador of Ukraine to South Africa, Olexander Scherba!

On behalf of the Ukrainian Association of South Africa, we would like to extend our sincere congratulations on your birthday.

We wish you good health, boundless energy, and continued success in your diplomatic mission to strengthen international support for Ukraine and to foster friendly relations and cooperation between Ukraine and the Republic of South Africa.

Thank you for your dedicated service, openness to cooperation, and support for the Ukrainian community in South Africa. 💛💙

20/06/2026

Today is World Refugee Day. And if you are reading this in a home you chose, in a city you were not forced to leave, this post is for you.
Since February 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has displaced over 9 million people. Not as a side effect of war. As a strategy of it. Civilian homes, hospitals, and entire neighbourhoods have been deliberately targeted, forcing families to flee with no certainty of ever returning.
3.7 million Ukrainians remain displaced inside their own country, many of them more than once. 5.3 million are refugees across Europe, rebuilding their lives in languages and cities that were never part of the plan. Over 2.5 million homes have been damaged or destroyed. More than 8 million people have been pushed into poverty.
These are not abstractions. They are teachers, doctors, grandmothers, children. People who had routines, neighbours, a favourite street. People who had дім.
On this day we do not look away. We hold the weight of what has been taken, and we say clearly: this was not inevitable. It is the result of a war that must end, on terms that restore dignity to the people it has cost the most.
Remember them today. Remember them tomorrow.

19/06/2026

Прошу · Proshu. You’re welcome. 🤍
It is also please. And here you go. And don’t mention it. Прошу does not ask what the moment needs - it simply shows up for all of them. One word that meets every act of grace with more grace.
In a language built by people who give without keeping score, this might be the most Ukrainian word of all.
Прошу. It was never a burden. 💛

18/06/2026

🇺🇦 Dear Ukrainians in Cape Town, the Western Cape, and the Eastern Cape!

The Consul of Ukraine in the Republic of South Africa, Mr Andriy Lutsak, with the support of the Ukrainian Association of South Africa (UAZA), is planning a consular visit to Cape Town to provide consular services to Ukrainian citizens.

To help prepare for this visit, please fill a short survey available at the link below.

Your responses will help determine:
• the current demand for consular services in the Western Cape;
• which services are required;
• how best to organise the consular outreach visit in Cape Town.

Please complete the form if you need consulate service.

🔗 Registration form: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/yEBJg7pq4J

Unity is our strength! 💛💙

17/06/2026

June 2023. Seven African heads of state flew to Kyiv. Among the points Ramaphosa carried from that visit, and into talks with Moscow, was a commitment to the return of Ukrainian children forcibly deported to Russia.
It was one item on a longer list. But it was named, it was agreed upon, and it was carried forward.
April 2025. Zelensky landed in Pretoria for the first official visit by a Ukrainian president to South Africa. He handed Ramaphosa a list. Not a policy position. Not a diplomatic note. A list of 400 children, by name, taken from their homes.
“I really hope President Ramaphosa will help us bring them back.”
Russia has forcefully deported over 19,500 Ukrainian children since the full-scale invasion began. Only 1,284 had been brought home so far.
The number is small. The war is not over. South Africa can help to get Ukrainian children back. In 2025, Ramaphosa received 400 names of Ukrainian forcibly deported children. Can we help to bring more children to their families?
For Ukraine, every child returned is not a statistic. It is a family made whole again. It is evidence that the international community has not looked away.
South Africa has not looked away.

16/06/2026

On 16 June 1976, thousands of Black South African schoolchildren took to the streets of Soweto to protest apartheid education policies.
The Apartheid government responded with police gunfire, killing at least 176 students and injuring over 1,139. The Soweto massacre shocked the world and made Soweto into a turning point in the struggle against apartheid.In South Africa, Several hundred white students from the University of Witwatersrand held demonstrations in Johannesburg on 17 June in sympathy with the black students of Soweto and were joined by black workers.
They were brutally attacked by white vigilantes and by the police, resulting in serious injuries to scores of persons.

Demonstrations against “Bantu education” and in solidarity with the African students in Soweto soon spread to numerous African townships near Johannesburg, Pretoria, Krugersdorp, Germiston, Benoni, Boksburg, Klerksdorp and Nelspruit,” – stated the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid in a report ‘The Soweto Massacre and Its Aftermath’ submitted to both the General Assembly and the Security Council in August 1976.The Committee suggested that killing young South Africans in Soweto proved that appeals and condemnations were no longer sufficient.
The massacre was presented as evidence that the international community needed to move toward coercive measures, particularly sanctions.The measures advocated by the Special Committee in 1976 included:

1. A mandatory arms embargo against South Africa.
2. An end to military, nuclear and strategic cooperation with the apartheid regime.
3. Economic sanctions, including restrictions on investment, loans and trade that sustained apartheid.
4. Diplomatic isolation of South Africa.
5. Support for the liberation movements, particularly the ANC and PAC, as legitimate representatives of the oppressed majority.
6. Implementation of the Apartheid Convention, which Ukraine has ratified in November 1975 had entered into force in July 1976 and defined apartheid as a crime under international law.

The report on Soweto was submitted by the Acting Chairman of the Special Committee Against Apartheid, Volodymyr Martynenko

#1976

15/06/2026

Systems of domination often prioritise targeting culture, memory, and historical identity.

Empires always target culture first. Last night’s over 500 drones and over 60 russian missiles attacked Kyiv. The main target of russia is Ukrainian culture.

Among damaged objects are the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra (a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the oldest monastic complexes in Eastern Europe, founded in the 11th century), the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre (Ukraine’s leading state film archive and audiovisual heritage institution), and the Mystetskyi Arsenal (a major national cultural and museum complex housed in a historic 18th-century arsenal building, and one of Ukraine’s key contemporary art venues).

At least five people have been killed, over 50 injured. This is an attack on Ukraine’s cultural heritage, memory, and identity.

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