Our universities have had their share of troubled times and controversies, but the dispute between judge Edwin Cameron, the chancellor of Stellenbosch, and Prof Wim de Villiers, its rector, is surely unprecedented.
A former justice of the Constitutional Court and one of the country’s leading advocates and most brilliant legal scholars, Cameron is not a man to make allegations lightly, or to express them in anything but the most precise and carefully argued terms.
In the matter of the proposed closure of Stellenbosch’s Wilgenhof residence (aka Bekfluitjie), following revelations of unacceptable initiation procedures in the past, a three-person panel was appointed to make recommendations. Its final report indicated that the only course available was to close Wilgenhof — or did it?
Cameron alleges that the panel’s original report was changed by De Villiers, by removing a section that had suggested an alternative to permanent closure, namely a campus dialogue that might lead to Wilgenhof remaining open with significant changes to its traditions and culture. The explanation by De Villiers has apparently not satisfied Cameron, and he alleges he was misled.
The country’s great universities have been rare islands of comfort in a sea of educational and moral dysfunction. How Stellenbosch handles this thorny issue will be revealing.
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