Protest at SU after urination incident
JUST hours after the formal installation of human rights lawyer and retired Constitutional Court judge, Justice Edwin Cameron, as chancellor, hundreds of Stellenbosch University (SU) students protested against institutionalised racism festering on its campus.
Around 300 protesters, supported by the Student Representative Council (SRC), the South African Student Congress, and the Economic Freedom Fighters Student Command, gathered to hand over a memorandum of demands under the #RacismMustFall Stellenbosch University Student Movement.
The movement said SU did not only produce the founders of apartheid, with graduates including Hendrik Verwoerd, DF Malan, and FW de Klerk, but it also produced apartheid policies that oppressed black people post-1948 after the National Party came to power.
Video footage of a white student, Theuns du Toit, urinating inside the room and on the desk of a black student, Babalo Ndwayana, has caused national outrage.
Ndwayana opened cases of housebreaking, malicious damage to property and crimen injuria, on Tuesday with Stellenbosch police.
The movement called for the establishment of an Institutional Reconciliation and Transformation Committee (IRTC) focused on racism, the expulsion of Du Toit and the dissolution of the Huis Marais House Committee.
An SU alumnus, Justice Cameron was installed as the university’s 15th chancellor at the Kruiskerk on Wednesday evening.
Justice Cameron assumed office in January 2020, but the official ceremony was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the ceremony, Justice Cameron said: “We deserve a university – to return to the rector’s theme – that is free of the disrespect and hatred and degradation that were manifested in the ghastly incident at Huis Marais on Sunday when a white student, Theuns du Toit, urinated on the study materials of a black student, Babalo Ndwayana.
“All these things are what our national sense of dignity and self-worth entitles us to object against, to claim better.”
Meeting with the rector and Justice Cameron earlier, the SRC said members wouldn’t be attending the ceremony when there was so much pain on the campus.
SU rector and vice-chancellor Professor Wim de Villiers said a significant part of Justice Cameron’s legal career was dedicated to using the law, apartheid’s oppressive instrument, to work against apartheid.
“There is absolutely no place for bigotry, discrimination, prejudice, violence, victimisation, damage of property, gender-based violence, and certainly no place for racism on our campus,” De Villiers said.
More than 150 000 South Africans have signed a petition calling for Du Toit’s expulsion.
A Rally Against Racism is expected to take place today at 5pm at Rooiplein on at SU’s main campus.
The petition will be handed over prior to the rally to the Student Discipline Office, at 3pm.
ANC leader of the opposition in the Western Cape Legislature, Cameron Dugmore, met with Ndwanyana and his father on Wednesday.
Dugmore said a conscious programme of anti-racism among students and staff was needed and he called for the immediate expulsion of Du Toit.
SU is investigating another alleged incident that occurred at the Law Dance on May 12, when racist remarks were allegedly made towards a female student.