Cape Town - The DA has been slated for calling on Stellenbosch University’s (SU) biggest funder to pull the plug if the institution did not reject the recommendations of the Khampepe report, which exposed racism at the institution.
The report by retired Constitutional Court Justice Sisi Khampepe found that black students and staff at the institution still felt unwelcome and excluded at SU.
DA constituency head in Stellenbosch, Leon Schreiber, on Wednesday said they had instructed their lawyers to take the report on judicial review.
He said the party would write to the trustees of the Het Jan Marais Fonds, requesting them to consider defunding SU unless the university management explicitly rejected the recommendations of the Khampepe report, on what they said was the “extinction of Afrikaans at the university”.
“The Het Jan Marais Fonds is by far the biggest donor to SU. The fund originates from the last will and testament of Jan Marais, who donated £100 000 to the university in 1915 on the explicit condition that the money would only remain available for as long as Afrikaans enjoyed equal status to English as an academic language at the university.
“The implementation of the Khampepe report would clearly violate this condition, as it calls for the abolition of Afrikaans at Stellenbosch.
It would therefore potentially be ultra vires and inconsistent with the terms of the fund’s contract with SU for the current trustees of the Het Jan Marais Fonds to continue funding a university that plans to erase Afrikaans.
“The DA calls on the Het Jan Marais Fonds to put Rector Wim de Villiers on terms, making it clear that the fund will withdraw all of its financial support unless the university explicitly rejects Khampepe’s outlandish recommendation to extinguish the right to mother-tongue education of South Africa’s diverse Afrikaans-speaking community,” Schreiber said.
The report detailed the history of the university and the symbolic meaning that it acquired for certain members of the Afrikaans community posed challenges to transformation at the university.
In her report, Justice Khampempe said a major source of contention at the university was the issue of language.
“Despite the university’s favouring of multilingualism in its language policy there is a perception that Afrikaans remains the language of choice in unofficial and social settings.
This excludes black members of the university community. It also prejudices black members of staff who do not speak Afrikaans,” read the report.
The Het Jan Marais Fonds did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
The university welcomed the report, saying they were in the process of studying it.
EFF Student Command provincial treasurer at SU Phiwokuhle Qabaka said the DA always came with problems and never solutions.
“The question we should be asking is why are they so obsessed with this institution, it’s worrying.
Our institution is not a political playground. Why are they so afraid of transformation?” said Qabaka.
GOOD Party secretary-general and Member of Parliament Brett Herron said: “The DA is doing our country and their supporters a disservice. It seems they are unable to cross the Rubicon – they are stuck where PW Botha’s legacy is stuck. On the wrong side of history.”
A former SU employee said: “I believe that elitism is at core of this awful mess, and that they are cultivating a generation of entitled individuals who continue the cycle of systemic racism, micro-aggressions, othering and overall bad behaviour at the institution.”
Cape Times