Rector and vice-chancellor Professor Wim de Villiers promised Parliament’s portfolio committee on higher education and training on Tuesday Stellenbosch University would root out “racists”.<\/p>\n
Stefan Lang, the outgoing SRC chairman, having to rush through his address in order to provide committee members the chance to respond to the university\u2019s presentation, reiterated that the SRC was focussed on “celebrating diversity”, a euphemism for black monoculture.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur vision is to create a welcoming ethos and anything that is against that must be removed,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur journey is imperfect, incomplete but we remain steadfast,\u201d said De Villiers.<\/p>\n
De Villiers, along with the rest of Stellenbosch University’s management were called before the Portfolio Committee to respond to allegations of racism made in an online documentary called \u201cLuister\u201d recently.<\/p>\n
The 35-minute video has been trending on social media since its release last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cI watched ‘Luister’ with my wife… it was uncomfortable and upsetting,\u201d said De Villiers. \u201cI do not enjoy knowing that students – my students – are suffering. It is painful.\u201d<\/p>\n
The student movement, Open Stellenbosch, was first to post the film online. It documented 34 students and a staff member’s accounts of racism on campus. De Villiers said he would not \u201cattempt to defend the indefensible\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s wrong. Racism, discrimination, human rights violations, exclusion and marginalisation are wrong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
However, De Villiers pointed out certain \u201cnuances\u201d omitted from \u201cLuister\u201d and in the dialogue that followed thereafter. Among these, De Villiers said clarification on off-campus incidents had not been made and that Elsenburg, a campus mentioned in the documentary, was in fact not part of Stellenbosch University.<\/p>\n
The “activist group” Open Stellenbosch on Tuesday embarked on a protest march to coincide with university management appearing before MPs to account for the institution\u2019s transformation policies.<\/p>\n
The group has bemoaned the university\u2019s use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, charging that this was devised to safeguard Afrikaner culture at the expense of black students.<\/p>\n
Last week a documentary titled Luister, which captured black students\u2019 plight at the university, caused ripples in Parliament and the government. Following its airing, the university\u2019s management was ordered to appear before Parliament\u2019s committee on higher education to explain themselves.<\/p>\n
Source: IOL\/ Business Day<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rector and vice-chancellor Professor Wim de Villiers promised Parliament’s portfolio committee on higher education and training on Tuesday Stellenbosch University would root out “racists”. Stefan Lang, the outgoing SRC chairman, having to rush through his address in order to provide committee members the chance to respond to the university\u2019s presentation, reiterated that the SRC was … Continue reading “Stellenbosch promises to ‘remove racists’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[12259,85,12321,12320,157,5190,11828],"class_list":["post-20183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-afrikaans","tag-afrikaners","tag-luister","tag-open-stellenbosch","tag-racism","tag-stellenbosch","tag-wim-de-villiers"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20184,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20183\/revisions\/20184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}