Sanele Nkompela
Cape Town - Each province has more than two official languages, usually three with English and Afrikaans enjoying equal usage followed by an indigenous African language.
Is there a university in Limpopo using an African indigenous language as a medium of tuition? Is there one in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu Natal, Mpumalanga and anywhere else? Any university that uses SeSotho as a medium of tuition in the Free State?
But the Free State University and Stellenbosch University are twins.
I'm asking this because language is an important aspect of culture. Every language in this country is important, including Afrikaans. Now, Stellenbosch University mainly offers its programmes in Afrikaans. I went to an on-campus Open Day on May 7 in order to see things of interest.
The brochures and pamphlets are written in Afrikaans.
In the session in that half-packed lecture hall, it was only myself and a Grade 12 learner from Masiyile High School in Khayelitsha who had maroon or burgundy skin. The session was largely conducted in Afrikaans and about four white folks asked a question about whether lectures are delivered in the language, because it transpired that some of white attendees, parents who accompanied their children seeking to enrol happened to be having difficulties understanding it, and preferred English.
It is important to note, though, that Stellenbosch University has demonstrated for a long period the importance of using a mother tongue academically in fields that are beyond the language and linguistic fields. Students have written their thesis and dissertations in Afrikaans.
This gave courage to the speakers of African indigenous languages and we began seeing other students writing their theses and dissertations in African indigenous languages.
In 2018 a total of 31 765 students were enrolled at the university. On the official annual SU census date (June 2018) 58.1% of enrolled students were white, 20.1% black African, 18.1% coloured, 3.1% Indian and 0.2% Asian.
In terms of home language, 47.8% indicated English, 37.8% Afrikaans, and 10.3% other official South African languages as their home language, and 4.1% other (international)languages.
So, this census, not from somewhere else but from the institution itself, tells clearly that the institution is fast growing as a diverse university in terms of its student population groups.
So why continue with a language not understood by a substantial percentage?
The reason is clear, the institution is not promoting Afrikaans but uses it as a tool to exclude other population groups and wants to make the institution exclusively for Afrikaans-speaking whites.
This is historical and post-1994 it has opted for an Afrikaans-English dual-medium agenda as a response to calls for transformation.
Brian Bunting once wrote in 1994 that in many cases, these universities were committed to preserving the apartheid status quo and were, and still are, dominated by Afrikaans-speaking managerial body or councils.
Stellenbosch University is a site of institutional whiteness and is frequently under scrutiny for trying to guard the Dutch culture and heritage as envisioned and epitomised by DF Malan, then minister of the interior in the 1920s and General Hertzog both serving under the government of segregation.
So I get the sense that Afrikaans-speaking whites have institutions, eg, Stellenbosch University and the South African Rugby Union and a few others that they consider their own and their own only. I cannot help but to think they consider Afrikaans theirs more than it is to our coloured compatriots.
And this Afrikaaner nationalism practised in such institutions as Stellenbosch is not promoting Afrikaans, but rather painting a negative picture about it. The university has been beginning to transform itself with the intervention of the Department of Higher Education but these incidents are pushing back the good work started.
Moreover, there are many students at Stellenbosch University who come from families headed by people who are not wage earners, but profit makers.
The suspended student’s action of urinating on the study material of a black student speaks more about a family as an organ of Afrikaaner nationalism and social class ego that still exists in that particular population group.
The university is an enabler and creator of an environment for such intolerable racist behaviours by children, because its systems illustrate to Afrikaans-speaking students that people who do not look like them are not welcome to the university and the community.
The university may have suspended the perpetrator with the initiation of internal processes alongside that of the police, but what about the institution’s racial systems?
A serious work by the Human Rights Commission is necessary to liberate those folks from themselves and appreciate the coexistence of diverse races of this country.
I hear some conservatives talking about how the suspect would be easily freed. Should the suspect get a good lawyer, this presupposes that there are no good prosecutors.
Yes, the perpetrator is young; the issue cannot, in my view, be addressed either by restorative nor punitive justice in that institution. The community of Stellenbosch as a town feeds into the university.
In conclusion, it would be salutary if many patriotic Afrikaans-speaking whites who subscribe to the notion of nation building, denounce these practices because there are many of them.
And the next Stellenbosch University Council meeting should be broadcast live to the public with this issue on the agenda.
Nkompela is a self-published fiction writer who lives in Khayelitsha, pursuing his LLB degree at Unisa. He is a regional convenor of the Unisa Law Students Association in Cape Town.
Cape Times