The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes today’s announcement by Stellenbosch University’s (SU) executive committee that it has launched an investigation into allegations against the Rector of SU, Professor Wim de Villiers. The investigation will be led by retired judge Burton Fourie, and is expected to deliver its findings on 2 December 2019.
This investigation comes after the DA’s constituency head for Stellenbosch and an alumnus of SU, Dr Leon Schreiber MP, lodged a complaint with the university’s Registrar over media allegations that De Villiers created a perception of interference with the court case to practically eliminate Afrikaans tuition from SU. De Villiers allegedly had ongoing inappropriate contact with Judge Edwin Cameron while the matter was before the court, in order to convince Cameron to accept nomination to become the next Chancellor of SU.
Shortly after Cameron accepted De Villiers’ repeated offers to become Chancellor, Cameron authored the judgement that practically eliminated Afrikaans teaching from SU. De Villiers’ conduct creates the extremely worrying perception that Afrikaans and substantive multilingualism at SU were the victims of an attempt by the Rector to improperly influence a Justice of the Constitutional Court.
The DA will closely monitor the investigation and we look forward to its findings. We are deeply concerned about the perception of a conflict of interest in this case, but also about the disrespect shown towards Afrikaans and multilingual tertiary education by the Rector’s alleged conduct. We reiterate our call that justice must be seen to be done in this case, that English and Afrikaans should be primary and fully equal languages of instruction at SU, and that substantive multilingualism should be pursued at educational institutions.