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The university’s transformation journey requires the courage to interrogate not only policies and demographics but also institutional cultures, symbols, and spaces. Wilgenhof is one such space.
PROFESSOR ASLAM FATAAR
At the reopening of Wilgenhof residence on July 25, 2025, former Chancellor of Stellenbosch University and former Constitutional Court judge, Justice Edwin Cameron, delivered a forceful speech defending the residence’s continued existence.
In remarks reported on Politicsweb on July 29, Cameron described the 2024 decision to close Wilgenhof as an act of ‘arrogance, ignorance, and folly’, attributing it to what he called institutional overreach, dishonesty, and a failure of leadership.
His framing casts the closure as a misguided attempt to impose ideological uniformity, implicitly portraying the university’s transformation efforts as intolerant of historical identity and tradition. He also criticised what he saw as a lack of due consultation and transparency in the decision-making process.
These remarks have rekindled a contentious public debate and generated concern among those working to align the university’s structures and culture with the broader aims of democratic transformation in post-apartheid South Africa.
Justice Cameron is widely recognised for his lifelong dedication to justice, dignity, and equality. His contribution to South Africa’s post-apartheid moral and legal frameworks is profound. Yet his recent public defence of Wilgenhof has brought into sharp focus the unresolved tension between institutional legacy and the urgent imperative of university transformation.
Cameron’s remarks were pointed and rhetorical. At the heart of his speech lay a passionate commitment to defending Wilgenhof’s identity as a site of tradition, community, and excellence. But therein lies the dilemma. In doing so, he aligned himself with a vision of the university that remains tethered to its past, rather than with the demands of its present and the promises of its future.
Today’s Stellenbosch University is not the one Cameron once attended. The student body is now more than 50 per cent Black. Academic staff demographics are shifting rapidly in response to national equity priorities and institutional commitments.
A growing number of students are supported by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), coming from working-class and impoverished communities. These students are not seeking to inherit a legacy shaped by elite masculine traditions. They arrive seeking a sense of belonging, recognition, and the opportunity to become intellectuals and citizens in a just and democratic South Africa.
Under new leadership, Stellenbosch is grappling with this transformation. It is an institution in transition, working to align its pedagogical, research, and institutional cultures with the democratic ideals of equity, justice, and public accountability. The project of transformation is not an assault on excellence or tradition. Instead, it is an effort to remake the university so that it serves all of its students and contributes meaningfully to the country’s social and intellectual futures.
Against this backdrop, Cameron’s defence of Wilgenhof appears increasingly out of step. By casting its closure as a result of dishonesty and intolerance, he deflects attention from the substantive critiques that have long been levelled against the residence. Wilgenhof has come to symbolise an older Stellenbosch steeped in patriarchal and racially exclusive codes of conduct, where brotherhood and discipline were often enforced through harmful initiation practices and hierarchies of belonging. These concerns are not speculative. Investigative reporting has highlighted troubling aspects of Wilgenhof’s culture, including its resistance to oversight, its bonding rituals, and its often exclusionary ethos.
Cameron’s address sidestepped the substantive historical and cultural legacies associated with Wilgenhof. Rather than engaging with its symbolic role in perpetuating exclusivist traditions, his remarks focused on procedural concerns, the perceived overreach of institutional authority, and the importance of safeguarding tradition. This framing shifts the discussion away from the structural dimensions of exclusion towards a narrative of institutional victimhood and betrayal. The risk here extends beyond sentimentality.
When tradition is invoked without critical interrogation, it can function as an ideological shield that protects historically privileged spaces from necessary transformation. In such instances, appeals to heritage do not preserve institutional integrity. Instead, they legitimise the continuity of power structures that reproduce racialised, gendered, and class-based forms of marginalisation, all under the guise of complexity and nuance.
The university’s transformation journey requires the courage to interrogate not only policies and demographics but also institutional cultures, symbols, and spaces. Wilgenhof is one such space. To preserve it without radically reimagining its form and function risks undermining the broader work being done across the university to cultivate inclusive and generative environments for all students. That includes rethinking residence models, pedagogies, curricula, assessments, and support systems, particularly for students who have been historically excluded from elite academic institutions.
Cameron’s intervention has become a distraction from this work. While the university is working to build an inclusive intellectual culture aligned with democratic commitments, his remarks may serve to centre the preservation of one exclusive space. They redirect the conversation away from justice and inclusion toward legacy defence and procedural grievance. For those leading transformation projects across the university, this feels like a frustrating reassertion of elite nostalgia at precisely the moment when systemic change is most needed.
Cameron’s legal legacy is undeniable. His contributions to constitutional democracy and human rights remain part of South Africa’s moral fabric. Yet on this issue, he finds himself aligned with institutional preservation rather than with meaningful transformation. His speech may reflect loyalty, even affection, for a formative space in his life. But universities are not museums. They are dynamic public institutions, charged with preparing the next generation for citizenship and leadership in a complex, unequal, and rapidly changing world.
Transformation is not about erasing history. It is about discerning which histories continue to serve the public good, and which must be revised or relinquished. Wilgenhof, in its then-erstwhile exclusionary form (now reimagined for inclusive purposes), did not adequately serve the intellectual and social needs of Stellenbosch’s diverse student body. Its symbolic and material structures carried too much weight from the past. Cameron’s refusal to reckon with this reality places him at odds with the university’s moral and educational commitments.
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The work of institutional change continues, with or without the approval of legacy figures. As Stellenbosch University builds pathways toward just education, inclusive knowledge, and socially engaged research, it does so on the strength of those willing to imagine a future beyond inherited structures. The future lies not in the defence of enclaves, but in the cultivation of spaces where all students may belong, flourish, and contribute.
Aslam Fataar is Research Professor in Higher Education Transformation, Department of Education Policy Studies, Stellenbosch University.
- This article was first published by News24.
