When University of Pretoria (UP) vice-chancellor Callie Pistorius visited a male residence a few years ago, he came across a wall adorned with pictures of Boer generals.
”I asked them: Where are the pictures of other South African heroes — like King Cetshwayo who beat the British at Isandlwana?” he told the Mail & Guardian.
The incident highlights the university authorities’ interventionist approach to residential integration — and the authorities say they have enjoyed some success.
Ten years after integration began, the university’s 29 residences — housing 8 000 students — are integrated, reflecting the institution’s demographics: 41% of the students are black.
One of the first issues to be tackled was that of language. Students were asked to switch from holding meetings in Afrikaans only and to introduce English or African languages.
The authorities closely monitor the population of each residence.
Initially, white and black students moved into racial enclaves on the same floors or corridors. House committees now ensure that even hostel floors reflect the university’s demographics.
House committees are also demographically representative and 11 of the 29 hostel heads, all academics, are black.
Each residence has to draw up a list of values, based on the Constitution, and adapt the residence’s traditions accordingly. For example, the initiation practice requiring first-year students to bruise themselves by hitting themselves on the chest was banned.
Stellenbosch has adopted the same approach. The university’s manager of student housing, Pieter Kloppers, said residences were required to develop the values of respect, responsibility, freedom and open dialogue. ”If you transgress a value, you have to heal the relationship. Values give you a framework for dialogue. We urge students to spend more time in dialogue and less in discipline and conflict.”
Commissions of inquiry have also helped in framing residence policy. At UP the Human Rights Commission probed charges of racism in residences in 1999, while an inquiry under Dr Frederick van Zyl Slabbert investigated initiation practices in Stellenbosch residences after the death of a student in 2003.
Pistorius and De Beer believe the militaristic approaches in some male residences are rooted in 30-year-old practices introduced by conscripts returning from Namibia.