Scotch Tagwireyi and Heather Hogan
The University of the Orange Free State (UOFS) has reintroduced apartheid-style rules in its male residences, by endorsing student demands to divide them according to race.
The extraordinary decision followed several incidents of violence on campus, which were attributed to racial tensions between students. The problems mostly occurred in under-graduate male hostels, although there are allegations that the house committees in female residences have barred black women from standing for office.
Since the decision last year to impose racial divisions, undergraduate residences have since been divided into three black, three white and two mixed, but the latter contains few blacks.
The university claims it tried to force students to communicate and sort out their differences but they refused. In the end, matters apparently became so bad that students approached university administrators and appealed for segregation in residences for the sake of peace. “We realise that if you allow people to live with their own kind, they create security for themselves which will make them want to reach out to each other,” says dean of students and transformation, Professor Theuns Verschoor. He adds: “We haven’t had trouble in the female residences – only the male residences – because where females can communicate, males have three problems – tradition, territoriality and testosterone – the three Ts.”
Male students say it is not possible for them to stay together because they do not agree on many things in the multi-storey, flat-like residences. White and black students argued continually over different tastes in music, sports, TV channels and language preferences at meetings, particularly the use of Afrikaans.
Karee, the most infamous of segregated residences on campus, has been divided by a corridor which serves as no man’s land. Black students now use the back entrance while white students use the old front entrance. They have different house committees and different facilities. Both groups of students say they are comfortable with the arrangement.
According to Verschoor, racial violence between white and black students started in 1994, after the university began admitting black students.
After one incident, transformation officer Billyboy Ramahlele convinced the white students not to go into the black residence by claiming the black students had guns. Verschoor says that in one case he fined seven white house committee members R500 each for not revealing the name of a colleague (which he believed they knew) who beat up a black student. Whites and non- whites allegedly wouldn’t communicate at meetings.
Although the university has accepted students’ demands as a workable solution to the racial problems, the solution has many implications for race relations on campus.
New students will now be placed in residences on the basis of their race and “character” interests. This segregation also conflicts with the country’s non- discriminatory policies.
The UOFS is not the only university to face racial problems in residences of this nature. The University of Pretoria was subjected to a Human Rights Commission enquiry last year on similar issues. The commission cleared the institution of racism in general, despite evidence of it in some residences.
Vivian Verwant, a 20-year-old physiotherapy student who lives in black Karee, says there has always been an unofficial division between the races on campus.
“It’s not the university that segregated us but the house committees in the hostels. The university only endorsed the changes to our residences,” says Sifiso Dlamini, a 23- year-old LLB student. “Everything is much better now. It is better this way.”
Tonie O’Reilly, a fifth-year law student, says: “There were many problems in the past, but both sides, whites and blacks, talked about it and together with the university decided to divide Karee and so far it’s been better – for both sides. There is a more peaceful atmosphere at the university. We [whites and blacks] still greet and respect each other and get along very well but the ‘new South Africa’ is the ideal and there were problems between students in the past.”