You write in your Editorial Reversing Verwoerd (15-21 February 2002) that “Fort Hare and Rhodes, for example, are balking at the planned merger. One has a proud anti-apartheid record, the other a proud academic record”.
This is inaccurate. The University College of Fort Hare was taken over by the Minister of Bantu Education from 1 Janauary 1960. It was granted university status by a Government Gazette of April 30 1969. Before then it was only a university college offering matric and Unisa courses. Between 1969 and 1992 the University of Fort Hare had only three vice-chancellors. They were Rousseau, De Wet and Lamprecht in that order. There is no information indicating that these men were opposed to apartheid. If events during the period of their reign mean anything, they operated an autocracy of the first order. Students responded by resisting the Fort Hare autocracy during this period. In other words, some students at Fort Hare were anti-apartheid but I have serious doubts if this can be said of the authorities. The autocracy had its roots in the days before Fort Hare became a university. That was when people like Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Tennyson Makiwane and Alfred Nzo were expelled. (Interestingly Chief Mangosuthu Buthezi was withdrawn from Fort Hare before he graduated. He was taken to Natal University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Bantu Administration! Mandela himself later obtained his BA and LLB by correspondence with Wits and Unisa in 1941 and 1942.) Staff who held views that were counter to those of the authorities were also expelled. According to reports, they are still being expelled to this day, i.e. Fort Hare is still an autocracy with a repressive campus network or imbokodo.
The comparison of a false picture of Fort Hare with the “proud academic record” of Rhodes also needs examination. What is meant by “proud academic record”? Let us take an example: the Institute of Social and Economic Research. Throughout the sixties and later this unit of Rhodes conducted some of the most racist research in the townships of East London, especially before the removal of people from rural areas which accompanied the creation of Mdantsane. Is this a proud record? Bambihlelo Hlwatika, Port Elizabeth