Students and staff at the University of Stellenbosch have united against a group of alumni, widely described as ”conservative old-timers”, who are opposed to a posthumous honorary doctorate for communist leader and advocate Bram Fischer.
The award has triggered a battle between the university’s council and senate, which approved the award; and the convocation, the body of graduate students and current and past academic staff, which is pushing for reconsideration.
Amid this week’s tensions — including an attempted toenadering between those in favour and the ”ooms in grey shoes” — senior academic staff brought a countermotion in support of the university’s nomination process. Others submitted a motion stating the convocation could not speak on behalf of all on campus.
”Bram Fischer is symptomatic of divisions over who owns the university,” said politics professor Amanda Gouws. A key factor in the conflict between those for transformation and those who regard the university as a volksbesit is that Fischer is seen as having ”betrayed the Afrikaner clan”. But the university had moved past that, said Gouws, who, with five others, signed the counter-motion.
That is a sentiment shared by the predominantly white student representative council (SRC), which is supporting honouring Fischer. SRC chairperson Lourens du Plessis said Fischer ”was brave enough to take a stand when he would have made it in the system … He is a role model.”
Despite reservations about Fischer’s communist beliefs, Du Plessis said the university must have a diversity of role models.
Herein lies a twist in the saga. Tertius Delport, Democratic Alliance MP and former SRC president, said he had brought the motion for reconsidering the honorary doctorate.
Taking issue with Fischer’s support of the armed struggle and citing ”hard evidence he remained an unreformed Stalinist to the end”, Delport was backed by, among others, Kobus Meiring, a pre-1994 Cape administrator who served as provincial finance minister under premier Hernus Kriel; former SABC chairperson Professor Christo Viljoen and historian Herman Gilliomee.
The university’s move to recognise Fischer has clearly hit a raw nerve: for decades this son of a Free State judge president and grandchild of an Orange River Colony prime minister was regarded a verraaier (traitor).
Ilse Fischer-Wilson, his daughter, believes he deserves the award. ”He never denied his Afrikaansness. It was an integral part of him.”
South African Communist Party deputy secretary general Jeremy Cronin said the party was proud that one of its members was being honoured, despite the robust debate. ”The real issue is [that] an Afrikaner communist is a reality that is just too indigestible for the conservatives.
”[The debate] has smoked out those individuals who remain stuck in a Cold War position — out of step with where young Afrikaners are going and out of step with a growing respect for the language.”
While the convocation is influential, it is not a decision-making body. In 2002 the university ignored its criticism of a new policy that accepted English and promised the development of Xhosa as a teaching language alongside Afrikaans. The same is expected to happen over the Fischer honorary doctorate. Next week’s meeting of the convocation is expected to simply note proceedings.
”It’s like a fight in the parking lot after the game has finished,” said Yvonne Malan, the philosophy doctoral student and researcher who, since nominating Fischer, has been a target of conservative criticism.
”We are the beneficiaries of Bram Fischer’s courage.”