Eleven years after South Africa became a democracy, student hostels at the University of the Free State are still racially segregated. And one of the hostels for white men is still called Verwoerd.
This week, a university official acknowledged that ”the current management of the University of the Free State has identified the residence placement policy as an issue that needs to be urgently reviewed — in fact, the process to review the policy has already begun”.
Anton Fisher, the university’s director of strategic communication said, ”The current management shares the view that this name [Verwoerd] is deeply offensive and needs to be changed … the process to do this has already started.” Fisher said a ”transformation plan task team” led by two vice-rectors would table a ”transformation road map” for the university within the next few months.
A third-year law student, who asked to remain anonymous, said she had come from a mixed-race school and had initially thought the segregated hostels were ”a joke”. ”When I saw it first hand, I was speechless. Real life is not like this. You have to work with people from every background in the big world.” She believed the university management did not want to change the status quo. ”They’re fine with it.”
”Students tried to make a change … but when it gets to the top manage-ment, it just gets: ‘Okay fine. Next month, next week, we’ll talk about it,’” she said. You just think, ‘Ag! What’s the point?’”
Student representative council chairperson Graeme Bradley denied the residences were segregated, saying people of ”different cultures” were accommodated in certain hostels.
He said the ”students decided they want to live like they’re living now” in 1997, when riots broke out on the campus. This led to tensions and the students segregated themselves.
”It is something we are trying to address,” said Bradley. ”We are aware that, to the outside, it doesn’t look good.” He said the council has received no complaints in the past two years about the race issue in hostels. ”The majority of students at the moment are happy.”