Can we read it or can’t we? The centre of this bizarre mystery is a doctoral thesis on disgraced former South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje submitted to Rhodes University in 2005. The thesis was passed last year and the PhD was awarded.
Yet there appears to be an embargo on the thesis, preventing anyone from getting access to it, according to several people involved in the saga. But the university has denied that anyone has been refused access.
Cronje captained the Proteas from 1994, but his glittering sporting career was sharply terminated in 2001 when he was banned for life from participation in the sport for match-fixing for financial gain. In June the following year he died in a plane crash.
The doctorate was written by Anne Warmenhoven, the research for it conducted in the Rhodes psychology department. Sociologist Ashwin Desai, who is writing a biography of Cronje, told the Mail & Guardian he came across a reference to the thesis during a brief research fellowship he held at Rhodes last year.
Given that it is standard practice for university libraries to stock open-access copies of all successful theses, Desai asked the Rhodes library for a copy. He was told that there was an embargo on it. This week he told the M&G that about a year of formal attempts to get a copy of the thesis had failed.
The supervisor of the thesis was Rhodes psychology lecturer Roelf van Niekerk. He told the M&G that to gain access to the Cronje family Warmenhoven had, with his approval, entered into a legal agreement of confidentiality with Rhodes.
The agreement involved not making the thesis public, he said, ‘and the Cronje family would be able to see it once it was completed. If they were unhappy with it, the confidentiality would remain in force forever.†Beyond confirming that the thesis was about Cronje, he declined to elaborate on its contents.
Van Niekerk said he recently contacted both Warmenhoven and her attorney to ask if the agreement could be reconsidered and had not yet received a decision from them. Attorney Chris Niland, who drew up the agreement between Warmenhoven and Rhodes, confirmed that the effect of the legal document was that if Warmenhoven was awarded the degree the thesis would not be accessible publicly. ‘The family apparently wouldn’t cooperate [with Warmenhoven] without that agreement,†he said. Since Warmenhoven was his client, he had not had any discussions with Rhodes or the Cronje family on the matter.
Van Niekerk justified the process by saying that ‘as a psychologist I wouldn’t use my discipline to harm anyoneâ€.
The M&G asked him whether the embargo defeated the intended public academic purpose of research — namely that its outcomes are freely available to all. He conceded this point, saying: ‘But we wanted to be sensitive.â€
The same question about the public benefit of academic research was one of nine written queries the M&G put to both Rhodes vice-chancellor Saleem Badat and dean of humanities Fred Hendricks. The latter replied that Badat was out of the country. ‘We are currently working on the issue,†Hendricks wrote, ‘and we would like to respond to only [the question concerning access to the thesis] — nobody has been refused access to the thesis.†He said ‘we will respond more fully to your other questions as soon as we are in a position to do soâ€. These questions included: what the title of the thesis is; what it deals with and how; what Rhodes rules or statutes were invoked to enable the confidentiality agreement to be entered into; whether the examiners of the thesis were aware of the agreement; whether any precedents exist at Rhodes for this unusual handling of a thesis; and whether the university would authorise similar circumstances for any future research.
Niland said Warmenhoven was in the United States. She had not replied to the M&G‘s emailed questions by the time of going to press.