The University of the Free State (UFS) has handed a private company a R4-million contract to help integrate its hostels, in the wake of the outcry over the ‘race video” shot by white students in the Reitz men’s hostel last year.
Cape-based iGubu Leadership Agency has a three-year contract to help the university identify obstacles to integration and make recommendations to the council.
UFS acting vice-chancellor Teuns Verschoor told the Mail & Guardian that the council realised that it would take too long for the university to embark on such a programme itself. ‘The appointment is a response to a council decision so iGubu’s recommendations won’t be taken lightly.”
iGubu CEO Rudi Buys said it will hold discussions with students on situations that could create conflict. It will also look at structural limitations to the building of trust among residence students.
Buys said the company will hold ‘stereotype reduction workshops where students get into story-telling. We find that students go home during the holidays and get exposure to the old language of apartheid and racism. We want to allow them space to break free and create friendships.”
On initiation rites, which are officially forbidden but continue, Buys said ‘we would like to enable students to critically unpack traditions and let go of dysfunctional ones”.
Since the Nineties, UFS has been plagued by white student resistance to its residence integration policies. Last year its council approved a new policy, to be implemented this year, which stipulates that first-year intake is at least 30% black in junior residences and 50% black in senior residences.
After the row over the video, which depicted five elderly black workers duped into eating food on which the students had urinated, the government called for Reitz to be closed and converted into a ‘centre for transformation, unity and reconciliation”.
Last week the university announced that Reitz will be closed on June 20 this year to become the Institute for Diversity ‘that will be a centre of academic excellence for studying transformation and diversity in society”.
A committee has been set up to help residents find other accommodation.
Verschoor said ‘our intention is to get beyond this and … become a champion in diversity management, even offering a BA degree in diversity management.
‘Reitz internationally is a symbol of racism and sexism. We decided: Let’s change this place around into a totally different one to enhance diversity.”
He said that while some residences are transforming, others are not. ‘The historically white ladies’ residences have transformed, but the historically black male residences are still 100% black.”
Verschoor said iGubu will assess whether the discretion that residences have over the placement of 50% of students is a stumbling block to integration.
Students out of the country
Former University of the Free State students Roelof Malherbe and Schalk van der Merwe, accused of taking part in the production of the Reitz video, have escaped university disciplinary action by dropping out. The UFS laid a charge of crimen injuria against them as well as Danie Grobler and Johnny Roberts, who had already left the university. The state is in the process of deciding whether the four should be prosecuted.
In theory, Malherbe and Van der Merwe, who were third-year agriculture students, could move to another South African university as there was no internal disciplinary hearing and they were not found guilty of misconduct.
However, UFS acting vice-chancellor Teuns Verschoor said that universities have an understanding that if a student wishes to complete a degree at another institution, a certificate of good conduct is required. This usually referred ”to outstanding disciplinary action, debt and library books”.
Theuns Eloff, chairperson of Higher Education South Africa, the universities vice-chancellors’ association, said ‘morally, universities would be reluctant” to accept Malherbe and Van der Merwe as students, as they have a stigma clinging to them.