The executive management of Stellenbosch University has unanimously accepted the recommendation to close down its disgraced residence, Wilgenhof, following evidence of torture and abuse at the 120-year-old male student accommodation.
The university’s vice-chancellor and rector, Professor Wim de Villiers, said the recommendation, if accepted by the university council, will result in the closure of Wilgenhof at the end of the 2024 academic year.
“Alternative uses of the space will be discussed with a view to being effected during 2025,” he said in a statement issued by the university on Wednesday.
The university’s executive management appointed a three-member panel to investigate the sordid contents of two rooms located inside Wilgenhof after media reports exposed acts of humiliation, torture, and physical and sexual abuse of students as part of initiation and punishment practices at the residence.
The panel discovered that “Hool 88” was a space where the Wilgenhof disciplinary committee, also known as the “Nagligte” (night lights), mete out punishment to students in the wee hours of the night.
Humiliation and torture
Another room called “Toe Argief” served as storage for records, memorabilia, and paraphernalia, including Ku Klux Klan-like hoods, hangman costumes, and shoes worn by the Nagligte.
The more than a century-long shameful history of Wilgenhof was exposed on January 27 when photographs taken during a surprise audit of the residence by the university’s management leaked to the media.
Contained in the two rooms, which the audit team had to break down to gain access, were shocking photographs depicting the humiliation, torture, and sexual assault of students in initiation rites and punishment practices.
Records found in the rooms were as recent as 2023 and also went back more than a century.
The panel, which included Dr Derek Swemmer, a former registrar at Wits University and the University of the Free State, and Penny van der Bank, deputy registrar for governance at Stellenbosch University, recommended closing the residence.
The university said De Villiers will recommend to the council that Wilgenhof residences be closed and that alternative uses be considered for the buildings.
“The council will consider the rector’s recommendations at its meeting on June 24, 2024,” said the university in a statement.
Rooms repainted and sanitised
In its report, the panel also lambasted the institution’s management’s decision to immediately remove the contents of the two rooms and to sanitise and repaint them.
By the time students returned for the start of the new academic year, there was no trace of Hool 88 and Toe Argief.
The panel found that Stellenbosch University should not have immediately stripped, repainted, and sanitised the two rooms in the way and at the time that it did.
“The two rooms should have been sealed up to prevent access by anyone. SU [Stellenbosch University] should then have preferably crafted an inclusive process to ventilate the meaning and implications of this discovery for Wilgenhof and SU.
“It was a lost opportunity,” the panel said in its report.
Some of the famous former SU students who were residents at Wilgenhof include retail magnate Christo Wiese, retired Constitutional Court judge Edwin Cameron, and the late Steinhoff crook Markus Jooste.
