SRC disappointed in Convocation
At the Stellenbosch Convocation last night, in her well-articulated speech, Lovelyn Nwadeyi asked the Stellenbosch Alumni to listen. We, the SRC of Stellenbosch University, believe that both the Alumni and Breyten Breytenbach ignored this request, preferring to maintain the status quo.
We saw a system that allows people who have not attended this university in at least thirty years, to make crucial decisions regarding the future and prospects of the current generation of students. On 26 January 2016, Stellenbosch University’s Convocation had the opportunity to vote for a truly transformed statutory body that represents Stellenbosch’s changing demographics and needs.
However, the Convocation chose to remain within the boundaries of what is comfortable and, in real terms, regressed in its representation of diversity and much needed transformation. It is concerning that the newly elected executive of Convocation represents a bygone era, where the university represented one culture, one race and one language.
The exclusionary comments in Breytenbach's speech, as the new President of Convocation, exposed the apartheid nostalgia inherent at Stellenbosch University. Furthermore, we call upon the alumni that attended Convocation to re-evaluate their decisions as they perpetuated the exclusion of extremely poor and marginalised groups; provided mostly nonexistent translations services, applauded the acts committed by DF Malan, who was president during the implementation of Apartheid, and spoke on behalf of Coloured, Xhosa and Zulu South Africans specifically.
It is also an unfortunate occurrence that the issue of language at Stellenbosch would still be treated as if it would cause the death of Afrikaans at this institution. The idea to remove Afrikaans completely, perpetuated by the early sensationalist reporting by the Afrikaans media, has never been on the agenda at any formal meeting or discussed in any press release from this University.