Cape Town - The ANC Youth League has threatened to make Stellenbosch University ungovernable if the transformation and race rows plaguing the institution are not resolved.
The threat came as the ANC escalated its involvement in the run-up to its election campaign. It has also vowed to take legal action against Stellenbosch Municipality and to shake up what it says is embedded Afrikaner culture.
Anti-transformation practices and allegations of racism at the university have recently come under intense scrutiny.
The ANC’s stance on the row was outlined at an event held late on Friday at the university to celebrate the youth league’s 71st birthday.
Hundreds of the party’s supporters packed into a room to hear leaders speak on the issue.
“This institution does not benefit poor people. It continues to benefit the white minority… The league of this province, we must mobilise the youth. We’ll call upon all young people of this province that we fight against this racism.
“When it comes to a push, we will make this institution ungovernable,” the league’s newly elected national deputy president Desmond Moela said.
It was Moela’s first address to the league’s members in the Western Cape and his speech prompted wild applause.
Moela said they could not accept “white arrogance”, which he described as the biggest opposition to transformation.
ANC provincial chairman Marius Fransman also spoke at the event and said the ANC backed action to undo anti-transformation policies.
“The next process is to take over the (DA-run) Stellenbosch Municipality; therefore we as the ANC would support this struggle and this campaign.”
Fransman said at least 63 percent of students at Stellenbosch University were white, as were 83 percent of the academic staff.
Fransman cautioned that the campaign should not focus on the Afrikaans language itself.
“It’s not Afrikaans that’s the fight here; it’s the way the language policy at this university is being implemented.
“ It’s the way they entrench the culture of Afrikaners.”
Fransman said it was clear that the ANC needed to use the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act legislation against Stellenbosch Municipality and to force the university to reveal information about its transformation policies.
“We must actually litigate against this municipality so that we can understand what this institution really is. Most probably this will be in front of the Equality Court.”
Chumile Samson, Stellenbosch University’s South African Students Congress chairman, said black people were undermined at Stellenbosch University.
“There is (not) one sentence that can define this university, except what I’m going to say now: we are in a state of war here in this university.
“No longer will we allow these white males to make decisions on our behalf… The policies in this institution are anti-black.”
Samson said black people at the university had been reduced to a quota system.
“Black people are here just to make up numbers.”
Sunday Argus