It seems Stellenbosch University (SU) has learned clear lessons from the Wilgenhof drama. The drama kept the university busy for over a year and the new rector, Prof Deresh Ramjugernath, has made some very sober comments.
But, with the current Wilgenhoffers soon moving back to their residence (after buildings there were “renovated”), one must ask: Has the media, which incited it all – and specifically the mainstream English media – learned any lessons from the messy, unnecessary, and libelous affair?
The SU has publicly apologised: “Specifically, SU does not regard Wilgenhoffers past or present as physical or sexual abusers, racists or Nazis, and wishes to state so unequivocally. SU regrets and apologises for not counteracting the adverse media narrative in this regard.”
You will, of course, find no similar admission, or even just a form of similar reflection, in the media. And this despite the fact that news sites, especially News24 and Daily Maverick, made it their goal to portray all current and former Wilgenhoffers as monsters.
At a time when so many people view the mainstream media with great suspicion, it is in the interest of journalists and columnists not to arm the sceptics unnecessarily. And yet, from day one, there has been a continuous stream of sensational, misleading, and erroneous reporting on Wilgenhof.
Anonymous sources were quoted. Accusations (even of rape) were made without any evidence. Obscure Nazi numerology was unearthed as self-evident explanations. People with barely a vague idea of what might go on in a men’s residence were widely quoted as “experts” and “specialists” – most of them also with an axe to grind.
Historical ambiguity
A technique often used by the media was a conscious historical ambiguity. They ignored the current Wilgenhof and simply wrote about the distant past as if it was still kept alive unchanged within the walls of the residence.
There is a great political market for this kind of race-focused noise. Just think of some of the so-called “scandals” News24 reported on that amounted to absolutely nothing:
- “Another ‘Blackface’ case at Stellenbosch University”, “Maties unit investigates ‘blackface'”, and “Maties students suspended from residence for wearing ‘blackface'” was screamed in 2016 – and it was, in fact, purple paint on female students’ faces.
- In January 2019, editor Adriaan Basson wrote about a photo of a primary school teacher’s class in Schweizer-Reneke: “There can simply be no justification for what she did. She should have known better and deserves censure for segregating her class based on race […] This is exactly what apartheid looked like […] The Schweizer-Reneke incident deserves outrage.” Only a few days later, the SA Human Rights Commission found no evidence of racism regarding the school commotion.
- “Eben Etzebeth should do the Boks a favour and return home” was the headline of a piece by Basson later that year, during the Rugby World Cup, when Etzebeth was also falsely accused of racism.
- In 2022, Basson wrote about “a very dark week that opened old wounds of South Africa’s unfinished business as the nation watched a young, white man urinating on 28 years’ gains made under our constitutional democracy.” News24, overall, caused a lot of damage with its reporting on the complicated Theuns du Toit saga. The court recently found Du Toit not guilty of crimen injuria and malicious damage to property.
- Clearly refutable accusations of racism against Jan Braai (who was just handing out boerewors rolls outside a Food Lover’s Market) were widely spread in misleading coverage in 2024.
- “Court awards R1.25m in damages to Cape Town pub owners over false racism accusations,” News24 reported, also in 2024, ironically about the very false racial uproar they themselves unleashed with terrible reporting.
There are other examples, but not enough space in a piece like this to examine them.
It’s of course not possible to quantify how many subscriptions News24 has lost due to this ideological madness, but I am convinced it’s a large number. One wonders if Media24, as a going concern, ever thinks about that?
It is also irresponsible of the media to see racism where there isn’t any. It dilutes the accusation, making it cheap and meaningless. This is unacceptable because real racism exists. But the temptation was too great to use Wilgenhof as a scapegoat for the past, especially among the “opinion formers”.
Pierre de Vos said Wilgenhoffers are an example of people that “cling to a version of their old exclusionary identity, one that is defined in opposition to a larger South African identity.” (Wilgenhof is precisely as transformed as the rest of the SU. Black Wilgenhoffers also publicly stated they want to send their own sons to the residence in the future, but by then the damage had already been done, and the media storm raged on.)
Torture chamber
Marianne Thamm wrote about the “exposure […] of a gloomy and filthy ‘torture chamber’ with Ku Klux Klan paraphernalia, veiled references to Adolf Hitler, used condoms, and photographic and written evidence of years of torture.” (By the way, the condoms were used as water balloons. And yes, this is the same Marianne Thamm who in 2018 wrote the glowing foreword for the defamatory The Lost Boys of Bird Island – a book in which several former apartheid-era politicians were falsely accused of child rape, a book that had to be withdrawn from circulation by the publishers.)
Jonathan Jansen, like many others, selectively quoted phrases from the De Jager investigation report in a misleading way: “absolute power wielded by white men without consequence” was used in Wilgenhof to “coerce, oppress, to victimise, to humiliate”. These phrases appear in a section of the report that theoretically speculates about the possible symbolic associations that the Nagligte’s medieval-style black cloaks could evoke. (The black cloaks were bizarrely linked to the Ku Klux Klan’s white attire in the report.)
It is also significant that opinion-makers like Jansen quoted no victims in their pieces, nor did they point out any incidents of violent or racist events in Wilgenhof’s recent past. Even the De Jager report – on which so much depended – had to admit that no such victims could be found.
At the level of news, the madness about Wilgenhof caused some very rough reporting. The obvious shortcomings in the De Jager report were not highlighted. The university’s processes were misrepresented. Lazy comparisons were made, such as equating the situation with the 2008 Reitz incident at the University of the Free State.
Even basic errors were made, such as the refrain that the Nagligte were involved in “initiation” – simply a factual error. Later in the protracted drama, many journalists would dismiss the fact that Rector Wim de Villiers, and Council Chair Nicky Newton-King, knowingly deceived the Council about the Wilgenhof report as a slight disagreement, or at most a bit of a slip-up.
Sensationalism
Sensational language that created false impressions – “rituals,” “horror,” “white supremacy,” “crude drawings depicting what appears to be male sexual assault” – was widely used by journalists. The drama of a cult or a bloodthirsty Mafia group – pure cliché – was irresistible to them. No true, in-depth investigative work was done by News24 or Daily Maverick.
The coverage was largely click-bait. This focus on spectacle may yield short-term gains for the media, but in the longer term it causes serious damage. How much credibility have the news sites lost in the year-long spectacle?
On 17 September 17, 2024, Basson published an opinion piece titled “Totsiens, menere” on News24. In the voice of a triumphant activist, the editor of News24 explained to his readers: The SU “had no choice but to close Wilgenhof men’s residence after 121 years – for good.”
On 18 July, the Wilgenhoffers will move back to Wilgenhof after being housed together as outcasts in another residence.
Wilgenhof lives on, and the Wilgenhof drama is over, but it will definitely not be the last fabricated racial scandal in the South African media. And the damage the media is inflicting on itself – by constantly alienating people through crude partisanship – is starting to look more and more like permanent damage.
The article originally appeared in Afrikaans on Maroela Media
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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