S.Africa: The RACIST & SEXUAL SCANDAL THAT NEVER WAS BUT NEWS24 TRIED TO CREATE IT ANYWAY: Wilgenhof: News24 ’ s parting smear
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[It seems News24 went to great lengths to pretend that all kinds of nefarious stuff was going on at Stellenbosch University's Wilgenhof residence. It was basically a huge storm in a tea cup … about something that never happened! Jan]
Here’s a short summary of the story:
News24 reignited the controversy surrounding Stellenbosch University’s Wilgenhof residence, which began with a January raid and leaked photos framing it as a hub of racist, abusive traditions. The campaign, spearheaded by News24 with apparent backing from university insiders, led to the residence’s closure, later deemed likely unlawful.
Vice Chancellor Wim de Villiers criticized Chancellor Edwin Cameron’s defense of Wilgenhof, accusing him of bias and downplaying allegations. Cameron had warned against overreacting to misconstrued practices but faced accusations of "gaslighting" and prioritizing Wilgenhof over institutional interests. Despite inflammatory claims of abuse, the investigative panel found no evidence of violence or misconduct, relying on anonymous, decades-old allegations.
De Villiers’ persistence, despite warnings of harm to the university, contrasted with positive testimonials from Wilgenhof alumni. News24’s sensationalist reporting, characterized by unsubstantiated claims and a persistent focus on alleged "sexual assault," appeared aimed at discrediting Cameron and Wilgenhof. Critics argue this misrepresentation undermined the university and the residence’s legacy.
Here’s the full article criticising it:
Wilgenhof: News24 ’s parting smear
Marie-Louise Antoni – James Myburgh – 22 December 2024
Marie-Louise Antoni and James Myburgh say the publication has chosen to end the year in the unfortunate manner it began it
As the year draws to a close and most people are preparing for a time of reflection and repose, the hardworking men and women of News24 have chosen instead to close out the year by flogging the dead horse that is the Wilgenhof ‘scandal’.
For those who may have forgotten, this affair was conjured up by News24 itself at the start of the year through a campaign of relentless and sensationalist coverage of the storied Stellenbosch University residence and its traditions. This effort was aided by a deluge of leaks and briefings from shadowy figures with opaque motives from within the SU administration.
These leaks began with the invasive photographs taken during a raid of two of the residence’s private rooms on 9th January, including its archive covering 120 years of history, by SU officials from Student Affairs. These were leaked to News24 two weeks later and splashed across the internet, for all the world to see, under the headline “House of Horrors” on 25th January 2024. It was the most read article on the site that day, garnering 100 449 page views, its author Prega Govender lately proudly noted.
This famously free-thinking residence – which nurtured an extraordinary number of anti-apartheid dissidents and business entrepreneurs – was re-framed by News24 as a den of abusive, racist, white supremacist activities perpetrated by pro-Nazi KKK-attired sadists who terrorised their victims in a dedicated “torture chamber”.
This media campaign, emanating from within the university administration itself, created the groundswell of outrage necessary to force through the closure of the residence. Though it initially achieved its objective, this came at the expense of many current Wilgenhof students, who suffered “unfair victimisation, abuse, reputational harm and trauma” – as even the council chairperson, Nicky Newton-King, later had to concede. The university ultimately did not contest the legal challenge by current students to the closure and instead reached a settlement, as its own “expert legal opinion” advised that the decision to close the residence was likely unlawful.
On Thursday, however, News24 decided to end the year as it began it by publishing yet another salvo against Wilgenhof and its defenders, based on yet another high-level leak, and again framed in the most damaging way possible. The article, which appears under the byline of Bernadette Wicks, reveals the contents of a follow up letter and its attachments that Vice Chancellor and Rector Wim de Villiers sent on 20th November to the Kriegler inquiry into his and Newton-King’s role in the underhanded changes to the recommendations of the panel report on the future of Wilgenhof, which were altered to ensure its closure.
In this letter, De Villiers reportedly criticises University Chancellor Edwin Cameron for defending Wilgenhof in personal correspondence and conversations from the very start of the affair. The letter was not forwarded by Kriegler to Cameron for a response, presumably because the issues it raised fell completely outside the inquiry’s terms of reference.
On 17th January — after the raid but before the images were leaked to Media24 – Cameron wrote an email to De Villiers, responding to the febrile state-of-mind that had already seemingly gripped the administration. "The shock-horror-clutch-my-pearls reaction”, Cameron cautioned, “seems completely inappropriate and – in addition – detrimental to the university as well as to Wilgenhof and everyone connected and associated with it".
It appears that during their concomitant conversations in January, Cameron warned De Villiers that the actions of the ‘Nagligte’ – the residence’s disciplinary committee — were being seriously misconstrued. According to De Villiers’ (jaundiced) account, as related by News24, Cameron described their practices as “innocent”, “play acting”, “a bit of paint daubed on the behind/body” and ‘swallowing some linseed oil and/or castor oil’." Cameron also commented that it was “all meant for fun” and dismissed the photos of the contents as “shock-horror-clutch-my-pearls” and “much ado about nothing.”
De Villiers also claimed that Cameron had further criticised Student Affairs’ involvement and questioned the motive behind their warrantless raid of Wilgenhof on 9th January. Cameron also repeatedly expressed the opinion, De Villiers stated, that “’Wilgenhof was being mugged’, that it was ‘set up’, and that the university was ‘always out to get them’."
In his letter to the Kriegler inquiry, De Villiers proceeded to complain:
“The chancellor’s email of 17 January 2024 and comments deeply disturbed me and signified a complete lack of insight with regard to his significant conflict of interest [as a Wilgenhof alumnus] and inability to appreciate the negative reactions/revulsion experienced by staff and students [especially those of colour] on being confronted by the images and activities of the Nagligte escapades.”
He went on to unfavourably contrast Cameron’s private input in mid-January with the public statement the Chancellor issued on 31st January, after News24 ’s misreporting had whipped up a national frenzy over the supposed KKK/Nazi/torture activity at the residence.
In his letter, De Villiers also accused Cameron of “gaslighting” for requesting him, in June, to issue a public a statement on his role in altering the report’s “final” recommendations. This, according to De Villiers, was “a deliberate attempt by [Cameron] to distort and manipulate the facts and unjustifiably and unfairly discredit me in the minds of others." A further conversation in September, when Cameron informed him of his decision to depose an affidavit in the review application by Wilgenhof alumni, was also described as "extremely unpleasant, and of a ‘bullying’ and ‘gaslighting’ nature.”
In this exchange, Cameron allegedly "repeated the assertions that Wilgenhof’s closure decision is a cancellation/cancel culture lobby victory." De Villiers claimed Cameron had "demanded" that the report be rescinded, threatening “reputation risk [to him], the council chair and the university" otherwise. "My overall impression was that the chancellor clearly put Wilgenhof’s interests above that of the institution’s."
In response to comments Cameron allegedly made to Newton-King that "the rectorate’s intervention to doctor the report was an astonishing and shameful lapse of judgment", De Villiers claimed such statements were "derogatory" and "deeply offensive" and an apology for them was warranted. The Kriegler inquiry found otherwise.
For the impartial observer, the key takeaway from all this is that after the photographs had been taken, but before this material was leaked to Media24, De Villiers had already been informed that it was being seriously misinterpreted and that the obsessive campaign to take out Wilgenhof was liable to result in a cascade of institutional, personal and reputational harm.
Though the university administration knew perfectly well that the images its staff members had taken were liable to provoke strong “negative reactions/revulsion” at first sight, it nonetheless allowed them to be leaked, without consequence, to News24. The publication was rewarded for its false and inflammatory framing of the story with a series of further leaks and briefings, seemingly from the top echelons of the administration.
What we learn from News24 ’s latest report then, in essence, is that – by his own account — at every step of this debacle, De Villiers was being privately advised by his own Chancellor that what his administration was up to was wrong, destructive, and likely to cause serious harm to the institution, its students, and alumni. And yet, throughout it all, De Villiers disregarded these warnings and (inexplicably) ploughed on regardless.
Not surprisingly though, News24 puts a very different spin on the De Villiers letter. It publishes it under the dramatic headline: Wilgenhof saga: ‘Conflicted’ Cameron defended ‘fun’ practices, ‘bullied’ me, says vice-chancellor." From the keywords used, we can glean several signals about how the publication intends to angle its reporting. We are warned upfront that Cameron has been accused of being ‘conflicted’, so his opinions should be taken with a grain of salt. He described certain dubious practices as “fun”, suggesting poor judgment, and a charge of ‘bullying’ has been laid against him by no less a personage than the Vice-Chancellor, implying he is a bad person as well.
A strong editorial voice inserts itself throughout the report. In paragraph three, we are told that Cameron’s alleged comments, in mid-January, stating that the university administration’s reaction to the images was overblown “flies in the face of what victims of the Nagligte over the years told News24, including that they were left traumatised after being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, assaulted, and forced to drink a concoction that brought on acute diarrhoea. Some were sexually assaulted.” The voice returns in the final paragraphs reiterating claims of “sexual assault”.
It is notable that, having long given up on its derogatory KKK and Nazi insinuations, News24 continues to endlessly recycle this intimation of rampant “sexual assault” at the residence. A Google search of the publication’s website for “Wilgenhof” and “sexual assault” returns literally pages of results. What News24 again fails to acknowledge is that the investigative panel itself — which was clearly no friend of a residence it wanted annihilated – stated in its report that it had uncovered “no evidence of physical violence, sexual violence, or sexually inappropriate conduct.”
The News24 claims are rather based on the (untested) recollections of two anonymous Wilgenhof alumni who told the publication they felt personally violated and humiliated while being painted with a brush by a member of the Nagligte as part of the punishment for their transgressions of residence rules. One incident occurred fifty years ago, and the other some thirty years ago. (Given that corporal punishment was common at the time, few South African males of that age would be unable to recount comparable, or worse, experiences.) As Jaco Rabie, head of the Wilgenhof Alumni Association, noted in a reply on 1st November to an article by News24 editor Adriaan Basson:
“It must be clearly stated: despite desperately trying to undermine Wilgenhof, after receiving written submissions from 288 persons, conducting 59 interviews and extending its deadline, the investigative panel still did not manage to find any actual evidence of racism, abuse, torture or any of the other sensational claims. No single victim made accusations. Only anonymous allegations were published on News24. The entire debate on Wilgenhof’s past has been irrational. If the residence should be closed for some transgressions in its history, then so should the entire SU. (Our emphasis)
In contrast to the claims that News24 puts such weight on and suggests are representative, numerous on-the-record accounts by Wilgenhof alumni – including luminaries such as Paul Harris — support Cameron’s (alleged) explication of the nature of the Nagligte’s “escapades.” In any event, for the past two decades, students had to opt-in to participate in the Nagligte system and could opt-out if they wished. Seventy black former Wilgenhof residents also submitted collective written accounts of their overwhelmingly positive and happy experiences at the residence.
This juxtaposition of Cameron’s alleged mention of “fun” and the accounts of “victims… over the years”, some of whom were “sexual assault[ed]”, is presumably intended to create the impression that the Chancellor was making light of well documented and ongoing incidents of abuse that traumatised numerous victims. Given the now well-documented countervailing and exculpatory reality, this framing comes across as an underhanded attempt to smear Cameron.
In conclusion, what’s worth noting about De Villiers’ letter is that he should direct the charge of “gaslighting” and “bullying” against Cameron. One definition of gaslighting is that it is an “insidious form of manipulation and psychological control. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves.” Bullying is described as the “repetitive, intentional hurting of one person or group by another, involving an imbalance of power.”
If one surveys the events of the past year, it is the Wilgenhoffers who have been the victims of both pervasive “gaslighting” and “bullying”, as those words are commonly understood. They were subjected to a relentless narrative – constructed by News24 and the SU administration – which they knew from personal experience to be either false or, to the extent to which there were grains of truth in it, wildly distorted and misleading. When they pushed back, however, they were informed by News24, the university, and the investigative panel, that it was the false narrative that was ‘true’ and their opposing memories and experiences delusional and ‘conflicted.’
If there was bullying throughout this affair it was also by a university administration that abused its power, in various ways, to repeatedly inflict what it regarded as "necessary pain" on its own students and alumni. Contrary to News24’s claims the victims of this saga are not Wim de Villiers, Adriaan Basson, or its “fearless” reporters, but rather the Wilgenhoffers, past and present, who had their lives disrupted or reputations besmirched, by those hell-bent on breaking their brotherhood.
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