In her landmark book about violence and its aftermath, Trauma and Recovery, Harvard University psychiatrist Judith Herman writes that perpetrators use a range of strategies to evade accountability, doing everything in their power “to promote forgetting”.
Secrecy and silence are their strategy to avoid taking responsibility for the traumatic impact of their actions. If their deeds are exposed, Herman informs us, “the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim … (and) marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalisation”.
The goal is to erase what is visible in plain sight, and as Herman says, to try to convince us that “it never happened, the victim lies, the victim exaggerates… and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on”.
In its 15th printing since it was first published in 1992, the groundbreaking insights of Judith Herman’s book resonated worldwide, with translations into more than 20 languages.
As I continue to read some of the reactions to the Recommendations of the panel appointed by the Stellenbosch University (SU) Rectorate to investigate Wilgenhof and the two controversial rooms in this male residence, and the rectorate’s unanimous decision to accept the recommendations, Judith Herman’s profound insights came to mind.
Debate
In one of the statements that for me crystalises the resonance of her ideas with what has unfolded in this debate about Wilgenhof, Herman argues that “the more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail”.
The defenders of Wilgenhof’s “legacy” who are opposing the findings of the panel chaired by Advocate Nick de Jager, and the panel’s “inescapable conclusion” that Wilgenhof and all that it has come to represent must be closed are, of course, not “perpetrators”.
By evoking Judith Herman, my intention is not to equate the Wilgenhof practices that have come to light with the kind of extreme violence that is described as “atrocities”. Far from it.
But the stories that broke the silence and lifted the lid of secrecy from the closed rooms of Wilgenhof ask us not to look away, and to bear witness to the emotional toll endured by many who were forced into years of silence imposed by shame and the tyranny of indemnity forms.
The custodians of the Wilgenhof “legacy” are drawing from the tradition of the denial and defence of difficult histories that Judith Herman has written about. The voices may be louder and more powerful than the ones that have exposed Wilgenhof’s secret operations.
It is a narrative that presents a history that wants to hide from itself, seemingly oblivious to the long-term injury of the humiliation wreaked by Wilgenhof’s disciplinary committee, the “Nagligte”. For students and staff who are survivors, or descendants of survivors who have stared into the abyss of apartheid, the violently haunting impact of the existence of a practice reminiscent of white terror can be an impossible trauma to live with.
Sanitised landscape of memory
The sanitised landscape of memory is at odds with this reality: the “misunderstanding” of Wilgenhof practices conceals a more noble story about the graphic images that have been unveiled, and the activities of the “Nagligte” were just theatricals, an enactment of rituals that shaped a proud culture of “discipline”, so the story goes as reported in the findings of the investigation of Wilgenhof.
There is a slippage in this narrative of “ritual” and “culture”, for it ennobles practices that do not chime with Stellenbosch University’s vision of institutional transformation. It is language that evades moral accountability in order to push everything into a black hole of forgetfulness.
But when this black hole collides with its “afterlife” in the lives of those who bear the burden of a less heroic memory of the events, it causes a tremor in the social fabric, as we have seen with the aftermath of Wilgenhof’s now-exploded locked-doors past.
The “good story” about Wilgenhof as a unique, elite residence that nurtured dissidents and free-thinking citizens (if you need a postcolonial analogue, the story of the “good about colonialism” refers) must be weighed against the ideals we hold for ourselves as the Stellenbosch University community of the 21st century, reflecting the values that the university is pursuing through all its transformation endeavours at structural, relational, and academic levels.
Whatever has been said about the “archive” of the materials found in the secret rooms of Wilgenhof, the visual display of that clandestine history suggests something base, something bordering on the barbaric.
The report of the panel of investigators chaired by Advocate De Jager describes one of the rooms simply as “a grim place”. There is something deeply troubling about these images. There is a haunted terror about them that traverses space and time — like spectres.
Uncanny symbols
The dark robes worn by the Wilgenhof men (the so-called “Nagligte” disciplinary committee) in the photographs that have been circulated since January 2024 in repeated publications of the story, with accompanying Ku Klux Klan-like hoods, infuse the images of the men with a spectral feel, the uncanny symbols in the graffiti on the walls of these rooms, and the strangeness of other objects found in them — each of these items, and the association of the “Nagligte” with the Ku Klux Klan “nightriders” – play a loop back to some of the darkest decades of violent histories.
The rector of SU, Professor Wim de Villiers, has assured the SU community of the rectorate’s “unwavering” commitment to efforts to make the university “a welcoming and inclusive centre of excellence”. The rectorate’s support of the recommendation to close Wilgenhof is a validation of this commitment.
Wilgenhof was allowed to exist as a place of exception for far too long, a place where some men created their private world, and, invisible behind black hoods, exercised power to humiliate and degrade others.
The closure of Wilgenhof would allow SU to move forward, not with the disavowal or whitewashing of the ugly side of Wilgenhof’s legacy, but with progress in fostering an environment of living together with mutual respect and recognising the dignity of each person who joins the community of Stellenbosch University. DM