
Picture credits: Faaiz Gierdien (http://www.sun.ac.za/english/faculty/education/curriculum-studies/staff/academic); Playing in the dark (Penguin Random House); The lie of 1652 (NB Publishers)
I recognise that Stellenbosch University (SU) sits on the ancestral and unceded land of the Khoe, KhoiSan and other First Nations. This land was and continues to be of great importance to these First Nations. Consistent with our values of community and inclusion, we have a responsibility to acknowledge, honour and make visible SU’s relationship to First Nations.
– Inspired by PT Mellet’s The lie of 1652: A decolonised history of land
We do not know to what extent the GG Cillié Building’s dedication on 22 September 1970 signalled a significant moment in the history of Stellenbosch University (SU). Cillié was the first SU Dean of the Education Faculty. People in attendance at this event included BJ Vorster, while he was prime minister of the National Party-dominated apartheid state and chancellor of SU; his minister of national education, JP van der Spuy; and retired SU rector, HB Thom. The occasion reveals salient links between politicians, academics as well as the building and its architecture.
...........
Currently, SU has adopted a visual redress policy to come to terms with its historical relations with the apartheid state structure. Starting in 2015, student protests, namely #Rhodesmustfall, #Feesmustfall and #OpenStellenbosch, called for “transformation” and “decolonisation” at historically white universities. SU reacted by choosing “visual redress” as one of its core responses to these protests.
...............
Currently, SU has adopted a visual redress policy to come to terms with its historical relations with the apartheid state structure. Starting in 2015, student protests, namely #Rhodesmustfall, #Feesmustfall and #OpenStellenbosch, called for “transformation” and “decolonisation” at historically white universities. SU reacted by choosing “visual redress” as one of its core responses to these protests. The university’s visual redress policy (2021) calls for renewing the public meaning and symbolism of SU’s buildings in a “resolute, intentional and coordinated way”. Furthermore, it notes that visual symbols evoke different emotions and experiences among people, especially in a diversified and historically divided country like South Africa.
More importantly, the policy needs to be viewed in relation to local-global optics, where universities are reviewing their historical role in underpinning colonial power structures (McNeill et al, 2022). In addition, the policy is concerned primarily with what is visually apparent in the spatial layout, and visible symbolism within the SU landscape. The policy encourages SU to “open up” its visual culture and iconography to a larger restitutional conversation, by examining what is not visually apparent and not so well known about the timing of their production, ideological intent and scholarly rationales.
............
The policy encourages SU to “open up” its visual culture and iconography to a larger restitutional conversation, by examining what is not visually apparent and not so well known about the timing of their production, ideological intent and scholarly rationales.
............
Engaging with this policy means avoiding what Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, in her literary criticism book (1991), calls “playing in the dark”. Morrison warns against merely denouncing “white culture” in American literature. Instead, she encourages a “self-help project” that aims both to map out new critical territory and to rearrange the territory within[i]. In other words, what must be brought to light are some details on ways the apartheid state entrenched itself politically during the mid-1960s and onwards. During what were known as the Vorster years, South Africans witnessed a hardening of apartheid rule, accompanied by the most repressive characteristics. Max du Preez, in his Pale native: Memories of a renegade reporter (2011), calls it a “time of great fear”. The John Vorster Square police station in Pretoria was opened in August 1968. This was a “state-of-the-art” police station on the African continent and a site of torture, interrogation and abuse of apartheid resistance fighters. In September 1969, in the Maitland police station in Cape Town, Imam Abdullah Haron, an anti-apartheid activist, was killed in detention. In October 1971, Ahmed Timol, another anti-apartheid activist, was pushed to his death from the top floor of the John Vorster Square police station. These details, albeit a few, reflect the apartheid state’s “kragdadigheid” (forceful and uncompromising tactics). The GG Cillié Building’s opening in 1970, as an SU celebratory moment, occurred in between these two deaths, revealing the separate worlds wherein South Africans found themselves.
Secondly, the same period also witnessed the apartheid state’s extraordinary economic growth with concomitant social and educational benefits, especially for white, Afrikaner South Africans. Historian Martin Legassick (1974) notes that during this time both external and internal capital found the apartheid state, with its “coercive labour economy”, congenial for “rapid business expansion”. Black workers, for example, were forbidden to form trade unions, meaning that their demands and work conditions were not considered. On a related issue, anthropologist and historian Steven Sparks (2012) speaks of the availability of cheap, hyper-exploited black labour.
...........
Furthermore, Legassick notes how Vorster’s speeches of the late 1960s were peppered with references to “the calm, peace and prosperity we have in South Africa”. Clearly, the “we” referred to white South Africans. These words also provided a “cocksure rationalisation” for apartheid supporters (Du Preez, 2011).
............
Furthermore, Legassick notes how Vorster’s speeches of the late 1960s were peppered with references to “the calm, peace and prosperity we have in South Africa”. Clearly, the “we” referred to white South Africans. These words also provided a “cocksure rationalisation” for apartheid supporters (Du Preez, 2011).
Historian Saul Dubow (2017) also notes that in the decade after 1963, investments in South Africa yielded some of the highest rates of return on capital in the world. On a similar point, Sparks (2012) frames this period as “Apartheid Modern”, based on his study of the development of an oil-from-coal process at the “company town”, Sasolburg. Dubow (2017) calls Sparks’s conception – Apartheid Modern – helpful, because it applies more widely to a range of social engineering programmes which started during the 1960s.
This was a time when apartheid’s planners ploughed substantial funds into universities, which included SU, for example (Dubow, 2017). The Matieland (1970) editorial describes the newly erected GG Cillié Building as dedicated to the “salvation” of the child and the future of South Africa (tot heil van die kind en die toekoms van Suid-Afrika)! The Afrikaans phrase shows a “vaunting ideological ambition” for Afrikaners and their offspring, occurring amidst a brutal “kragdadigheid”, a politically repressive atmosphere for opponents of the apartheid state (Dubow, 2017).
Thirdly, reading the event of the launch of the GG Cillié Building on 22 September 1970 as a choreographed event, must include some background on the two other actors. From archival records, we learn that JP van der Spuy started out as a career diplomat/politician and ardent champion of the apartheid project. He first served as “buitengewone” ambassador (ambassador extraordinaire) to Austria in 1967, and moved on to become minister of “national education” in 1969. During a 1967 speech in Vienna to the Wiener Akademikerbund (Viennese Academic Association), he compared the break-up between the Holy Roman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with that of South Africa’s problems. Clearly, he was appealing to a western European audience’s sensitivities. He ended his talk by elaborating South Africa’s “separate development” solution to its problem. This phrase stems from Verwoerd’s mid-1950s urge to use euphemisms, which included the well-known analogy between “apartheid” and “good neighbourliness”. It takes a politically savvy reader to realise how Van der Spuy used apartheid planners’ “language of domination” (Posel, 1987).
The background and some details of the speech content of HB Thom, another attendee at the event, however, deserve more detailed analysis. He was regarded as the “ideal Afrikaans aristocrat and scholar”, who could skilfully blend nationalist cultural and political life and academe into one harmonious whole (Grundlingh, 2020). At the event, he made good use of these skills. Also, in Thom’s career as SU historian, especially, he promoted linkages between the “volk” and their “true” past in a “sober, calm, dignified and even detached manner” (Grundlingh, 2020).
Based on archival records, Thom told the audience that “objective” (objektief) – read detached or dispassionate – was the “single word” (enkele woord) that best described GG Cillié’s spirit and thoughts (gees en denke). Here, Thom forged a connection between himself and GG Cillié as a kind of lineage. This was surely appealing to the “volk”, the Afrikaner audience on that day.
More interestingly, Thom considered history as an “objective-scientific” area of study. At SU, his career focused on disciplining Afrikaans historical writing under the aegis of “objectivity” in order to conform it to the dictates and demands of a “science”, that is, so-called neutrality (Grundlingh, 2020). This “objective-scientific” method to (Afrikaans) historical writing became a “fetish” that created the illusion on the part of some that they were recording history impartially (Giliomee, 2018).
Intriguingly, as Afrikaans historians, Thom and his students regarded their position as “apolitical”. In turn, it was regarded as a so-called “neutral counterpoint” to any form of ideological historical writing (Grundlingh, 2020). On that day, he saw, in a so-called impartial way, a harmony between Vorster as politician and Vorster as SU chancellor. For Thom, the gravity of Vorster’s kragdadigheid was simply not an issue. Thom’s utterances show traces of a “dogmatic intensity” regarding the apartheid imaginary (Dubow, 1989).
Lastly, opening the GG Cillié Building means understanding its architecture during the era of “high apartheid” (c 1959-1973) (Dubow, 2017). This period saw the economy of South Africa entering a “golden age” as a result of the gold mining industry, and growing by an average rate of six to eight per cent per year (O’Meara, 1996; Scerri, 2009). A particular result was the development of “modern” buildings on the campuses of the Afrikaans-speaking University of Pretoria and the University of South Africa (Brink, 2012). The GG Cillié Building is one such modern building, designed by an architect, JB Collins[ii], who favoured a conservative “nationalist” architecture[iii].
............
We should, therefore, view the GG Cillié Building as an effective physical symbol of the apartheid state, its racist education imaginary, and its hopes and ideals in its most influential era. Writing about Pretoria and the Afrikaner “state building”, architect Hilton Judin (2021) makes similar connections between “apartheid ideology and architectural form”. The time is ripe to bring to light these and other not so visible and nuanced architectural details.
.............
We should, therefore, view the GG Cillié Building as an effective physical symbol of the apartheid state, its racist education imaginary, and its hopes and ideals in its most influential era. Writing about Pretoria and the Afrikaner “state building”, architect Hilton Judin (2021) makes similar connections between “apartheid ideology and architectural form”. The time is ripe to bring to light these and other not so visible and nuanced architectural details.
Concluding notes
“Opening the GG Cillié Building”, in line with SU’s visual redress policy, presents my attempt to understand SU’s visual redress policy. This policy calls for renewing the public meaning and symbolism of SU’s buildings in a “resolute, intentional and coordinated way”. In intentional ways, I outlined my argument by drawing on relevant political, economic and social backgrounds and then narrowing it down to illuminate the event, the three actors who were present, the building and its architecture.
I coordinated my attempt through a nuanced reading of Morrison’s Playing in the dark: Whiteness and the literary imagination, starting with the first part. Here, my purpose was to “bring to light” background information – however sketchy – about the event for myself and for the reader. Interestingly, “playing in the dark” points to an impossibility. Players or participants in a game, say, need to be able to “see”. One cannot engage SU’s visual redress policy by playing in the dark.
The “whiteness” in Morrison’s full title also calls for an understanding beyond literary criticism. Using a dialectical reading, she sees whiteness and blackness as intertwined, as producing each other, in American life. Here, I make the analogy and argue that as much as Vorster, Thom and Van der Spuy, in concert, spelled out the apartheid project –whiteness – they were repressing and, in turn, producing their opposition, namely blackness.
Furthermore, the GG Cillié Building’s “whiteness”, that is, its connection to the apartheid project, must be made explicit. An article in Matieland (1970) describes this building as a “functional, modern building”. In his seminal Words and buildings, architectural historian Adrian Forty (2000) considers “function”, which also includes “functional” and “functionalism”, an important concept in modern architecture. He further elaborates “function” as a “biological metaphor” that derives from the “organic” notion of form developed by the German Romantics. The earlier quote “tot heil van die kind en die toekoms van Suid-Afrika” makes this romantic and functional connection evident. Put differently, the building, as a site, is dedicated to produce and to foster the apartheid dream. On a related point, Cheng and colleagues (2020), in Race and modern architecture, contend that architectural historians, as well as those interested in SU’s visual redress, must take account of the whiteness central to the universal mythologies of Enlightenment discourses, read German Romantics. Race – that is, whiteness – is in the building, even if we think it is not.
References
Brink, B (2012). Built with sand, rock and Broederbond: Brian Sandrock’s buildings for the University of Pretoria and the University of South Africa. South African Journal of Art History, 27(3), 1-27.
Cheng, I, Davis, CL, & Wilson, MO (eds) (2020). Race and modern architecture: A critical history from the Enlightenment to the present. University of Pittsburgh Press.
Dubow, S (2017). New approaches to high apartheid and anti-apartheid, South African Historical Journal, 69(2), 304-329.
Dubow, S (1989). Racial segregation and the origins of apartheid in South Africa, 1919–36. Springer.
Du Preez, M (2011). Pale native: Memories of a renegade reporter. Penguin Random House South Africa.
Forty, A (2000). Words and buildings. London: Thames & Hudson.
Giliomee, H (2018). Historian: An autobiography. University of Virginia Press.
Grundlingh, A (2020). Pitfalls of a profession: Afrikaner historians and the notion of an “objective-scientific” approach in perspective. In Jansen, J & Walters, C (eds). 2020. Fault lines: A primer on race, science and society. Stellenbosch: SUN PReSS.
Judin, H (2021). Architecture, state modernism and cultural nationalism in the apartheid capital. Routledge.
Legassick, M (1974). South Africa: Capital accumulation and violence. Economy and Society, 3(3), 253-291.
Matieland (1970). Matieland 1970s (sun.ac.za).
McNeill, D, Mossman, M, Rogers, D, & Tewdwr-Jones, M (2022). The university and the city: Spaces of risk, decolonisation and civic disruption. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 54(1), 204-212.
Mellet, PT (2020). The lie of 1652: A decolonised history of land. Tafelberg.
Morrison, T (1991). Playing in the dark: Whiteness and the literary imagination. New York: Vintage.
O’Meara, D (1996). Forty lost years: The apartheid state and the politics of the National Party, 1948-1994. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.
Posel, D (1987). The language of domination, 1978-1983. In S Marks and S Trapido (eds), The politics of race, class and nationalism in twentieth century South Africa. Harlow: Longman.
Scerri, M (2009). The evolution of the South African system of innovation since 1916. United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Sparks, SJ (2012). Apartheid modern: South Africa’s oil from coal project and the history of a company town (doctoral dissertation). https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/91528
[i] Steiner, Wendy (5 April 1992). The Clearest Eye. The New York Times. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
[ii] https://digital.lib.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.2/15115.
[iii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAKTcSePd_k&t=2187s.
- Faaiz Gierdien, Department of Curriculum Studies, Stellenbosch University
Also read:
BAQONDE and multilingual education in South Africa: An interview with Lorna Carson
Reguit met Robinson: Is transformasie bloot ’n mooi woord vir die US?
Deal decisively with dehumanising institutional culture, or step aside
’n Dekoloniale toekoms? Musiek, ras en taal aan die Universiteit Stellenbosch
Open Stellenbosch: Fresh and innovative ideas are sorely needed
Open Stellenbosch: Beyond the rainbow, towards a change of climate
Rhodes moes val: Gedagtes oor dekolonisering en swart historiese agentskap
Het die Soweto-opstande iets te make met vandag se studenteprotesaksies?
Ná #RhodesMustFall en #FLF2015: 'n gedeelde ervaringswêreld?
University Seminar 2016: Achille Mbembe on the new politics of the South African student
The role of African universities in the intellectualisation of African languages
The lie of 1652 deur Patric Mellet: om die verlede te herverbeel
Kommentaar
Dankie vir hierdie insiggewende artikel. Die verband tussen argitektuur en ideologie is baie goed uitgelig. Die artikel slaag daarin om visuele regstelling aan die groter politiek waarvan dit onlosmaaklik deel is, te koppel. Regstelling moet dus ideologiese "witheid" (nie wit mense as sulks nie) teiken en vervang met norme van inklusiewe meelewing en regstelling.
Insiggewend. Dankie Faaiz.
Hoe hanteer jy die meertaligheid in jou klaskamer?
Is dit ’n groot probleem?
Dit het eintlik niks met visual redress uit te waai nie. Dis eenvoudig die afbreek van 'n ander se geskiedenis en die vervanging daarvan met jou eie of die hedendaagse mense s'n. Dis bietjie van 'n sinlose artikel. Alles wat die NP-regering gedoen het, was om wit belange te beskerm, en al hulle geboue weerspieël die wit belange. Ja, net soos die ANC vandag swart belange beskerm en die wit belange afbreek en vernietig. Die “Only black lives matter”-ideologie. Die woke ideologie. En pseudo-akademici sugar-coat maar te lustig hiermee saam. Die ANC moet nog leer om die blackness in geboue in te bou, dit sal tog 'n harde visuele statement van hulle rassistiese ideologie wees. Dalk was die ConCourt 'n poging.
The history you referring to, was a history built on oppression, the dehumanization of another purely based on colour, the dispossession (theft) of property and the denigration of human beings.
En in daardie skynheiligheid kon julle nog Sondag kerk toe gaan en die Liewe Vader aanbid. Rêrig??
Tja. Die Boerkies het vir eeue gedink daar is 'n god bo die wolke wat die mensdom van liefde leer. Baie dink nou nog daar is so iets.