Despite assurances from the university that the initiation problem is being addressed, it has not managed to root out the toxic and exclusionary culture in some residences, with some white residents and alumni actively resisting efforts to do so.

I lived in Wilgenhof Men's Residence ("Die Plek") in 1984 and 1985 during the first two years of my undergraduate studies at Stellenbosch University. An authoritarian Afrikaner Nationalist ethos permeated the university (at the time State President PW Botha even served as Chancellor of the university).

First-year students in men's residences were subjected to dehumanising initiation practices in the name of fostering a unique koshuis gees (residence spirit) as part of a larger project to ensure broad acceptance of the Afrikaner Nationalist culture, a culture steeped in violence, obedience to authority, and fear and hatred of the Other.

This usually ended with some kind of ritual aimed at "breaking in" first-year students to ensure their loyalty to their specific residence, and to the larger Afrikaner Nationalist ethos.

In Wilgenhof, the final initiation ritual happened on an evening about two weeks after the start of lectures. In my time, first-year students were all blindfolded and kept in a locked room where we were blasted with piercingly loud music and made to do various physical exercises, before -- late into the night -- each of us was brought to the "quad" individually, still blindfolded and very much disoriented,...