SU URGED TO BREAK SILENCE ON GAZA GENOCIDE

Thu 03 July 2025:

Academics cite university’s apartheid history as a “special moral responsibility” to condemn atrocities and sever ties with implicated Israeli institutions.

More than 200 academics and staff members at Stellenbosch University (SU) are intensifying pressure on the institution’s leadership to condemn the ongoing violence in Gaza, which they label a genocide, and to suspend collaborations with Israeli universities complicit in human rights violations. Citing the university’s own history of collaboration with apartheid, the group insists SU has a “special moral responsibility” to act.

The call comes amid a devastating humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. According to the latest reports, Israel’s military actions in the Strip have resulted in catastrophic loss of life, with over 54 000 killed and more than 123 000 wounded. International aid organisations like the International Rescue Committee and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report that the entire population of Gaza is facing crisis-level food insecurity, with a severe risk of famine and the collapse of water and sanitation services.

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Recent Israeli strikes have continued to cause mass casualties, including at aid distribution sites, with Al Jazeera reporting that over 600 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food in a five-week period.

In a formal statement, the signatories, comprising a broad coalition from the SU community, urged the university to “officially and unequivocally add the university’s voice to this worldwide call.” They argue that SU’s relative silence contrasts sharply with other South African institutions like the University of Cape Town (UCT), the University of the Western Cape (UWC), and Nelson Mandela University (NMU), which have all passed resolutions calling for a ceasefire.

A Moral Imperative

A central theme of the academics’ appeal is the university’s past. They reference SU’s 2018 Restitution Statement, in which the institution expressed “deep regret” for its role in the injustices of apartheid. Professor Sandy Liebenberg, the HF Oppenheimer Chair in Human Rights Law at SU, told EWN that the university was “on the wrong side of history” during apartheid and now has a burden “to be on the right side of history this time.”

The group’s demands are specific and multifaceted:
* An immediate end to the genocide in Gaza.
* The urgent provision of relief aid, including food, medicine, and fuel.
* The establishment of humanitarian corridors for the safe evacuation of the sick and injured.
* A permanent cessation of violence against the Palestinian people.
* Suspension of all ties with Israeli universities where there is a risk of involvement in human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

This renewed push follows the narrow defeat of a similar motion in the university’s Senate on 30 April 2024. The proposal, which called for a ceasefire and the protection of academic freedom, was voted down 101 to 80, with 18 abstentions—a result that then-Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, met with “utter dismay and disbelief.”

In response to the recent statement, SU acknowledged the severity of the crisis and reiterated its commitment to peace, human rights, and academic freedom. University media manager Martin Viljoen stated that SU is not the only institution, locally or globally, to refrain from taking an institutional stance in order to safeguard academic freedom. He added that the university has “repeatedly expressed its sympathy and compassion for those affected by the humanitarian crisis” and provides a space for robust and constructive debate on the issue.

However, the concerned academics maintain that the scale of the atrocities, which they believe constitute a genocide, demands more than institutional neutrality. They argue that academic freedom has its limits when fundamental human rights are at stake, a sentiment they share with other respected global institutions that have taken similar stands.