And why parliament is talking about it
By Louis Kruger and Zaakirah Jabbar
At a recent meeting of the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education, chaired by Minister of Parliament (MP) Tebogo Letsie, one topic kept cropping up: what is Stellenbosch University (SU) doing about the incident which took place at Majuba Men’s Residence on 2 March? This may baffle those only cursorily acquainted with the facts. Clearly, an explication of the case in its proper context is required to understand what is at stake.
The event
On the evening of 2 March, a resident at Majuba Men’s Residence, Kylo Le Roux, returned to his room to find it had been trashed. A few hours later, his mother, Vanessa Le Roux, a prominent education activist, was at the residence. The next morning, a police case had been opened, citing unlawful entry and damage to property.
Prof. Ramjugernath, Rector of SU, states that in the university’s preliminary investigations it was found that none of the student’s personal belongings were removed from the room. This is notwithstanding the couch, bed frame, and mattress that were taken, which are the property of the residence. It seems that his personal property had, however, been strewn about the room, including his bedding.
The university understands the incident as resulting from a dispute around a football game which was played earlier that evening. Kylo Le Roux, being a resident of Majuba, had coached his ex-Commuter Student Community (CSC) Aurora to a 1–0 victory over the residence. Vanessa Le Roux explains that he made this decision due to a lack of support for football in Majuba.
Vanessa Le Roux claims that there had been “banter” in the week leading up to the match. An ex-House Committee (HC) member of Majuba who attended the game, and has chosen to remain anonymous, says, “There was a big Majuba crowd and quite a lot of chirping from the sidelines.” He alleges that Kylo Le Roux pulled the “middle finger” at the Majuba crowd. Vanessa Le Roux, however, asserts that her son “didn’t take it that deep” and “thanked them for the great game” afterwards.
Aftermath
Since the initial incident, the case has only grown in proportion, culminating in the Portfolio Committee sitting.
Vanessa Le Roux harangued residence leaders for not issuing an apology three days after the event, and the university for treating her son as somehow responsible or guilty for what happened. (Majuba issued an apology soon after her complaint.) Shortly afterward, Kylo Le Roux was relocated to another residence as per his request, despite Vanessa Le Roux’s initial stance that he would move for no one.
Vanessa Le Roux claims that the Prim, Jacobus Smuts, was “protecting these culprits for almost 40 minutes” on the night of the incident by withholding their names, and that he denied having named them the next day when giving testimony at the police station. Smuts has since temporarily stepped down, according to the Residence Head Dr Dawid Mouton “in the interest of ensuring an impartial and unhindered process”.
At a meeting between the Residence Head and HC of Majuba a week later, Vanessa Le Roux says she was physically “blocked” by the Vice-Prim from joining the meeting. She questioned why they were meeting about her son without her, “What the fuck are you doing here?” She says the Vice-Prim then went past her and made a threatening move towards her son, “balled his vuises [fists]” and “looked at him with hatred”.
Vanessa Le Roux in the following weeks lodged an appeal for a formal parliamentary investigation into the “culture of discrimination” through Letsie. This resulted in an argument between the two.
It started when Letsie reportedly hung up abruptly on a call with Vanessa Le Roux. He claims she called him “a hundred times” while he was in a meeting. She responded, “Answering a call is not respect. It’s what you signed up for,” continuing, “I truly expected better from the committee. The buck [burden] don’t stop with you. It stops with us.” Letsie asserted, “I am doing everything I can do legally here.”
Vanessa Le Roux said to Die Matie on 13 May that an interim protection order was obtained against her, supposedly related to the contents of a TikTok video she posted. According to her the Vice-Prim of Majuba is involved. The Le Roux family, in turn, opened an intimidation case against the Vice-Prim, and filed for an interim protection order, almost a month after the event itself.
Prosecution
Vanessa Le Roux’s anger is borne largely from misgivings about how the case is being handled by the police, the university, and parliament. She insinuates that institutional corruption has played a part, saying, “No amount of money will save these bloody culprits from what they have done to my child,” and proclaims, “They are not serious about changing things in this university.”
The South African Police Service (SAPS) is still investigating the case, according to Vice-Chancellor Prof. Ramjugernath. The university in turn has activated “necessary internal processes”, according to Media Manager of SU, Martin Viljoen.
Questioned by Letsie, and heavily criticised by Vanessa Le Roux in media, Dr Leslie Van Rooi, Dean of Students, explains why the procedure has taken so long. First, it takes time for the Investigations Officer to gather information and draw up charges. Further, because the defendants have sought legal representation, scheduling meetings is more difficult. According to Prof. Ramjugernath, however, the case is now before the Central Disciplinary Committee (CDC), with a sitting on 12 May.
Thus far, a guilty verdict has been announced on one of the accused, according to a post on the Parents for Equal Education South Africa’s (PEESA) Facebook page on 12 May. Die Matie awaits the final outcome.
Head of Legal Services at SU, Neville Naidoo, responds to accusations of going “soft” on suspects, “The matter is basically governed by the Student Disciplinary Code,” not by the university directly, which he asserts, “must maintain an arm’s length.” The Disciplinary Code for Students, which is currently under review, “focuses on student interest, student-first principles, and is not meant to be punitive as a mechanism,” although, “punitive measures are possible”, said Naidoo.
In addition to this, the university is being very careful to follow due process. Van Rooi points to the Wilgenhof case, which was challenged based on an inconsistency in prosecution, eventually forcing an out-of-court settlement. The university is understandably eager to avoid a drawn out, public legal battle as it has been engaged in twice in the last four years.
Discrimination at SU
The Portfolio Committee required that SU, represented by its top officials, give an account of the university’s activities, including finance, registration, transformation initiatives, and ongoing issues at its residences. The meeting was also attended by the Students’ Representative Council (SRC), members of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), and representatives of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).
The hearing focused on various cases of discrimination associated with SU. Patriotic Alliance MP Ashely Sauls questioned why the university accepted 38% white students in 2026, as per the university’s report at the Portfolio Committee. This figure is intimately related to the case. Sauls grilled Dr Ronel Retief, Registrar of SU, for a lack of commitment to transformation, despite espousing it in their presentation. Leading up to the incident, Vanessa Le Roux lambasted the university over “inequalities” and queried “why there are more white children” despite being a minority.
From the beginning, Vanessa Le Roux has identified this as the most recent in a string of all-too-familiar cases. She refers first to Taylië Jaap being pushed out of a window in 2019. Under extensive discussion at the Portfolio Committee was, of course, the Theuns Du Toit case at Huis Visser, which saw him expelled but exonerated in court, and the various allegations surrounding Wilgenhof.
Vanessa Le Roux has a personal history with these statistics. Two years ago, Kylo Le Roux was initially rejected by the university, receiving acceptance only upon an appeal. Vanessa Le Roux’s niece, who placed in the top 10 of her high school class, failed to gain entry into the BA (Humanities) program in 2026, which Vanessa Le Roux is adamant is linked to her race (coloured).
Importantly, then, this incident is immediately apprehended as part of a pattern of discrimination at SU, linked to its registration figures, its connection with Apartheid (very vaguely referred to in the hearing), and most directly to previous instances of racism and discrimination at SU. The university’s reputation hangs in the balance of these and related decisions, which is part of the reason this case is being treated with such deadly seriousness.
Dispute
Naidoo maintained at the sitting that “motive is not something we’ll be able to generally ascertain early on”. Yet it is the motives of the perpetrators that are so contentious.
Vanessa Le Roux is adamant that this incident must be evaluated in terms of race. “Everyone keeps asking me, why do I make it a race issue, and I am asking whether we come from the same country? Do you really think racism is limited to the “K” and “H” word? What else do you call a bunch of white boys trashing a black boy’s room?”
Van Rooi says that preliminary findings indicate that “there was no overt racism”, nor was it a “racist act”, despite the issue being markedly “racialised”. What exactly “overt” means in this context, and whether it is helpful to talk only about “overt” racism, was questioned by the MPs.
The MK Party’s MP Mnqobi Msezane further challenged this finding, and the procedure which led to it, saying, “This is a sensitive matter, and you should have allowed the process to conclude before coming up with the report.” Sauls stated, “It is my view, based on those facts, that SU is protecting students who victimised the coloured student.”
Vanessa Le Roux cites messages sent by Smuts to her son before the match, as well as chants at the football game asking where he was going to sleep, implying that this was co-ordinated and thus intentional. Even after the incident, Smuts allegedly sent a message to Kylo Le Roux, “I told you not to tune the res.”
The Economic Freedom Fighters Youth Command (EFFYC) stated on 7 March in an open letter on their Instagram page, “Such behaviour reflects the persistent culture of racial arrogance, entitlement and impunity that continues to manifest within spaces that claim to transformation while reproducing historical patterns of exclusion and intimidation.” This points to systemic, rather than “overt”, racism.
Die Matie’s informant at Majuba holds that “Kylo’s door was not locked” and that “bedding was reportedly removed before [the room was splashed with water]”. He continues, “What happened was not seen as vandalism, but more as the kind of residence banter or practical jokes that happen quite often in res culture,” acknowledging, however, “that Majuba residents perhaps did not fully consider how something like this could be experienced differently by someone else”.
Approached from this angle, it may be difficult to see why it has been taken up in what is now a truly national debate. Die Matie’s informant goes on, “From my perspective, the way the situation has been portrayed in some of the media feels very far removed from how many residents experienced and understood the event.”
Room trashing is a staple practice at residences other than Majuba, including Eendrag Men’s Residence. In an interview with an anonymous Eendrag resident last year, discussing the annual trashing of first-year rooms by seniors during the “Jarbal” (first-years’ dance), he describes how residents “kept walking into rooms and were like, ‘Okay this is a black student.’ They don’t want to touch them because they might get into trouble.”
Complexity
Van Rooi describes the case as a “very unfortunate incident that becomes more and more complex by the day”, made only more difficult by its highly “public” and “sensitive” nature. He takes heart in the fact that “all parties involved from the beginning indicated that they wanted to be as open as possible”.
Vanessa Le Roux views this as an instance of an “inhumane”, “trashy” “white import culture” masquerading as harmless, value-free res culture. Clearly, framing the event as a permutation of res culture overlooks the broader social context of what has been happening at SU and in the country. It also tends to take tradition for granted as an unchanging and unchangeable, and thus unproblematic, aspect of the residence.
On the other hand, the responses of the MPs, and to a lesser extent Vanessa Le Roux’s reaction, do not take into account the specific context of the residence, in which an act like this draws on established meanings. There are, however, differences in this case which may set it apart from usual room trashing, even while superficially resembling it. But treating it as an easily isolated white problem – as Vanessa Le Roux states, “The only people that celebrate this nonsense are white people” – is overly reductive.
The ex-HC member Die Matie spoke to remarks, “This event raises questions about perception. Something that one group of people understands as banter or tradition may be experienced very differently by someone else. I think that is something many of us are still trying to think through.” It comes down to a deeper question, a question being asked in residences all over campus: by what standard can we begin to evaluate res culture?
The university’s approach to transformation over the last 30 years has been centred around a “values-driven” approach – supplanting discriminatory values with new, inclusive ones – as was reiterated in Prof. Ramjugernath’s presentation on 29 April. In assessing the incident, then, the university has recoursed to the discourse of human rights and institutional values, highly characteristic of a democratic South Africa.
This is apparent in the open letter issued by Dr Mouton to residents, stating “The matter is regarded as serious in light of relevant legislation, the values of SU and the residence community, but also, and importantly, in view of the possible emotional impact on, and the dignity of, the individual concerned. Our shared responsibility is to help ensure a safe and values-driven environment, so that similar incidents can be prevented in the future.”
Early on in the Portfolio Committee sitting, Letsie tried to demonstrate to university officials what is at stake in the inclusivity problem through a concrete example. “When we speak to you [university officials], we get the sense that you don’t know what is really at play. When you are in that position as a vulnerable person, you don’t have a say.”
MPs Ashley Sauls and Mnqobi Msezane both advocated for a greater simplification of SU’s inclusivity issue, contrasting this to the “sophistication”, read as self-indulgence or decadence, of the university’s presentation at the sitting and its racial policies. If the university is not reaching its quota targets, simply accept more Africans, they implied, in a kind of action over policy stance. There is certainly something to be said for cutting through bureaucracy, as Vanessa Le Roux has attempted to.
But this approach ultimately lacks sensitivity and understanding, as was apparent from the MPs unfamiliarity with the difficulties involved in formally investigating the case, and with the problems of residences such as Wilgenhof, which include, but extend beyond, straightforward racism. Similarly, this was exhibited by Vanessa Le Roux treating this incident as an isolated and unprecedented act of aggression – “I didn’t ever hear of incidents involving white boys.”
It may be that the only compelling way to interpret the Majuba incident is by referring to the human dignity of those involved, and to the kind of standard it sets for our country. But often, as Letsie pointed out, the anaemic, detached institutional language of SU hinders real understanding. One might, in turn, raise concern about some of Vanessa Le Roux’s highly polarising speeches.
In judging a case like this, it is important to consider how it feels to those involved, and remember that victims and perpetrators are human subjects rather than disciplinary problems to be worked out.
*This article was edited by Die Matie on 15 May due to a misattribution from Dr Leslie van Rooi to Neville Naidoo.
*This article was edited by Die Matie on 16 May to correct information regarding a defamation case.
