By Nicola Reyneke
For 85 years, generations of women have helped shape Die Matie.
When Corinne Oosthuizen became Die Matie’s first female Editor in 1984, many outside the newsroom saw it as a milestone. Inside the newsroom, however, it hardly felt revolutionary. “It was a natural progression,” Oosthuizen told Die Matie in an interview.
There was no sense that the newspaper needed to appoint a woman for the sake of representation. She said she had worked her way through the editorial ranks and, to her and her colleagues, becoming Editor simply made sense.
“We were not going to back off,” Oosthuizen recalled. She said the editorial team shared a strong sense of purpose and believed in defending the newspaper’s independence, regardless of the pressure they faced.
After interviewing former Die Matie Editors and journalists from four different decades, one theme emerged repeatedly: despite studying and working in a deeply conservative society, none of the women remembered Die Matie primarily as a place where they had to prove themselves because of their gender. Instead, they remembered a newsroom where they were expected to do good journalism.
Before the first female Editor
Die Matie’s story did not begin with women.
When Die Matie was first published on 1 August 1941, Stellenbosch University (SU) looked very different from the institution students know today. It was an Afrikaans university operating within the social and political norms of its time.
Die Matie was established as the university’s official student newspaper and initially reflected the conservative values that shaped campus life and governance. Yet over the decades it developed a reputation for questioning authority and defending editorial independence.
Former Editor-in-Chief Jacolette Kloppers traces this transformation in her 2009 master’s thesis in journalism. She argues that repeated clashes between Die Matie and university authorities gradually helped shape the newspaper’s editorial identity and contributed to the development of its 1995 code of conduct, with its emphasis on editorial self-regulation.
Editorial decisions frequently brought the newspaper into conflict with university management, making clashes with university authorities almost expected.
Although women had already begun serving on Die Matie’s editorial team by the late 1940s, editorial leadership remained overwhelmingly male for more than four decades.
A natural progression
When Corinne Oosthuizen became Die Matie’s first female Editor in 1984, many outside the newsroom saw it as a milestone. Inside the newsroom, however, it hardly felt revolutionary.
She said the greatest challenge she faced in Die Matie was never being a woman, but rather being an Editor.
During the height of Apartheid, Die Matie regularly challenged both the university and the political establishment. Oosthuizen said one of the defining moments of her editorship came after the appointment of then-State President P.W. Botha as the SU Chancellor. Oosthuizen believed the roles of politician and university Chancellor should remain separate, a position the university itself would later adopt.
The Chancellor demanded to see the editorial before it was to be published. Oosthuizen refused, arguing that prior approval would compromise the newspaper’s editorial independence.
She was subsequently suspended as Editor.
Rather than silencing the newspaper, the decision sparked national attention. Newspapers across South Africa reported on the suspension and students rallied behind Die Matie. Soon after, banners reading “Corinne for Chancellor” appeared on campus in support of her. The university reinstated Oosthuizen a few days after the incident.
Oosthuizen said she believes the episode perfectly illustrated Die Matie’s purpose. Die Matie was never intended to be a social newsletter. She said it was “an independent watchdog”.
She also recalled introducing the use of “Me.” (Ms.) rather than “Mev.” (Mrs.) or “Juf.” (Miss) when referring to women in the newspaper – placing women on equal footing with men, whose marital status was never identified. She said that, although initially controversial, the practice was later adopted more widely by bigger newspapers such as Die Burger.
Oosthuizen said that outside of Die Matie, Stellenbosch remained conservative. Inside, she remembers a place where ideas mattered more than gender.
Journalism before gender
If Oosthuizen’s experiences reflected the 1980s, the women who followed inherited a newsroom during one of the most politically turbulent periods in South African history.
Oosthuizen’s appointment was not an isolated milestone. Over the following decade, more women steadily assumed leadership positions at Die Matie. By 1989, women such as Tanja Hichert (Assistant Editor, 1989), Pearlie Joubert (News Sub-Editor, 1989), Henriëtte Geldenhuys (News Sub-editor, 1989), Anneliese Burgess (Current Affairs Editor, 1989) and Marina Pretorius (Current Affairs Sub-Editor, 1989) occupied several key editorial portfolios. The following years saw Julia Andersen become Editor in 1991, Melissa Fourie in 1993, and in 1996, Liza Albrecht.
When Melissa Fourie became Editor in 1993, Anna-Retha Bouwer served as Assistant Editor. In an interview with Die Matie, Bouwer described Die Matie as “a little bit rebellious” and “a real headache” for the university. She said journalists constantly challenged authority and “pushed the boundaries”.
Bouwer recalled articles exposing hazing practices that sparked outrage. One front page on initiation practices resulted in eggs being thrown at Die Matie team and copies of the newspaper being burned by angry students. She remembered another edition that distributed condoms alongside the newspaper. This decision sparked controversy, and Die Burger, which printed Die Matie at the time, refused to insert the condoms into the newspapers. As a result, the editorial team had to distribute them separately.
Bouwer also said the editorial team attended African National Congress (ANC) meetings while the organisation was still banned. This was something she believed was part of Die Matie’s willingness to question the status quo during South Africa’s political transition.
For Bouwer, however, the remarkable part was not the controversy, but rather the culture inside the newsroom. Although women’s residences still enforced stricter rules than men’s residences and society remained conservative, she never felt women were expected to stand back. “Everything the men did, we did,” she recalled. “We were just on the editorial team.”
Carien du Plessis, who wrote for Die Matie between 1993 and 1996, echoed many of Bouwer’s memories in responses to questions for this article. She described Die Matie as “exciting, subversive and high-nicotine”, recalling a place where ideas, politics and journalism collided daily.
Du Plessis said her satirical column, “Tannie Heks”, tackled campus politics with humour and sharp social commentary. She said she was inspired partly by the character Liewe Heksie.
She also recalled one of her most controversial “Tannie Heks” columns, written during the government’s HIV/AIDS awareness campaign in the mid 1990s. The piece compared HIV/AIDS and the treatment Jesus might receive today, challenging the moral judgement surrounding HIV prevention and condom use. This incident caused national outrage, with prayer groups across South Africa reportedly praying for her afterwards.
To Du Plessis, these stories reflected Die Matie’s willingness to push political and social boundaries during a period of immense national change. She believes Die Matie “made people angry for the right reasons”.
Throughout these interviews, one name surfaced repeatedly: Liza Albrecht.
Liza Albrecht became Editor of Die Matie in 1996. Although she passed away on 11 February 2026, every former colleague interviewed remembered her.
Together with colleagues, Albrecht also helped establish Voëlvry, an independent feminist publication that grew out of the campus Vroueforum. Separate from Die Matie, it sought to create space for women’s voices and feminist issues during a period when such conversations were far less common on campus.
Bouwer described her as “perhaps the one who went the furthest in journalism”, while Du Plessis remembered her adventurous approach to journalism, sharp sense of humour and willingness to challenge both government and university authorities.
Passing the baton
By 2001, Jacolette Kloppers became Editor. In an interview with Die Matie, she reflected that the newspaper often found itself ahead of both the university and the country in the positions it was willing to publish. Her own research into Die Matie’s history, as part of her master’s thesis, traces how editorial independence gradually became central to the newspaper’s identity.
More than two decades after the editorship of Jacolette Kloppers, Aurelia Mouton became Editor in 2023. She was Die Matie’s first Editor of colour. In an interview with Die Matie, Mouton said she, like Oosthuizen, is hesitant to define her editorship by this type of milestone alone. Instead, she spoke about creating a newsroom where students from different backgrounds feel welcome and where difficult conversations could still happen respectfully.
To her, Die Matie has worn many identities throughout its history, reflecting the changing university around it. Yet its purpose has remained remarkably consistent: creating space for voices that deserve to be heard.
Mouton was followed by Emma Hamman in 2024, Jani Roux in 2025, and current Editor Emma Giles in 2026.
Giles said she sees herself as part of that continuing legacy. Reflecting on the women who came before her, she credits former Editors such as Oosthuizen, Kloppers and Mouton with paving the way for future generations. Rather than feeling limited as a woman leading the newspaper, Giles said she experienced a newsroom built on professionalism, mentorship and mutual respect.
A legacy that continues
History often remembers the first woman to do something:
The first female Editor.
The first Editor of colour.
The first woman to challenge convention.
Yet after speaking to female journalists from different eras of Die Matie, another story emerges. They remember late nights waiting for the newspaper to come off the press, heated editorial debates, chasing difficult interviews, defending controversial stories, and learning journalism by practising it.
Above all, they remember a newsroom where they were encouraged to think critically, challenge authority and trust their own voices.
Perhaps that is Die Matie’s greatest legacy. Not that women eventually found a place in the newsroom, but that, for decades, the newsroom became a place where many simply got on with the job of being journalists.
Edited on 19 August 2026: The caption accompanying Carien du Plessis’s photograph was edited.
