By Leah Falcon and Amber Steyn
“Every rector has a particular role to play in terms of the institution at that point in time and the institution in terms of who it envisages itself to be into the future,” said Prof. Deresh Ramjugernath, Rector of Stellenbosch University (SU).
Since its formal establishment in 1918, SU has had 13 Rectors and Vice-Chancellors steer its direction and development as an institution. Initially separate, the positions of Rector and Vice-Chancellor were combined in 1981 according to an SU article by Prof. Matilda Burden commemorating their centenary.
Die Matie, established in 1941, has a long history alongside the university’s governance, documenting, critiquing and connecting the rectorate with the students as the university and its students passed through seminal moments in history.
Die Matie interviewed Prof. Andreas van Wyk, Prof. Wim de Villiers and Prof. Deresh Ramjugernath, two of SU’s former Rectors and SU’s current Rector.
Leading through uncertainty: Prof Andreas van Wyk
Prof. Andreas van Wyk captained SU through the tumultuous and transitional years of the 1990s. He was officially appointed as Rector in 1992, although he explained that he started performing Rector duties in 1990.
“My first task was to keep Stellenbosch stable during a very uncertain transitional time,” Van Wyk said.
With the interim Constitution of South Africa implemented in 1993 and a new government established in 1994, Van Wyk said that his focus was on adapting SU to the future while keeping its roots.
“This meant we had to establish a good relationship with the new government. One of the first things we did was to invite Mr Mandela [South Africa’s first democratically elected President] to come and visit the campus. He was welcomed with friendliness on the Rooiplein.”
Van Wyk holds a unique position to comment on Die Matie’s role in SU. Not only did he interact with the paper during his term as Rector, but he was Die Matie’s editor in 1964 while he was studying Law at the university.
“Sunday night rides with my bicycle down Bird Street to deliver Die Matie’s copy, are something I will never, never forget,” Van Wyk reminisced. “Die Matie was much more focused on the smaller things of the average student life.”
But this did not stop Die Matie at that time trying to be “a little incendiary”.
Van Wyk said that he had written an article on the construction of the Neelsie. A student centre had been promised to the students and fundraised for from the 1930s. “But the thing just never came. So I wrote a front-page article and asked, ‘Where is the student centre?’ And then I was called in by Prof. Hendrik Thom, the Rector, to explain how I could be so audacious,” he said.
Van Wyk said that his article came full circle when, during his term as Rector, he oversaw renovations to the Neelsie. The student centre was transformed from only offering residence food to “the current shopping centre and a place where students are keen to go”.
Van Wyk said Die Matie’s role in the Stellenbosch community was to prompt people to think a little wider. In the 1960s, the Group Areas Act of 1950 was applied in Stellenbosch. “Brown Stellenboschers, who were Stellenboschers just like us, were moved out of their homes [in Die Vlakte in Ryneveld and Crozier Street], because they were brown, to Cloetesville, a new neighbourhood developed for them. It was terrible.”
Van Wyk said, “Students did start asking, ‘We cannot continue in South Africa as if we don’t have black compatriots, and the question is, how are we going to do things on the road ahead in this country?’”
Van Wyk wanted his legacy as Rector to be to leave SU as an internationally competitive institution. “When I stepped out at the end of 2001, I wanted SU’s international reputation to stand much stronger [and] we were rated one of the top three universities in the country,” Van Wyk said.
“I am also especially proud that Stellenbosch is still the most student-friendly university in the country.” He said the decision not to close the Stellenbosch campus by putting a fence around it, as other universities have done, contributed to this culture. “I think precisely the fact that Stellenbosch is an open campus. At 23:00, there the students go walking down Plein Street. They are still busy having fun in town.”
Reflecting on the future of universities world-wide in the face of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Van Wyk said, “Universities will adjust their methods. They have to adjust their methods.”
However, he sees tertiary education as essential. “It is simply a human necessity and a societal necessity to have centres where young people, especially, can collect high-level knowledge. And you can probably get that high-level knowledge through machines, but it will never replace the human element,” he said.
A commitment to change: Prof Wim De Villiers
Prof. Wim De Villiers, SU Rector from 2015 to 2025, believes that the transformation towards a stronger, more inclusive SU is an “ongoing process” which is far from over. Reflecting on his decade-long tenure as SU’s rector, he said to Die Matie that SU’s ongoing commitment to change may, ultimately, be the most important legacy he left behind.
De Villiers became the Rector of SU in 2015 after his predecessor, Prof. Russel Botman, suddenly passed away in July 2014. He said, “I didn’t see it in my path, but I applied and I was successful.”
The Stellenbosch he returned to “was a much better university, and it was much more diverse” than the Stellenbosch that he left in 1983 following the completion of his medical degree (MBChB), he said.
However, he said that it still did not reflect the diversity of the country. “There were many issues we had to grapple with and that we are still grappling with as a university.” His leadership coincided with pivotal moments in SU’s history, including the FeesMustFall movement, debates surrounding language and institutional culture and access.
During De Villiers’s period, he pioneered SU’s implementation of the new language policy, along with visual redress initiatives and a Transformation Plan and Policy.
He said that SU had to overcome many challenges, such as the drought which occurred in the Western Cape in 2018 and the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of the visions De Villiers had for SU, he said, is encapsulated in SU’s vision 2040 in the phrase “in and for Africa, and in service of society”.
He described SU as a “multilingual university that serves the entire community” and that it should continue to do so by creating local impact and maintaining regional relevance and its global competitiveness. He said this vision “has its focus on internationalisation, [which has] resulted in an increase in multiculturalism and multilingualism”.
De Villiers said, “Transformation is not something you park in a little corner of the campus. It must be a part of everything.” Central to De Villiers’s transformation vision was his language policy. He said SU “is not an Afrikaans university nor an English nor an isiXhosa university”.
De Villiers is reluctant to claim personal credit regarding the transformation that occurred. He describes it as a “team effort”, rather than one individual. He quoted Joseph Simone, saying, “First-rate leaders appoint first-rate people. Second-rate leaders appoint third-rate people.” He added, “You’ve got to recruit and appoint the best, and that’s what I tried to do.”
De Villiers remains optimistic about the future of higher education in the age of AI. He acknowledges that AI will change the way universities teach and assess, but believes that universities will continue to play an important role in developing critical thinking. Some practical and social skills cannot be replicated online, he said.
As De Villiers reflects on Stellenbosch as a town where he was born, raised and schooled, he describes the town and the university as inseparable. As a former Matie, he hopes that traditions such as the first-year Welcoming ceremony in the Danie Craven Stadium and Dream Walk will continue to foster a sense of belonging among new students while the university continues evolving, he said.
Realising Vision 2040: Prof Ramjugernath
Prof. Deresh Ramjugeranth stepped into the position of Rector and Vice-Chancellor in April 2025 at the end of De Villiers’ term. In the first year of his term, Ramjugernath said that he has focused on getting all stakeholders firmly behind this common vision and mending and rebuilding relationships of trust in the institution.
He explained that his vision for the university builds on those of the Rectors before him and is consolidated in SU’s Vision 2040 which was adopted in 2019. SU’s Strategic Framework works towards SU becoming the leading research-intensive university on the African continent and one of the top-100 ranked universities globally.
Ramjugernath quoted the last five words of the Vision, for SU to be “in service of our society”. He said, “The legacy I want to see is that we become an institution that is integral to economic development regionally, nationally, continentally. That we play a real, relevant role to society.”
On the basis of Vision2040, De Villiers said, “It’s not just about becoming the top university on the continent, it’s about what we do with that position as an institution. Our vision statement is to enhance academic excellence and translate academic excellence into socioeconomic impact.”
A key to the realisation of this vision is adapting the learning and teaching experiences at SU to the shifting world around us. A challenge has been “ensuring that we keep the good traditions and adapt those that have to be amended,” Ramjugernath said. This was also touched on by each rector Die Matie interviewed.
Ramjugernath referred to the focus of Vision 2040 as one of “academic renewal”, ensuring the graduates that SU produce are ones that understand their own relevance and impact in their community, society and across the world. An SU graduate must understand “holistic sustainability [and] the kind of shifting geopolitics that we have globally”, he said.
“Our curricula must be relevant, it must be addressing the global and worldly issues of the time, but also preparing our students for the jobs of the future. It means that we need to embed AI as a tool learnt by all of our students. A tool that will enhance their learning experiences [and their ability] to deliver in their disciplines and in their professions once they graduate from SU.”
Ramjugernath said Die Matie is critical to a university ecosystem which develops the “critically-engaged citizens that we envision as part of our transformative experience at the university [and for students] to understand academic freedom and freedom of expression”.
“It is not just about learning about these principles and responsibilities through what is taught in the formal curriculum and what is in the Constitution. It is also about the lived experiences that the students have through the freedom of speech and press freedom that they have through Die Matie,” he said.
