STELLIES' SHAME

The secrets of the oldest student residence at Stellenbosch University were recently uncovered in a shocking exposé. A former student describes what happened if you broke the house 'rules' 

THERE are many “house rules” in this place. Rules about music and noise. Rules about doing “wheelies” in the quad with your car. Rules about not wearing boxer shorts in the food hall.

There are rules that state residents must clean up vomit in the morning and that you may only whistle in the shower if you’re alone.

And what happens if you break any of the many rules outlined in a document from Wilgenhof men’s residence at Stellenbosch University? The five-page document, dated 2016, doesn’t say.

But by now it’s no longer a secret what’s been happening behind the closed doors of the student residence. Shocking details and images have emerged in the past few days – and they paint a terrifying picture.

Men dressed in dark hoods similar to the US white supremacist right-wing organisation the Ku Klux Klan, students stripped naked in seemingly humiliating positions, a graffiti-covered room where punishment was doled out . . .

These are some of the images that show the alleged extreme hazing methods happening within the student res at the university in the heart of the Western Cape town.

The details of what has been happening at Wilgenhof came from a student who’d experienced humiliating punishment, according to News24’s Prega Govender. In The Inner circle: A Brief Look into One Student’s Journey Through Wilgenhof Residence, the former resident alleges, among other things, that students were forced to be naked, mocked for their penis size and had to drink a mixture of linseed oil and aloe, which brought on acute diarrhoea.