Tsukudu Speaks

In 1967, a man by the name of Wilhelm Olaf Meyer was tasked with designing a building that would transform a largely agricultural population into a class of collegiate and intellectually inclined people. The building was to be grand and austere, and it was to “make a statement about its patrons who had just arrived in the city”. I am, of course, referring to the main campus of the Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit, better known as the University of Johannesburg.  At the height of Afrikaner Nationalism, the ruling party in 1955 commissioned the establishment of an Afrikaans medium tertiary institution so as to tap into the intellectual potential of Afrikaners who came from families that historically migrated to the city from the countryside after their decimation from the Anglo-Boer War.  These were people who (due to urban absorption that did not accommodate Afrikaans speakers) were anglicised and therefore did not grow the Afrikaner culture substantially, leading to conformity t...