26°11′05″S27°59′51″E / 26.18472°S 27.99750°E /-26.18472; 27.99750
Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit | |
 | |
| Motto | Diens Deur Kennis |
|---|---|
Motto in English | Service through knowledge |
| Type | Public university |
| Active | 24 February 1968–2004 |
| Location | ,, |
| Language | Afrikaans, English |
| Colors | Green and Grey |
| Nickname | RAU |
 | |
TheRand Afrikaans University (RAU) (Afrikaans:Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit) was a prominent South African institution of higher education and research that served the greaterJohannesburg area and surroundings from 1967 to 2004. It has since merged with the Technikon Witwatersrand and two campuses of Vista University to form theUniversity of Johannesburg.
In the two decades after theSecond Boer War, the flow of impoverished Afrikaners from the countryside to theWitwatersrand grew without a significant increase in the number ofAfrikaans speakers, as is evident from the fact that the congregations of Afrikaans churches in Johannesburg showed almost no growth. That an entire generation ofAfrikaners on the Rand was lost and Anglicized during this time was due, among other things, to the lack of Afrikaans educational institutions.[1]
The picture only began to change from the 1920s and especially during theGreat Depression when the first Afrikaans high schools on the Rand opened –Hoërskool Voortrekker inBoksburg in January 1920,Hoërskool Helpmekaar inBraamfontein andHoërskool Monument inKrugersdorp in 1921. Shortly after theSecond World War, there were only six Afrikaans-medium high schools on the Witwatersrand, compared to 26 English-medium high schools.[2]
The growth of Afrikaans-medium high schools gradually began to reflect the population growth of Afrikaansfirst language speakers. The number of Afrikaners on the Rand grew by 167 percent between 1936 and 1960, compared to 60 percent in South Africa as a whole.[1]
Compared to English-speaking South Africans, however, the intellectual potential of this large population concentration was underutilized, for social and economic reasons. In South Africa as a whole, the percentage of English speakers who matriculated or obtained an academic degree was twice as large as the percentage of Afrikaans speakers. On the Rand, the Afrikaners were even further behind on this metric, as many Afrikaans learners left high school beforematriculating, while many matriculants could not afford to pursue tertiary academic education at a university.[1]
It became clear to Afrikaner leaders in the 1950s that higher education institutions had to be established within easier reach of Afrikaans speakers in the Rand, to enable bothpart-time study, for students who were already in employment, and full-time study for students who were still living in their parents' homes.The long campaign for an Afrikaans education college or university was conducted in three phases. The first campaign between 1956 and 1961 reached its peak with the establishment of theGoudstadse Onderwyskollege [af] in February 1961. During the second phase between 1961 and 1965, negotiations were held with theUniversity of South Africa (Unisa). The final campaign in 1965 and 1966 was aimed at obtaining its own, independent Afrikaans-medium university.[3]
While local communities outside Johannesburg also insisted on the establishment of an Afrikaans university, the policy of the then-white government was to expand existing white institutions of tertiary education to meet the growing needs rather than to establish new universities. It was not until the announcement on 13 February 1963 of the establishment of a new, bilingual university in Port Elizabeth that this policy was changed, especially in light of the findings of a commission of inquiry appointed by the Minister of Education. On 5 November 1963, 468 delegates unanimously decided at a congress to establish an Afrikaans university.[4]
It was also proposed to negotiate with Unisa to move its seat from Pretoria to Johannesburg to exercise a dual function there – that of a residential Afrikaans university and that of an external university. The government's reluctance to proceed with the establishment of entirely new universities could thus be circumvented.
On 4 August 1965, the then Minister of Education,Jan de Klerk, announced that the Cabinet had decided that Unisa's seat would remain in Pretoria and had given its consent to the proposed establishment of an independent Afrikaans-medium university for the Witwatersrand, with its seat in Johannesburg. In 1966, the Cabinet decided on a campus site inAuckland Park.
The first students registered on 3 February 1968, and on 24 February of that year the Rand Afrikaans University was officially opened[5] with just over 700 registered students, and the inauguration of its first Chancellor (the then Minister of Finance and later third State President of South Africa),Nico Diederichs, and Vice Chancellor,Gerrit Viljoen.[6]
Initially, the campus was temporarily located inBraamfontein, but the new campus and newly constructedbrutalist[7] buildings in Auckland Park were officially opened on 24 May 1975.[1] The land for the campus is a former golf course acquired fromthe Country Club Johannesburg.[8]
The faculties of RAU were as follows:
Rector of the university
| Surname | Name | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|
| Viljoen | G. vN. | 1966 | 1979 |
| de Lange | J. P. | 1979 | 1987 |
| Crouse | C. F. | 1987 | 1995 |
| van der Walt | J. C. | 1995 | 2001 |
| Botha | T. R. | 2002 | 2005 |
Chancellor of the university
| Surname | Name | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diederichs | N. J. | 1966 | 1978 |
| Meyer | P. J. | 1978 | 1983 |
| Viljoen | G. vN. | 1983 | 2000 |
On 1 January 2005, Rand Afrikaans University,Technikon Witwatersrand and theSoweto andEast Rand campuses of theVista University ceased to exist as such, when they merged to become theUniversity of Johannesburg, as part of a broader reorganisation of South African universities.[9][10][11][12] The outgoing and final vice chancellor of the university was Roux Botha.[13]
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