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itself beyond a single generation”. Both Pretoria and Stellenbosch were Afrikaans univer-
29
sities and as such conducive of and receptive to Erasmus’s Afrikaner ideals for the UDF.
The Academy students’ esprit de corps and resultant inclination to group-forming did have
some negative influence on their absorption in student society. But the rest of Du Toit’s
claim holds no water. The Academy students were not morally or intellectually inferior to
the civilian students; the first two intakes did have a slightly higher fall-out rate at first-year
level than their civilian peers, but from 1957 they were on par. The University of Pretoria
did not opt out of its affiliation with the Military Academy because of strained relations; the
military students adapted well to campus life and little discord between the military and ci-
vilian students was recorded. There was no initiative from the University of Pretoria to sever
the affiliation, the UDF decided of its own accord to relocate the Academy to Saldanha and
Stellenbosch. And; the Academy students did not wreck the spirit of one residence after the
other at Stellenbosch.
Comparatively good relations resisted between the military and civilian students in Dag-
breek, Huis Visser and Huis Marais from 1955 to 1956. The Academy students participated
freely in student activities. Limited friction did surface on occasion because senior civilian
students jerked the military first-years about by their uniforms or because civilian students
made fun of the military students’ drills and regimental routine, but no serious confrontation
ever occurred. The only serious clash occurred in 1957 when the military first-years were
housed in Wilgenhof and refused to subject themselves to the longstanding initiation rituals
and disciplinary system of that residence. This culminated in the so-called ‘Battle of Wilgen-
hof’ when the military second and third-years hurried to the rescue of their first-year compa-
triots when the latter were abused and assaulted by the Wilgenhoffers. although the opposing
parties, armed with hockey sticks and what not, were ‘at daggers drawn’, the Commanding
Officer of the Military Academy with the help of the University authorities and the SA Police
succeeded in defusing the situation before violence erupted. The Wilgenhoffers subsequently
declared the military students in their midst personas non grata, ignored them for the rest of
their stay in the hostel and deleted their names from the residential register permanently. 30
The ‘Battle of Wilgenhof’ resulted from the diverging military and student subcultures,
not from any lingering post-World War Two civilian disenchantment with the military or
primary political differences (that element was to arise in the 1970s and 1980s and had only
an indirect effect of student/military academy relations). Following the ‘Battle of Wilgenhof’
no further confrontations arose between the military and civilian students at Stellenbosch.
After the last of the military students had been relocated to (170 kilometres distant) Saldanha
in 1961, there was very little interaction between the Academy students and their civilian
peers at Stellenbosch. The ‘Battle of Wilgenhof’ lived on in the memories of the military
students for a few years, but was soon forgotten. The limited interaction that took place
between the military and civilian students was not the kind that would bring forth conflict,
for it was in the service of Venus. There was virtually no female company available in the

29 A. Giddens, Sociology (Second Edition, Polity Press, 1995), p 746; M. Hughes and C. J. Kroehler, Sociology
– the Core (McGraw Hill, New Delhi), p. 70.
30 For detail, see G.E. Visser: ‘Civilian-military interaction on the Matie campus: The Battle of Wilgenhof,
1957’ (unpublished paper, 2008).