In Memoriam: Andre du Toit, 1938—2026
In Memoriam: Andre du Toit, 1938—2026
Andrew Nash
I must begin with my condolences to the du Toit family—Andries, Marijke, Jeanne and Masha—on your grievous loss.
Your loss is shared, and felt, by many others, including generations of André’s du Toit’s students and colleagues. I share in your loss and I grieve with you.
André was one of a kind. His academic achievements were the stuff of legend. He never focused on academic achievement for its own sake. He was a model of intellectual integrity; a mind that never sought to display itself; but was always ready for the task at hand.
In his final years, what stood out was his enduring clarity of mind, his generosity of spirit, his uncomplaining endurance in the face of declining health; indeed, his resilient enjoyment of life. These qualities of endurance and insight enabled him to complete his path-breaking work on the contested and frequently tangled processes of Amnesty and Truth and Reconciliation process.
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I first encountered André du Toit in February 1972. I had begun studying towards a law degree at the University of Stellenbosch.
First-year law students at Stellenbosch had a prescribed syllabus, which allowed for one only optional course, out of many available first-year courses. My beloved aunt, Mary Murray, said I should take Political Philosophy (then called Staatsfilosofie) as my optional course. Somehow, I recalled this term—Staatsfilosofie—on the day first-year students were marched to a university venue, and given registration forms to fill in. I did not then realize it would determine the direction of the rest of my life!
More than half-a-century later, I cannot imagine the course my life would have taken without André du Toit’s impact and that of his older colleague, Johan Degenaar.
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Degenaar’s first lecture was a retelling of the story of Little Red Riding Hood, with many subversive twists to the tale. I had never heard a children’s story in told Afrikaans, and it took a while for me to understand who Rooikappie was. At the end of the lecture, Degenaar gave us our first essay assignment: a three-page essay on the question, What is a university? To answer the question, we were provided with an extensive list of books available in the library. For the rest of the semester, Degenaar took us through selected parts of Plato’s Republic; by turns in amazed and rhapsodic conversation, with Plato., Socrates and with his students.
Du Toit’s lecture, on the following day, introduced us to the analysis of logical structure, and in particular to informal logic, which required us to recognize implicit assumptions and weigh up their validity. In particular, we were required to show how fallacious arguments could disguise themselves as having validity; how eloquence could pass itself off as truth. Degenaar’s teaching style was free-wheeling, full of charm and wit. Du Toit was far more rigorous and precise. It was a formidable combination.
Every assignment was dealt with in careful detail. Apart from larger written assignments, du Toit also divided the class into tutorial groups, and guided us through hour-long discussions of mostly one-page extracts of texts that seemed persuasive, but forced us to consider and reconsider their validity. Every assignment, large or small, was discussed in careful detail, if a kind that was unheard of in those years, and perhaps to this day.
The burden of work du Toit took upon himself in the process was massive, and the process of analysis he took us through was dizzying. I repeated du Toit’s tutorial process in my third-year, when modest funding became available to student tutors, and Hans van der Riet and I were appointed as student tutors. By then I had abandoned my legal studies!
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The Department of Political Philosophy was created with the intention of making it redundant. Philosophy was a compulsory subject for students intending to qualify for the Dutch Reformed Church ministry. Political philosophy was created to ensure that philosophy students could not be contaminated by the ideas, arguments and provocations of Degenaar. He was seen as a nuisance by the powerful Broederbond of that time.
To this end, philosophy was made compulsory for aspiring ministers of religion, who were at that time plentiful, and devout. Political philosophy was created to ensure aspiring theology students could not be taught by Degenaar. It was assumed that this would spell the end of the department of Political Philosophy; it would be closed down as student numbers diminished.
But the Broeders had miscalculated the changing mood of the time. Not only did Degenaar sustain the new department of Political Philosophy; a new generation of students gave it sufficient support to justify the appointment of a second member of academic staff, and Andre du Toit, who had recently completed his graduate studies at the University of Leiden.
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There is more than one generation of students by now who know André du Toit primarily in the context of the University of Cape Town, where he taught from 1987. That was the year when the crisis of apartheid reached its climax, with mass struggles on the streets, death squads sent to murder township activists. Stellenbosch was something of a side-show in that context. I joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Western Cape, then a hub of lively innovation under Jakes Gerwel.
I’ve written at length about Degenaar elsewhere, and won’t deal with his extraordinary gifts here. Perhaps du Toit’s most far-reaching innovation as to introduce tutorial discussions, dividing the class into small groups, and guided us through hour-long discussions of mostly one-page extracts of texts that seemed persuasive, but forced us to consider and reconsider their validity.
The burden of work he took upon himself in the process was massive, and the process of analysis he took us through was dizzying. I can vouch for that, as modest funding for student tutorials became available in our third-year and the late Hans van der Riet and I were appointed student tutors. By then I had abandoned my legal studies!
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I’m not the only living survivor of the Department of Political Philosophy at Stellenbosch, which re-amalgamated with the Department of Philosophy at the end of 1986; but I may by now be the oldest of them, after the death of André du Toit. My friend Marius Vermaak reminded me of André’s role in establishing the Film Society at Stellenbosch; if I remember rightly, he also at one stage chaired the National Federation of Film Societies.
André du Toit moved to the University of Cape Town in 1987, at the same time as I moved to the University of the Western Cape, where I taught until 2000. In those years, André played a pivotal in establishing Die Suid-Afrikaan, along with Hermann Giliomee, Riaan de Villiers, Antjie Krog and others.
I moved from UWC to Monthly Review Press in New York, where I worked until 2006. I recall visiting André and his beloved wife Maretha in New Haven, Massachusetts. I also recall André coming to supper with my family in Harlem, when he was invited to one of Mahmood Mamdani’s many gatherings at Columbia University, of South Africans and Americans.
I recall having to guide André, my mentor of so many years, through the New York subway system, so that he could get safely back to his Columbia University accommodation, with our roles reversed; I was familiar with the Manhattan subway system, and Columbia, and he was understandably not, and was perhaps slightly baffled by the reversal of roles.
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I moved to a teaching position at the Department of Political Studies at the University of Cape Town in 2006. André was already an emeritus professor, I think; but a more active professor than many who still had years to go before their retirement. In particular, he took on a large and innovative postgraduate programme on Transitional Justice and Reconciliation, which graduated a whole generation of UCT students.
We established a routine of meeting about once a week, to discuss what we were doing, or what the world was doing, which continued until almost the end of his life. At first, we would meet for lunch on UCT campus; later, we would walk in Newlands Forest each week; in the Covid year we were allowed to walk at Kromboom Park, once restrictions were relaxed; then we moved to meeting at his house in Rondebosch about once a week, as André’s mobility declined.
For some years, he would set our discussion going with accounts of the newest London Review of Books and the like. I think the collapse of the South African Post Office may have put an end to that!
My estimate is that I took early retirement from UCT at roughly the same time as André, my much older colleague, but more energetic colleague. He completed and launched his path-breaking books on the Truth and Reconciliation process; a fitting conclusion to his life and work.
Towards the end, his stamina declined; but his mind was intact; his beautiful, eloquent and generous mind.
AN, 23/4/2026