Sol Iustitiae and the Cape, halfway the Via Sacra, (Alumni-lecture)

Abstract

This lecture deals with the long history of Utrecht University and South Africa. I will use a heuristic devise, which is the concept of the Via Sacra. By using this device, this metaphor, I will try to suggest the outlines of a Utrecht tradition that proved to be dominant in its relations with South Africa and to be one of the reasons, why South African students came to Utrecht. I will elaborate on the influence that Utrecht – and if I speak about Utrecht, I mean town and university - may have had on a number of remarkable South Africans. For most of them Utrecht was initially a little town and a university in a faraway country that they were not familiar with, other than hearsay from other visitors.