Rupert participated actively in the Ox-wagon Trek of 1938. As part of the celebrations a lighted torch had been carried all the way from Jan van Riebeeck’s statue in Cape Town to the uncompleted foundations of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, and it was also kept burning on the university campus. Rupert’s younger brother Jan, a member of the Voortrekker youth movement, was on a visit from Graaff-Reinet at the time. Rupert recalled that Jan had to hold the torch while he drove his open car carefully so the flame would not go out.
On 10 October Rupert and Fritz Steyn, as representatives of the UP community, had travelled to Bulhoek to commemorate Pres. Paul Kruger’s birthday in the company of the Trek party. On this occasion they had requested the leader of the Ox-wagon Trek to donate a wagon that could serve as a lasting inspiration to students at their university. On 14 December − two days before the centenary reached its climax on the Day of the Covenant, the commemoration of the Voortrekker victory over the Zulu at Blood River − it was announced at a mass rally on Monument Hill that the wagon of Louis Trichardt was to be entrusted to the students of the University of Pretoria for safekeeping. On 17 December students pulled it to the university campus.4 It became traditional for every outgoing chairman of the SRC to formally hand over custody of the wagon to his successor, as Rupert duly did to Hans Nel in 1938.
At the peak of the Ox-wagon Trek celebrations Rupert edited and published a newspaper, De Oude Emigrant, with the historian Gustav Preller as honorary editor-in-chief. He consulted the news editor of Die Transvaler, Piet Meiring, also from Graaff-Reinet and later head of the South African Information Service. Rupert worked night and day on the four editions of the jubilee paper that appeared on 13, 14, 15 and 16 December, writing the editorial, collating copy − articles and news about the Ox-wagon Trek and the centenary celebrations of the Great Trek − and getting each edition printed by morning. But he failed to get a distribution network going and after the celebrations thousands of unsold copies had to be burnt. ‘I learnt a valuable lesson there,’ Rupert was to say later. ‘Your product could be good, and still be a failure if your sales organisation and distribution aren’t good.’
Afrikaner nationalism swept the Pretoria campus after the centenary, so much so that the UP was unofficially called the Voortrekker University for a while. Emotions ran high and UP students pelted the screen with eggs filled with ink when ‘God Save the King’ was played in cinemas, as was customary in those years. At a mass rally on 10 April 1939 Rupert proposed that 14 September (the day when, seven years earlier, the university became an Afrikaans-medium institution) be celebrated annually at a student function, its nature to be determined by the SRC. The proposal was adopted unanimously. In fact, the date was one day out: 13 September in due course became Commemoration Day, or Spring Day. Initially it took the form of a morning gathering on the campus, at which the Louis Trichardt wagon, Voortrekker apparel and national flags featured prominently. In the afternoon there were sporting events and in the evening a ball. This continued until 1944 when, on the proposal of the then SRC chairman, it was declared an annual university holiday.
As invited speaker on Spring Day in 1961, Rupert recalled how in 1938, without official permission, they had taken the principal prisoner, carried him to the old club hall in a huge chair and started celebrating. Compared to the world’s great universities − from Salerno, the oldest of all, dating back to the ninth century, to relative latecomers like Leiden and Harvard − South African universities were young, he said. ‘But we have our own tradition, a tradition we should maintain with pride. We have a tradition of youthful vitality and resilience; a tradition of life instead of bricks and concrete. It is a tradition which should govern our actions, thought and attitudes, because in our country and with our challenges we need to be able to think clearly.’
On the 40th Spring Day in 1978 Rupert presented his alma mater with the hand-embroidered sash of office of Pres. Paul Kruger, taken to England as booty by a British soldier after the Anglo-Boer War, that he had traced and bought back. In an impassioned speech he reminded the students of the importance of symbols like the ox-wagon and the flaming torch to keep them aware of their origins and destiny. ‘The ox-wagon was [for the Voortrekkers] the church, the childbed and the cradle of a new generation. And that is why this small wagon stands here as a symbol and a guard in order that we should never forget how small our beginnings were and how humble and grateful we should remain,’ he said.
Yet even in the emotionally charged atmosphere of the late 1930s Rupert’s patriotic fervour did not overrule his sense of justice. This is evident in his attitude towards an incident involving an English-speaking lecturer, John Agar-Hamilton. It was the upshot of the protracted language struggle that persisted even after Afrikaans was declared the official medium at the university in 1932. That move had been triggered by the tarring and feathering of a French lecturer at the UP, HP Lamont, who was suspected of pseudonymously writing a book entitled War, Wine and Women that contained denigratory comments about Afrikaners. At his assailants’ trial Lamont admitted to writing the controversial book and was dismissed by the university.5
Despite the 1932 decision on the language medium, the UP senate decided that English-speaking lecturers merely had to improve their proficiency in Afrikaans to a level where they could understand the language but not necessarily be able to lecture in it. So John Agar-Hamilton, senior lecturer in history, continued to deliver his lectures in English amid mounting student objections that culminated in a boycott of his classes in April 1939. At the instigation of the chairman of the SRC, Albert Geyser, a protest meeting was held on campus, at which the Vierkleur, flag of the old Transvaal Republic, was hoisted.
Rupert was deeply perturbed by Geyser’s action. Officially Agar-Hamilton was still permitted to lecture in English until the end of the year. At a mass meeting of students he proposed that Agar-Hamilton should receive an apology: as a guest on their campus he ought to be treated hospitably. He also suggested that English-speaking students abstain from voting, since it was the Afrikaners’ honour that was at issue. Although Rupert’s proposal was accepted by an overwhelming majority, Geyser refused to apologise to Agar-Hamilton. At the outbreak of the Second World War the lecturer joined the air force and left the campus for good.
This episode illustrates Rupert’s early awareness of the need for coexistence, but also reveals a conviction that would become a philosophy of life: that Afrikaners should conduct themselves civilly and courteously towards people from other cultures. Geyser was not prepared to accept that. A Hervormde Kerk theology student, he did not have full student support during his chairmanship of the SRC. One of the council members, Ria Hugo (the later history lecturer Dr Maria Hugo), accused him of undermining Rupert, then chairman of the ANS, and proposed a motion of no confidence, which was passed. Geyser and his henchmen then proceeded to assault Rupert supporters, and one night they lay in wait for Rupert himself. He drove a battered red MG convertible, bought second-hand when he became a lecturer. They forced him out of it and led him to a nearby hall. Colijn van Bergen, who was with him in the car, managed to escape and ran to the library where Huberte was on duty. He shouted to her to summon the police, who arrived soon afterwards and came to Rupert’s rescue. He was already being stripped by his assailants, who intended to tar and feather him.
Rupert refused to lay charges against the Geyser group, either with the police or the university authorities. He dismissed their conduct as plain jealousy. One by one his assailants came to him to apologise. Geyser was the very last to do so. That was in 1977, when he represented the University of the Witwatersrand at Anton’s inauguration as chancellor of the University of Port Elizabeth.
After the Ox-wagon Trek Rupert and his good friend Colijn van Bergen, then in charge of the ANS Film Bureau, went on tour