The news of Professor Sakhela Buhlungu’s departure from the University of Fort Hare was already a story of institutional turmoil. The embattled vice-chancellor had been suspended on full pay since March, and last week he finally resigned, seemingly bringing a long, painful chapter to a close. But just days after his resignation, a far more explosive development came to light. Sarah Burger, a Cape Town attorney and forensic investigator whose firm was hired by the university to investigate corruption, has accused Buhlungu of lying under oath in an effort to keep her bank accounts frozen. In a 27-page affidavit, Burger alleged that Buhlungu made false statements in court papers to portray her as corrupt and to destroy her reputation as a professional. She has laid charges of perjury and crimen injuria against him, and the case, originally opened at Kleinmond police station in September 2025, has since been transferred to Makhanda. For weeks it remained quietly on the record, unseen by the public, until it surfaced in the media just after Buhlungu’s resignation. The timing could not be more striking: a leader leaving under a cloud, now facing allegations that strike at the very heart of his credibility and honesty.
To understand why these allegations carry so much weight, it is important to understand who Sarah Burger is and the road she has traveled. Burger made her name as the lead forensic investigator at Fort Hare, where her work through Horizon Forensics over four years helped expose alleged tender fraud and corruption inside a university that has long been a symbol of black intellectual excellence in South Africa. Her investigations were wide-ranging and fearless. She even looked into allegations of academic fraud against Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane, an accusation he has denied. But in March 2024, her own life was turned upside down. She and her business partner, Bradley Conradie, were arrested in connection with the very corruption case she had been investigating. Burger spent five nights in a holding cell before she was granted bail. The charges were serious, and the public humiliation was immense. For more than a year, she carried the stigma of being a suspect in the same corruption scandal she had helped expose. Then, in July 2025, the National Prosecuting Authority withdrew the charges against her. No trial. No vindication in court, but also no conviction. It is against this background that her latest affidavit must be read. Burger is not some outsider making wild accusations from a distance. She is a central figure in the Fort Hare saga, someone who has both investigated corruption and been investigated herself. When she speaks about being deliberately smeared, her words carry the weight of lived experience.
The core of Burger’s complaint against Buhlungu revolves around a legal battle over frozen assets. Before the charges against her were dropped, the Makhanda High Court granted the state a provisional restraint order on March 18, 2025, freezing her assets along with those of others accused in the case. Buhlungu deposed to an affidavit supporting that order, and it is this affidavit that Burger now says was riddled with deliberate falsehoods. The restraint order was later set aside on May 27, 2025, but the damage, she argues, had already been done. In his sworn statement, Buhlungu told the court that the university had been unaware of deeper links between Burger and Isaac Plaatjies, the university’s former director of investigations and vetting, until the 2024 arrests. He suggested that Burger and others opposing the restraint order should never have engaged in underhanded dealings with Plaatjies, let alone paid him money or financed the acquisition of his million-rand house. These were not neutral observations. They painted Burger as someone who had secretly colluded with a university official, someone who had used her position for personal gain, someone who could not be trusted as an attorney. In her affidavit, Burger said her relationship with Plaatjies was purely professional and that she had never paid him a cent. But more than that, she argued that Buhlungu’s words were calculated to destroy her. She described him as occupying a position of great eminence and public responsibility, and said his falsehoods went beyond simple inaccuracies. They were, in her words, defamatory and intended to brand her as corrupt and dishonest.
Perhaps the most damaging part of Burger’s affidavit is the evidence she presents to contradict Buhlungu’s sworn claims point by point. Buhlungu told the court that Plaatjies never formed part of the vice-chancellor’s office and that his contract was not linked to Buhlungu’s own term. But Burger attached a council-approved 2021 organogram listing Plaatjies as a direct report in the vice-chancellor’s office, in a post marked clearly as linked to the VC’s term. She also attached an email that Buhlungu himself sent to the then council chairperson, Bishop Ivan Abrahams, on December 3, 2021, recommending that Plaatjies receive a new three-year contract. In that email, Buhlungu wrote that the post would be a contract one and that its term would coincide more or less with that of the vice-chancellor. He explicitly recommended a contract running from February 1, 2022 to January 31, 2025, tying Plaatjies directly to his own tenure. This is not a matter of interpretation. It is a clear contradiction. Buhlungu also told the court that Plaatjies had been one among many senior staff who reported to him and that there was no special working relationship. But Burger pointed to a March 2024 interview in which Buhlungu said the exact opposite. “To say that Plaatjies was close to me is an understatement,” Buhlungu said in that interview. “He was my interface person with the SAPS, the Hawks and everyone else.” The contrast between that public statement and his later sworn testimony is stark. Burger also challenged Buhlungu’s denial that he regularly instructed her and other attorneys. She listed eight matters between 2018 and 2024 in which he personally instructed Horizon Forensics or the university’s attorneys, including the probe into Mabuyane’s academic record. Taken together, the evidence does not simply poke holes in Buhlungu’s affidavit. It suggests a pattern of statements that appear to change according to what is most convenient at the time.
The University of Fort Hare has responded to the allegations with careful, measured language, but its words reveal the seriousness of the situation. The university said it was not previously aware of the criminal complaint lodged by Burger against Buhlungu. It only became aware when the media furnished it with the supporting affidavit and invited comment. After considering the nature of the allegations, the university described them as exceptionally serious, particularly insofar as they concern knowingly making false statements under oath in judicial proceedings. This is significant. A university is an institution built on truth, on evidence, on intellectual integrity. To have its own vice-chancellor accused of lying under oath in a court case involving corruption allegations is a direct challenge to the values it claims to uphold. The university said it respects the independence and integrity of the criminal justice system and considers it imperative that allegations of this nature be subjected to appropriate investigation by law enforcement authorities. It also said it would cooperate fully with any lawful investigation and, in the meantime, considered it inappropriate to comment on the merits of the allegations or to prejudge the findings of any investigation or subsequent legal proceedings. Buhlungu, for his part, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. His silence leaves a space that will inevitably be filled by speculation and assumption. Meanwhile, the disciplinary proceedings that prompted his resignation are still ongoing. The council rejected his claim that the process was set up to reach a predetermined outcome, refused to let him leave immediately, and agreed only a day later to shorten his notice period. He will now leave on October 23, but the disciplinary proceedings will continue until they are concluded. The university is, in effect, holding him accountable even as he exits.
This story is about more than one man and one woman. It is about power, accountability, and the fragile nature of truth in institutions under pressure. The University of Fort Hare is not an ordinary place. It is a historically black institution with a proud legacy, a place that has educated generations of leaders and produced some of South Africa’s most important thinkers. Its reputation is precious, and yet it has been battered by years of allegations of corruption, fraud, and mismanagement. The fact that the person hired to investigate those allegations now finds herself making criminal accusations against the vice-chancellor is almost Shakespearean in its irony. It speaks to a system that can easily become tangled, where the lines between accuser and accused blur, where reputations are weapons and legal documents become battlegrounds. Burger’s charges of perjury and crimen injuria are serious. Perjury strikes at the integrity of the courts, the very foundation of justice. Crimen injuria, a uniquely South African legal concept, protects the dignity of the individual, and in this context it speaks to the deep harm caused by being publicly branded as corrupt when one believes one is innocent. These are not trivial accusations. They will require careful investigation by the police and, if there is sufficient evidence, a court will have to decide where the truth lies. In the meantime, the public is left with uncomfortable questions. Can a leader accused of lying under oath continue to claim moral authority? What does this say about the institutional culture at Fort Hare? And what happens when the pursuit of accountability becomes so complicated that even the investigators need protection? The answers will not come quickly. But the fact that these questions are being asked at all is a sign that, despite everything, there are still people willing to demand the truth, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it is personal. For the university, for Buhlungu, and for Burger, the coming months will be decisive. But for everyone else, this is a reminder that integrity is not something to be claimed, but something to be demonstrated, under oath, under pressure, and under the unblinking eyes of history.