I was expelled for opposing LGBT ideology. I’m still fighting for my rights four years later

(LifeSiteNews) — Four years ago, my life took a knock that I never anticipated. What began as a normal student election campaign at Rhodes University in South Africa quickly turned into a massive legal battle that has put my future on hold.

During my campaign for president of the Student Representative Council, my private Facebook messages that I wrote a year earlier were leaked to the public. In those messages, I expressed my sincerely held beliefs regarding transgenderism, including stating that homosexuality is sinful according to Leviticus 18:22.

Instead of debating my ideas on leadership or challenging what I offered to students during the elections, activists focused entirely on destroying my candidacy because of what I had said on my leaked private social media platform. An online petition gathered over a thousand signatures demanding that I should be disqualified from the presidential bid. The pressure was enormous, and the narrative that campus activists promoted was simple: if you hold traditional Christian convictions, you have no right to be a leader.

I refused to back down because I believed as I still believe now that a democratic society cannot function if Christians are isolated from public life just because their views rooted in Scripture are unpopular. Despite the public backlash, my peers voted for me anyway.

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The cost of faith on campus

Looking back at what happened, it is quite hard to describe the intensity of what took place on campus. That is why I have attached a short video on my legal defense fund page. The footage depicts the raw reality of the backlash, including the chilling moment where another activist confronted me during my presidential campaign speech Q&A session and asked me on camera: “How do you think you’ll survive after tonight?”

Before the election results were even announced, the university nullified the votes, charged me with hate speech, expelled me and endorsed my transcript, meaning I can’t study anywhere else. The disciplinary process I faced was highly alarming. One of the three proctors that presided over my hearing, Advocate Shuaib Rahim, is a vocal LGBTQ activist. This raised concerns whether impartiality was preserved, since a person with a proven public track record of being a staunch gay rights activist was actively involved in making decisions about my fate. Even the university’s vice-chancellor personally stepped in to testify against me. He argued that when a student enrolls at Rhodes, (s)he agrees to abide by the institutional values and policies of the university. As a result, my beliefs on homosexuality and transgenderism were described as incompatible with the policies of Rhodes University.

The board ruled on its final verdict, “We readily acknowledge Mr. Vamva’s right to enjoy his religious beliefs and to express them freely… [Mr. Vamva should] understand that some students do not embrace his Christian faith and therefore they have not signed up [to the university] to consume its message” (see pages 23 and 24, paragraphs 58 to 60). If Christians can be told that their peers have a right not to be exposed to the Christian faith, then clearly religious freedom is completely dead.

Why this story should matter to a non-South African

An ordinary reader may be asking themselves what a case at a South African university campus thousands of miles away from the United States has to do with them. I can assure anyone that this fight is no longer just a South African story. Rhodes University does not operate in a vacuum; the university belongs to an international academic community. It maintains close ties with American universities like Baylor University in Texas, Harvard University, the University of California, Boston College, and receives major funding from U.S. foundations like the Mellon and the Kresge Foundations.

This is where the global leadership pipeline comes into play. These institutions share administrative models and cultural rules amongst each other. For instance, Emeritus Professor Deryck Schreuder, who is a former vice-chancellor of two Australian universities, visited Rhodes to help shape views on the modern role of universities. Former Rhodes vice-chancellor Dr. Saleem Badat later transitioned into a senior role at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York. In that powerful position, the very man who presided over the institutional culture that violated and undermined my religious liberty was given the authority to shape funding, curriculum standards, and diversity mandates globally. He spent significant time at prestigious centers like UC Berkeley, directly impacting academic benchmarks across the United States.

These connections show how deeply intertwined these academic environments are. The same anti-Christian behavior influencing universities in North America and Australia are being exported and shared overseas. It’s a clear indication that a South African controversy today can easily become a new reality for someone else in Virginia tomorrow. This is why I often believe that Christians around the world should pay attention when a fellow Christian on another continent is institutionally sidelined for expressing their orthodox Christian beliefs.

What lies ahead

Living through the fight against a global network of this magnitude takes an enormous amount of resources. Modern institutions use time and financial strain as key weapons, in the hopes that they could apply pressure to students who dare to take them on.

When I started to raise funds earlier this year, my previous fundraising campaign was severely stalled because my past GiveSendGo campaign was set in South African Rands (ZAR). Many international supporters naturally assumed that they were donating in U.S. dollars, meaning a donor in Greensboro, North Carolina, who assumed they gave $5,000 ended up having their donation processed as 5000 ZAR ($300), which is only a small portion of that amount according to USD terms. The campaign raised R25,000 (approximately $1,500), and I remain extremely thankful for each and every contribution.

I realized that being generous was not the problem; the systematic set-up was. Yet had those same contributions been processed in the dollars they were intended rather than Rands, the proceeds available for this fight would have been exceptionally different. To prevent this from happening again, I have decided to launch a new USD-denominated legal defense fund on GiveSendGo to prevent any further confusion about currency differences.

My day in court arrived on November 20, 2025. Because this case carries so much international weight and an impactful precedent for religious freedom, the court has reserved its judgment ever since, and we have been patiently waiting for the judge’s final ruling. This long wait indeed proves how hard Rhodes has been fighting to protect its unreasonable actions, all just to cement an ideological ego. Whichever way the judge decides to rule, the real war will unfortunately begin then. The fact that the university has subjected me to a four-year painful legal process proves they will never accept a loss when its conduct is under such heavy scrutiny. This battle is headed straight for the Supreme Court of Appeals and, ultimately, the highest court in South Africa, the Constitutional Court.

We are now raising $500,000 to establish a long-term Precedent Protection Fund. This would make sure that my legal team has the war chest resources to handle the staggering, immediate costs to prepare filing for the Supreme Court of Appeals together with a multi-year constitutional fight. Furthermore, once victory is established, this permanent fund will fuel a landmark lawsuit to hold the university directly accountable for violating my right to religious liberty.

If you cherish and value fairness and the right to hold Christian beliefs, I deeply ask for and appreciate your prayers and support through my GiveSendGo legal defense fund. For in fact and in truth, convictions matter more when they come at a cost. Thank you for your compassion.

Donate to Christian student’s appeal: GiveSendGo