Reitz 4 ‘pardon’: In defence of Prof Jansen’s decision

By Dr Colleen Aldous

Professor Jonathan Jansen has demonstrated a form of emotional intelligence that South Africans should be looking to as being exemplary. As a South Africa however, I hang my head in shame and disappointment, as I did when the Reitz racial incident occurred. Because instead of being him being revered and held in high esteem for the commitments he made in his inauguration speech, an oration that should go down in history as one of the greatest orations of our time, too many South Africans are currently in a vitriolic confusion, calling for his resignation as Vice-Chancellor of the University and threatening to make the campus ungovernable. It is sad that the efforts of Bishop Desmond Tutu through the Truth and Reconciliation Committees of the nineties have been so short-lived in their effects.

Bishop Tutu has however come out in praise of Professor Jansen pointing out that ‘forgiveness is not for sissies’. Professor Jansen has never been a sissie. As the first black Dean of a Faculty at the University of Pretoria, he set about changing blanket racial perceptions by setting an academic standard higher than had ever been set in his Faculty. He required of his faculty excellence beyond that which they had ever been expected to achieve. But he did not only set those standards, he demonstrated that they could be achieved. He, himself, achieved every academic goal that he set his faculty in terms of research output and publications while still delivering important social commentary in the press and running his faculty. At the beginning of his tenure as the Dean of the Faculty of Education, few people knew he was black, and his name gave no indication that he would be anything but a white Afrikaner. He would arrive at engagements to alarmed white faces and would set a
bout challenging their prejudices and converting so many racially prejudiced whites, particularly Afrikaners, into true South Africans who had no reverence for racial divide. He did this alone – he is not a sissie.

During these years, which for many could be likened to his years of being Daniel in the lion’s den, Professor Jansen also undertook to understand the complexities of white racial prejudice. He would hear stories from white students about how they had been victims of crime, crime they implied emanated exclusively from blacks. He would then tell them of crimes where his grandfather’s farm was taken from him by whites, amongst others inflicted by whites. Both he and the students got to learn of the hardships all have experienced at the hands of other people, sometimes from another race. The culmination of such discussions was the smudging of the lines between race and victimization. Professor Jansen wrote his new knowledge up in the book Knowledge in the Blood: Confronting Race and the Apartheid past. A must read for any South African who truly wants to understand our South African community dynamic.

If any South African understands the root of racial tension today, it is Jonathan Jansen. His experience, his intelligence, his strong sense of justice and the courage of his convictions has lead him to carry out one of the most remarkable acts of reconciliation we have seen this century in South Africa. He knows what he is doing and I hope he is left alone long enough for him to achieve his ultimate aim. If there be any sensibility in our land we will allow Prof Jansen to help knit our people into a single nation while preserving the diversity of our cultural treasures. His critics and detractors do not understand that the only true forgiveness is unconditional forgiveness. Anything less will not hold ground.

Dr Colleen Aldous
Research Fellow
Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA)
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine