Defend Truth

Politics

Jansen stays and the FF+ goes (on about consultation)

Jansen stays and the FF+ goes (on about consultation)

Maybe Malema and Nzimande realised that transformation would not be served by having a black government boot the black head of a university. And maybe the Freedom Front needs to realise that consultation or no, integration is going to happen.

Julius Malema has changed his tune, or so the headlines read. But he hasn’t really said anything about Professor Jonathan Jansen before, so it’s not a full hundred and eighty degree turn. What he has said, is that Jansen must stay, that he must lead the transformation of the university, and that he is “one of our own”.

Malema being Malema, he couldn’t leave it there, and said, “We mustn’t throw one of our own to the enemy.” Whether he meant whites, white racists, opposition parties, or the university is not really known. No doubt he’ll say he meant that Jansen is black, and as the first black Vice Chancellor of the university, he must stay. Clearly someone figured out what would have happened if Jansen was forced out.

That someone is probably Blade Nzimande. The Higher Education minister knows it took a little while to find someone to replace Professor Frederick Fourie (Jansen’s predecessor), and so to start that again would really suck. There’s also the image of Jansen booted out of Kosvies, not by white racists but by a black government.

Jansen is political astute enough to have given Nzimande something. He made sure that the ministry didn’t go away empty handed, with his offer to consult again, and re-look at the process. It wasn’t much, but Jansen knows that face is important, and he gave it to Nzimande.

Someone else who may be seeking to save face is the Freedom Front Plus. They were busted this week by Fourie, who claimed they were largely responsible for keeping the university residences segregated. He says when he tried to integrate towards the end of 2007 (just a few months before the Reitz video emerged in 2008) the FF+ led a campaign against it. The ANC and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela have condemned that campaign, and that starts to have some interesting political implications. Don’t forget the FF+ is in government.

The FF+ has now hit back, saying it was about “consultation”, not integration. It went to court because students hadn’t been consulted properly. Maybe Fourie suspected that the consultation process would go against him, maybe not. Either way, someone would have had to use the “Meredith option”.

James Meredith was the former US Air Force member, who wanted to study at the University of Missippi in 1962. He was black, and after the Supreme Court ruled he could study there, spent the next few years surrounded by federal marshals. But graduate he did. It cost two lives and a tonne of trouble. He became a stock broker.

If you’d “consulted” the students at Ole Miss then, the answer would have been a straight no. But someone eventually had to use the law to protect the rights of an individual, to study, and the expense of some of the rights of the majority. It was the right thing to do.

By Stephen Grootes
(Grootes is an EyeWitness News reporter)

Photo: James Meredith with US marshalls entering the University of Mississippi in 1962.

Gallery

Please peer review 3 community comments before your comment can be posted

X

This article is free to read.

Sign up for free or sign in to continue reading.

Unlike our competitors, we don’t force you to pay to read the news but we do need your email address to make your experience better.


Nearly there! Create a password to finish signing up with us:

Please enter your password or get a sign in link if you’ve forgotten

Open Sesame! Thanks for signing up.

We would like our readers to start paying for Daily Maverick...

…but we are not going to force you to. Over 10 million users come to us each month for the news. We have not put it behind a paywall because the truth should not be a luxury.

Instead we ask our readers who can afford to contribute, even a small amount each month, to do so.

If you appreciate it and want to see us keep going then please consider contributing whatever you can.

Support Daily Maverick→
Payment options

Become a Maverick Insider

This could have been a paywall

On another site this would have been a paywall. Maverick Insider keeps our content free for all.

Become an Insider

Every seed of hope will one day sprout.

South African citizens throughout the country are standing up for our human rights. Stay informed, connected and inspired by our weekly FREE Maverick Citizen newsletter.