Graduating cum laude from school of hard knocks
Vice-chancellor is ending an illustrious term at UFS
ABOUT two weeks ago in the small eastern Free State town of Reitz, an Afrikaner woman cupped Professor Jonathan Jansen’s hands.
“I have sent two of my children through your hands. I have another in Grade 4. You can’t leave before you have looked after him as well,” she said.
Little did she know that her fears were about to be realised.
On Monday, Jansen announced that he would step down as vicechancellor of the University of the Free State on August 31 to take up a position at Stanford University in California, one of his alma maters.
It was Jansen who served his students soup and vetkoek in winter and ice cream in summer, and who initiated a programme whereby talented retired teachers adopted the Free State’s 23 worst-performing schools, helping the province improve its matric results.
He also had to tackle entrenched racism on campus, and was caught in the middle between those who criticised him for not transforming the institution fast enough and those who accused him of undermining Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.
In an interview this week, Jansen said he had returned to South Africa after years of working abroad “because my mother taught me that one has to make one’s contribution”.
He first worked at the then University of Durban-Westville, before taking up a post as dean of education at the University of Pretoria.
“I have never wanted to be comfortable in my surroundings.
“My surroundings must challenge me. I love being displaced,” said Jansen.
“So when I came to the Free State, I knew it was agricultural and conservative — Pretoria on steroids. Then the Reitz residence racism debacle broke.”
The 2008 furore was ignited by a video in which four white students from the Reitz residence pretended to trick black cleaners into drinking urine.
“I could write a book of highlights about my time in the Free State,” said Jansen.
“Students would come into my office merely to say that they pray every morning that I have a wonderful day. That always humbled me.”
Other fond memories included graduation days, and “the girl who was assaulted as a teenager and whose mother was killed, now graduating in molecular biology; and the many black and white students who found love and married — in the Free State! — but whose stories are not told by a media always looking for racial strife”.
So were the seven years in Bloemfontein worth it?
“If you want to run a university you must be prepared to be challenged to your core,” said Jansen.
“In my case the seven years were absolutely worth it.
“I am not leaving because of the pressure. I always told the university council I would give it my all for seven years — I have always believed that anyone who stays in the same job for more than seven years lacks imagination.”
Did he feel torn apart by the differing expectations of black students and conservative white Free Staters?
“Both black and white Free Staters gave me huge support. I felt at home in farming communities from Bothaville to Senekal and Viljoenskroon, and in the townships from Thaba Nchu to Botshabelo and Mangaung, where I was welcomed into people’s homes and hearts.
“There was a sliver of people who tried to make my life miserable. I received many death threats — and in the Free State people sign them with their names and addresses.
“I was lambasted by the local Afrikaans daily newspaper all the time. They believed I was an ANC plant — I think the ANC must have laughed at that proposition.
“On the other hand, I was not radical enough for the radical black nationalists, whom I would not call progressive. They wanted a party hack, but I am nobody’s party hack.”
Jansen warned that a range of factors meant that local tertiary institutions were at risk of going the same way as their counterparts in Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Uganda.
“At the formerly excellent universities of Zimbabwe, Dar es Salaam and Makerere, three factors combined to weaken them, and I cannot deny that I am worried about these issues in South Africa,” he said.
He listed the dangers as state interference in the governance and financial management of universities, failure by the government to provide enough financial support, and “chronic instability”.
The instability meant management never knew “which building will be burnt down next by nihilist students, which in the South African case is a very small part of a generally progressive protesting body”.
He said he had never experienced interference by Blade Nzimande, the minister of higher education, or his directors-general, Mary Metcalfe and Gwebs Qonde.
But Jansen said the kind of state interference envisaged in the Higher Education Amendment Bill would reduce South African universities to the mediocrity of the University of Zimbabwe.
“Why do parents send their children to university? Surely to obtain an excellent education in a safe environment. If those requirements are lost, middle-class flight to private and overseas universities takes place.
“Also, an excellent university needs at least a dozen top-notch academics to not be a training college. When these leave, only the academics without options stay. When the middle class and top academics leave, your campus becomes mediocre.”
On his move to Stanford, Jansen said: “I’d be an idiot to say no to that opportunity. It is a huge compliment to be asked by Stanford to come to their institute of advanced study, which is similar in structure to the one Stellenbosch has.”
Asked if moving to California meant he would be lost to South Africa for good, Jansen scowled and said: “I’ll be back.”
I knew it was agricultural and conservative — Pretoria on steroids When the middle class and top academics leave, your campus becomes mediocre