Rector: UFS not ANC property

2009-07-02 16:05

Bloemfontein - The University of the Free State is not the ANC's property, its new rector and vice chancellor has warned, The Times newspaper reported on Thursday.

The university belonged to all and was not the ANC's private property, Professor Jonathan Jansen was reported as saying.

He said he was confident the university would become a world-class institution.

ANC MP Neels van Rooyen told the Free State legislature this week that the ANC would intervene if transformation at the university did not proceed according to its wishes.

"The UFS is a national asset and not the exclusive property of a group of South Africans who are unwilling to transform and adapt to a democratic South Africa."

Jansen officially took up his new position at the university this month, which was still recovering from a racial incident caused by the "Reitz video".

It was produced by residents of the now-disbanded Reitz men's hostel and showed students mocking the institution's integration policy by initiating five black workers.

Jansen said part of his job was to develop a positive working relationship with all spheres of society, including political parties, with whom he wanted a "positive, honest and open relationship".

"I count all political parties in the group of stakeholders, but I will not be beholden to any of them," he was quoted as saying.

Van Rooyen also reportedly told the legislature that Jansen's comments about Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga were "unwarranted".

Jansen recently described Motshekga as a "lazy and incompetent minister, if one takes into account her record as MEC in Gauteng".

- SAPA