Four students were due to go on trial, accused of humiliating black
cleaners. The vice-chancellor moved to pardon the four but, as the trial was due to begin, students threatened make the uniiversity "ungovernable".

The hullabaloo began on 16 October, when new Vice-Chancellor Professor Jonathan Jansen announced at his inauguration that the University of the Free State, or UFS, would drop its complaints against the four expelled students, and they could return to campus. The university would pay "reparations" to the five cleaners degraded by the students.

Other initiatives included: reopening the infamous Reitz student residence in which the racist video was shot to "transform it into a model of racial reconciliation and social justice for all students"; racially integrating residences; introducing African language learning for white students and Afrikaans for black students; transforming the curriculum; banning initiation rituals and alcohol in residences; and filling 25 professorial posts with a diverse pool of top scholars to end the dominance of white male academics.

Nobel peace prize-winning Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu told reporters that Jansen "has done us proud". Media editorials described him as "brave".

But the vice-chancellor's well-intentioned and, in the context of a conservative university, radical efforts to bridge racial divides and reform the institution got lost amidst the outrage express by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and student bodies at the decision to 'pardon' the racist students.

The ANC welcomed Jansen's transformative programme, but national spokesman Jackson Mthembu said the party believed "such act will not lead to reconciliation but will again harden racial attitudes not only in the university but in the country broadly".

The South African Union of Students rejected Jansen's announcement with "contempt". The racist students should not be allowed to continue studying, it said, adding that Jansen's move was an attempt to win the hearts and minds of "intransigent whites" within the institution.

Dr Blade Nzimande, Minister of Higher Education and Training, issued a statement saying he had asked the university for a report explaining its reasons and processes for withdrawing complaints against the four students - but had not received one. Contrary to Jansen's public assertions, he added, the Ministry was not consulted or informed beforehand.

Nzimande said he had been "inspired" by Jansen's vision during a recent visit to UFS, but was shocked at withdrawal of the complaint. It had become clear to him that the workers - Nkgapeng Adams, Emmah Koko, Mothibedi Molete, Mankoe Phororo and Sebuasengwe Ntlatseng - were "profoundly scarred" by the incident. One of them told the Mail & Guardian: "This proves we are nothing." Among other things the cleaners were told by the white students to eat food that, in the video, appeared to have been urinated on.

The pardoning process should have involved all those affected, Nzimande argued, but neither the victims nor key university stakeholders had been consulted or meaningfully engaged in the decision - which Jansen denies.

The department's view was that "we cannot allow victims of racism to be unconditional unilateral forgivers. We fear that on one hand Jansen has taken it upon himself to absolve the perpetrators on behalf of the victims and compensate the victims on behalf of the perpetrators. This would constitute a superficial trade-off which further impugns the dignity of the victims and is unfortunately an apology for the perpetrators of racism."

Nzimande called on the university to convene an urgent meeting of stakeholders and to suspend the decision to withdraw the complaint and readmit the students, "pending the outcome of a process of institution-wide, meaningful consultation, and that the Minister be advised on any consequent action that might need to be taken."

The incident did not only affect the university, he added, but was a matter for the higher education sector and society as a whole and "threatens to undermine all our efforts to root out racism and all forms of discrimination in higher education."

Such comments were bound to prompt concerns about university autonomy. Higher Education South Africa, the vice-chancellors' association, issued its own statement on Friday, saying it had taken note of the public debate and would discuss the withdrawal of the complaint against the 'Reitz Four' at its next board meeting this Tuesday.

HESA chair, Dr Theuns Eloff, said: "There are important principles at stake in this issue, in particular those of institutional autonomy and public accountability. HESA upholds the principle of institutional autonomy and is firmly committed to ensuring that it is appropriately balanced against accountability to the public good".

University of Cape Town Deputy Vice-chancellor Professor Crain Soudien, who led a post-Reitz Four ministerial committee probe into racism in universities, told Business Day that Jansen's plan was "a moment of public education" that he would have to carefully explain to the public, and especially to the university's black students.

"The major issue in South Africa now is what 'transformation' means, and it is not simply a clearing of the decks, although that is obviously his [Jansen's] first step."

On Friday, politicians and student leaders told the Independent on Saturday there would be protests at the university tomorrow, when the Reitz Four - RC Malherbe, Johnny Roberts, Schalk van der Merwe and Danie Grobler - are due to appear in court in Bloemfontein on charges of crimen injuria. It appears likely that the case will be postponed.

Buti Manamela, National Secretary of Young Communists League, told reporters its members would render the university "ungovernable", the Progressive Youth Alliance said it would be mobilising members to protest against Jansen's decision, and the ANC in the province said its would picket at the court and hold a protest march on Friday.

Jansen - who obtained his masters from Cornell and Phd from Stanford and is a much-published honorary professor of education at the University of the Witwatersrand, recent Fulbright scholar and former dean of education at the University of Pretoria - is a straight-talking and independent thinker with a high public profile.

He was never going to be a shrinking violet as the new head of UFS, especially since his remit was to profoundly transform the conservative Afrikaans-speaking university. But few expected his first official speech to provoke such a furore.

In his inaugural lecture, Jansen called the Reitz student resident "a place of infamy that brought great shame to our university and unprecedented outrage to our country". He said he had visited Reitz often in an effort to understand how such an atrocity could have occurred at an institution of higher learning.

He had concluded that the big mistake made in analysing Reitz was to explain the incident in terms of individual pathology. The video was preceded, Jansen said, "by a long series of racial incidents protesting racial integration especially in residences of the university".

Shifting the focus of analysis from individual pathology to institutional culture, Jansen said, "it becomes clear that the problem of Reitz is not simply a problem of four racially troubled students. It is, without question, a problem of institutional complicity."

For this reason it was also clear that deeper issues of racism and bigotry at Free State and other universities will not be resolved in the courts - the same social, cultural and ideological complexities would continue, "unless we do something differently".

The radical moves he suggested, such as 50-50 integration of student residences and banning initiation ceremonies, are likely to help achieve real transformation at Free State - unless the row over the pardoning destroys the support he enjoyed when he first took the very tricky job.

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