PROFESSOR Jonathan Jansen's apologists are a mischievous lot. They are deliberately distorting opposition to Jansen's unilateral reconciliatory gesture to create the false impression that those who hold a differing viewpoint to theirs are opponents of racial harmony.
Some suggest that Jansen's recalcitrance in the face of calls that he revisit his decision shows that he is standing up to the ANC. South Africans, particularly black ones, have proven themselves more than willing to extend their hand in reconciliation and nation building.
In the face of the horrors that they have witnessed in the name of white racism, the behaviour of the Reitz Four pales into relative insignificance.
There are still individuals whose hands are dripping with the blood of those whose only sin was to oppose an evil system based on the white supremacist lie.
As if to piss into Jansen's alleged "toenadering" the neo-racists now claim that the professor's gesture of goodwill is a mere cop-out because the university realises that it has no case against the four young men who urinated into the food they later offered to the university's cleaning staff.
Having learnt the lesson that reconciliation requires, as a bare minimum, that the perpetrator and the victim engage with each other, we are glad to learn that Jansen has now reopened the debate on his ill-advised but well-meant gesture.
Jansen must know by now that the majority of South Africans are not averse to national reconciliation and forgiveness. But someone must first say a simple askies.
Reitz a drop in the ocean
PROFESSOR Jonathan Jansen's apologists are a mischievous lot. They are deliberately distorting opposition to Jansen's unilateral reconciliatory gesture to create the false impression that those who hold a differing viewpoint to theirs are opponents of racial harmony.
Some suggest that Jansen's recalcitrance in the face of calls that he revisit his decision shows that he is standing up to the ANC. South Africans, particularly black ones, have proven themselves more than willing to extend their hand in reconciliation and nation building.
In the face of the horrors that they have witnessed in the name of white racism, the behaviour of the Reitz Four pales into relative insignificance.
There are still individuals whose hands are dripping with the blood of those whose only sin was to oppose an evil system based on the white supremacist lie.
As if to piss into Jansen's alleged "toenadering" the neo-racists now claim that the professor's gesture of goodwill is a mere cop-out because the university realises that it has no case against the four young men who urinated into the food they later offered to the university's cleaning staff.
Having learnt the lesson that reconciliation requires, as a bare minimum, that the perpetrator and the victim engage with each other, we are glad to learn that Jansen has now reopened the debate on his ill-advised but well-meant gesture.
Jansen must know by now that the majority of South Africans are not averse to national reconciliation and forgiveness. But someone must first say a simple askies.