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My South Africa is the working-class man who called from the airport to return my wallet without a cent missing. It is the white woman who put all three of her domestic worker’s children through the same school that her own child attended. It is the politician in one of our rural provinces, Mpumalanga, who returned his salary to the government as a statement that standing with the poor had to be more than just a few words. It is the teacher who worked after school hours every day during the public sector strike to ensure her children did not miss out on learning.

My South Africa is the first-year university student in Bloemfontein who took all the gifts she received for her birthday and donated them – with the permission of the givers – to a home for children in an Aids village. It is the people hurt by racist acts who find it in their hearts to publicly forgive the perpetrators. It is the group of farmers in Paarl who started a top school for the children of farm workers to ensure they got the best education possible while their parents toiled in the vineyards. It is the farmer’s wife in Viljoenskroon who created an education and training centre for the wives of farm labourers so that they could gain the advanced skills required to operate accredited early-learning centers for their own and other children.

My South Africa is that little white boy at a decent school in the Eastern Cape who decided to teach the black boys in the community to play cricket, and to fit them all out with the togs required to play the gentelman’s game. It is the two black street children in Durban, caught on camera, who put their spare change in the condensed milk tin of a white beggar. It is the Johannesburg pastor who opened up his church as a place of shelter for illegal immigrants. It is the Afrikaner woman from Boksburg who nailed the white guy who shot and killed one of South Africa’s greatest freedom fighters outside his home.

My South Africa is the man who went to prison for 27 years and came out embracing his captors, thereby releasing them from their impending misery. It is the activist priest who dived into a crowd of angry people to rescue a woman from a sure necklacing. It is the former police chief who fell to his knees to wash the feet of Mamelodi women whose sons disappeared on his watch; it is the women who forgave him in his act of contrition. It is the Cape Town university psychologist who interviewed the ‘Prime Evil’ in Pretoria Centre and came away with emotional attachment, even empathy, for the human being who did such terrible things under apartheid.

My South Africa is the quiet, dignified, determined township mother from Langa who straightened her back during the years of oppression and decided that her struggle was to raise decent children, insist that they learn, and ensure that they not succumb to bitterness or defeat in the face of overwhelming odds. It is the two young girls who walked 20kms to school everyday, even through their matric years, and passed well enough to be accepted into university studies. It is the student who takes on three jobs, during the evenings and on weekends, to find ways of paying for his university studies.

My South Africa is the teenager in a wheelchair who works in townships serving the poor. It is the pastor of a Kenilworth church whose parishioners were slaughtered, who visits the killers and asks them for forgiveness because he was a beneficiary of apartheid. It is the politician who resigns on conscientious grounds, giving up status and salary because of an objection in principle to a social policy of her political party. It is the young lawman who decides to dedicate his life to representing those who cannot afford to pay for legal services.

My South Africa is not the angry, corrupt, violent country those deeds fill the front pages of newspapers and the lead-in items on the seven-o’-clock news. It is the South Africa often unseen, yet powered by the remarkable lives of ordinary people. It is the citizens who keep the country together through millions of acts of daily kindness.

* This article originally appeared in Mango’s inflight magazine.

Prof. (JD) Jonathan Jansen Vice-Chancellor and Rector

Prof. Jonathan Jansen was appointed as Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the University of the Free State on 1 July 2009.  He is an Honorary Professor of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand, received an honorary doctorate in Education from the Cleveland State University, USA in 2010 and was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Science of the Developing World (TWAS) in the same year. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the National Research Foundation (NRF). He is a Fulbright Scholar to Stanford University (2007-2008), former Dean of Education at the University of Pretoria (2001-2007) and an Honorary Doctor of Education from the University of Edinburgh. He is a former high school Biology teacher, who completed his undergraduate education at the University of the Western Cape (B.Sc.), his teaching credentials at UNISA (HED, B.Ed.), and his postgraduate education in the USA (MS, Cornell; Ph.D., Stanford). His most recent books are Knowledge in the Blood (2009, Stanford University Press), while he has also co-authored Diversity High: Class, Color, Character and Culture in a South African High School (2008, University Press of America). In these and related works he examines how education leaders balance the dual imperatives of reparation and reconciliation in their leadership practice. Knowledge in the Blood received an outstanding book recognition award from the American Educational Research Association. His co-authored book Curriculum: Organizing knowledge for the classroom is in its second edition. Prof. Janses serves as Vice-President of the South African Academy of Science and from this vantage point leads three major studies on behalf of the academy, including an inquiry on the role of the South African Ph.D. in the global knowledge economy and another investigation into the future of the humanities in South Africa. He recently served on the boards of bodies such as the Centre for the Study of the Internationalization of Curriculum Studies, University of British Columbia; the International Commission on the Child of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (Washington D.C., USA); and as member of the general assembly, International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum, among others. He has served as international consultant to UNESCO, the World Bank, the governments of Namibia and Zimbabwe, USAID, SIDA (Swedish), CIDA (Canadian), the European Union (EU), Germany, the Netherlands, DFID (UK) and the USA (through agencies such as the Academy for Educational Development in Washington D.C.). He has served as national consultant to SAQA, the CHE, HESA, the HSRC, SAMDI (now PALAMA), and the NRF. He has also worked closely with embassies of various countries represented in Pretoria, especially the Latin American representatives. He has chaired ministerial committees on further education and training (appointed by Minister Kader Asmal) and (currently) school evaluation and teacher appraisal (appointed by Minister Naledi Pandor). In addition, he has advised provincial governments on school change. Prof. Jansen has extensive experience in higher education as professor, head of department, dean, (acting) deputy vice-chancellor and, at the two South African universities he worked at, as senate representative on the council (UDW and UP). He has chaired committees at all levels of the university, and does extensive training for deans and for young scholars. He works closely with the business community on matters of education and training and is a non-executive director of ADvTech, a major provider of private education in South Africa.