ANC Youth League president Julius Malema was "extremely smart", University of Free State rector Jonathan Jansen said on Friday.

"His ability to synthesise a fairly complex set of discussions that we had was amazing," he said.

"I wish I had some professors who could do that."

Jansen was speaking to the Cape Town Press Club about his much-publicised meeting with the youth leader last month on the university's Reitz race row.

Jansen said he had a golden rule that when he talked to anyone, especially politicians, private meetings stayed private.

"And so I'm not going to talk about Mr Malema and what drives him and what we talked about and so on.

"But I do want to say this about him... unlike the impression I think in the media, he is an extremely smart person."

Jansen said the second thing that was "amazing" about Malema was that he had a deep respect for education, teachers and professors.

After the 29 October meeting Malema surprisingly came out in full support of Jansen's stand on the Reitz issue.

"Jansen is one of our own," Malema told students at the time. "We cannot feed Jansen to the enemy."

Sapa

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