The former students at the centre of the Reitz race row would probably make a public apology before the end of this month, University of the Free State rector Jonathan Jansen said on Friday.
Speaking at a Cape Town Press Club lunch, he also revealed that he had had an emotional reconciliation with the Free State ANC Youth League leader who called for him to be shot as a racist.
The four students, residents of what was then the all-white Reitz hostel, were expelled for making a video that showed them feeding black university workers food which had apparently been urinated on.
Jansen was both applauded and heavily criticised when he announced at his inauguration last month that the university had pardoned the four and that they could continue their studies if they wanted.
Replying on Friday to a questioner who asked whether the students should not have shown remorse before being allowed back on campus, he said: "I think it would have been ideal, sir, if there was remorse, and ideal if there was an apology.
"And I do believe it's going to happen within the next two weeks. You will see a process that I think will transform this country enormously."
He said the process was not being led by the university, and had had little to do with him, but that he had been "fortunate to be part of it".
"Nobody can guarantee the outcome, but I'm very optimistic," he said.
Jansen said his emotional encounter with Free State ANCYL leader Thebe Meeko had come after a meeting on the Reitz issue with a youth league delegation headed by its national president, Julius Malema.
"At the end of this meeting with Mr Malema I said, as if I didn't know who it was, I said, where is Mr (Meeko).
"He put up his hand, and I took him into my office.
"He stood at the far side of the office. I said, 'Come towards me,' and he was very hesitant to do that.
"I said, 'Don't worry, come,' and he came.
"I went towards him and I took my two arms and I put them around him and I said, 'I need you to know that I love you very much and I think you will still become a good leader.'
"I wish I could describe to you that emotional moment for him and for me. I wish I could tell you the full apology that came quickly.
"And I wish I could tell you the sense that he had and I had, that there is another way for getting out of our troubles."
Meeko told supporters last month after the readmission decision that Jansen was "a criminal like these racist young students".
"We agree with the president of the ANC, shoot and kill a criminal," he said.
Jansen told the press club he remembered the days when South Africans said their country would never become like Zimbabwe or Rwanda.
But they had to find another way of talking to each other, and dealing with their bitterness and hatred, or they would not be far from going down that road.
Jansen emphasised repeatedly that the decision to readmit the four students had nothing to do with the criminal case that had been opened against them, or a looming civil action.
"They will be and in my view should be accountable in those processes," he said.
"This has simply to do with the decision universities make every single day, which is a decision about who studies and who gets expelled and who gets readmitted."
He criticised South Africans for standing on a podium of self-righteousness, and said he regretted not having had the courage to admit in a radio interview earlier this month that he himself was a racist.
Jansen, who is coloured, said he tried every day to be generous, honest and equitable.
But he could not guarantee that he did not have thoughts which were shameful, and that he did not feel hatred towards whites for what they had done to his family under apartheid. - Sapa