Johannesburg-quoted food group, Astral Foods, on Thursday said it had appointed trailblazer Dr Theuns Eloff as the new chairman of the firm, starting June 1 this year.

Eloff (59), until recently the Vice-Chancellor of North-West University, South Africa, succeeds Jurie Geldenhuys, who retired in March this year after a lengthy service with Astral Foods.

Eloff is famous for being part of the Afrikaans group that represented the now-defunct National Party in South Africa in talks leading to the country’s first all-race elections of 20 years ago. The talks were known as Codesa, the Convention for a Democratic South Africa.

He has been an independent non-executive director on Astral Foods board for the past eight years, the time during which he served on the Audit and Risk Management Committees and chaired the Social and Ethics Committee.

He is also the chair of the Dagbreek Trust and deputy chairman of the FW de Klerk Foundation.

FW de Klerk Foundation was started by the last white president of South Africa, FW De Klerk, who released the late first president of the democratic South Africa, Nelson Mandela, from Robben Island.

Mandela had been incarcerated on the Island prison for 27 years before being released on February 2 1990.

Eloff finished his studies at Potchefstroom University (now North-West University). He started his career as a minister of religion in Pretoria and left the ministry in 1989 to join the Consultative Business Movement (CBM), where he was appointed as Executive Director in 1990.

In 1995 Eloff became CEO of the National Business Initiative and later served on the Economic Advisory Council of the North-West Province, the Board of Business Against Crime and the Board of the Centre for Conflict Resolution.