South Africa: Video emerges of white students humiliating black cleaners

[Honey]

South Africa has come face to face with its apartheid past when a "shocking" video emerged of white university students force-feeding and racially humiliating five poor black cleaners.


The four students are heard referring to the old "Boer" college way of life during the footage, which saw the elderly workers being made to drink bottles of beer, run races, play rugby and then kneel and eat meat which had been urinated upon.
News of the video yesterday sparked rioting at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, once the Afrikaans heartland of the Orange Free State. Scroll down for more ...

One of the white students can be seen urinating on the food in images from the video

The black cleaners are then forced to kneel on the floor and eat the food

The humiliating video represents what the white students think about integration, according to the narrator

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Police arrested scores of black and white demonstrators as university vice chancellor Frederick Fourie fought desperately to calm tensions as tutorials were cancelled.
He said the video was made last September, since when two of the students had left. The remaining two had been suspended and the police called in to investigate.
"I am deeply saddened that students apparently see nothing wrong in producing such an offensive and degrading video," he said.
"I have publicly said several times that the UFS is not a place for racism.
"It's a gross violation of the human dignity of the workers involved. We have immediately started with a most urgent investigation on this matter." The video is thought to have been made in response to the university's integration policy on student accommodation. Up until the end of the last student year in December, the 3,000 students on campus lived separately. Scroll down for more ...

The cleaners were humiliated on camera


Attempts to change that this academic year led to riots last week with students complaining they had not been consulted. The video was made in a male-only digs which are still all-white but that is due to change under the new policy.
The narration on the video starts: "Once upon a time the 'Boer' lived peacefully here on Reitz Island( the name of the student hostel), until one day when the less-advantaged discovered the word 'integration' in the dictionary." The amateur footage shows garlic being put into a dish full of meat which looks like dog food. The narrator is heard saying: "We know they're less privileged so we're adding a bit of meat." Another student puts the bowl on the toilet and urinates into the mixture. The concoction is then handed out in plastic glasses to the cleaners.
All five – four women and a man - spit out the first mouthful, but try to finish it amid loud encouragement from the students. The video ends with the words: "That, at the end of the day, is what we think of integration."
The footage then shows one of the students asking a cleaner: "What does 'sefebe' mean in Afrikaans?" She replies: "a black whore". Scroll down for more ...

The horrifying video sparked riots at the university today


It is unclear how the footage was released or how long it had been circulating at the university.
The video was last night widely condemned. The SA Students Congress said: "The barbaric behaviour of the Afrikaaner students in that university still resembles the old apartheid order." Liana Van Wyk, a spokeswoman for the opposition Democratic Alliance, said it was "shocking and inhumane".
She added: "It looked like they were willing [participants] but they didn't know what purpose the video served ... it was quite humiliating at the end to see the quite senior ladies on their knees eating the meat."
Police arrested scored of demonstrators



South Africa stunned by echoes of apartheid past after video emerges of white students humiliating black cleaners | the Daily Mail

[Mivvi21]

Disgusting bastards. I hope they get their racist asses kicked to hell and back for this.

[Butterfly]

What is wrong with people. Scum bags.

[crumpet]

The cruelty of people leaves me speechless sometimes.

[AliceInWonderland]

S.A. sucks!

[Dixie Normos]

That is fucking atrocious. I hate it when ANYONE abuses their power, but is especially heinous to abuse locals when YOU are the outsider. They ought to be whipped and made to eat their own crap cakes.

[DitaPage*]

Disgusting behaviour. I hope theres a harsh punishment. But seeing as though they're white, and the victims are black, it doesn't look promising.

[AliceInWonderland]

[celeb_2006]

Students "apologize"

(yawn yet another "if we offended anyone" crapola fake ass "apology")


SAfrican students apologize for video - Yahoo! News

Two white students behind a video in which five black university workers appear to be duped into eating food tainted with urine apologized and said they had been "crucified as racists."
Meanwhile, a magazine said Friday that one of its black journalists covering the video story had been assaulted in what appeared to be a racial attack at a restaurant in Bloemfontein.
Themba Makamo, 26, had to receive stitches after been accosted at his table by a "burly white man" who later followed him to the bathroom, where he headbutted, kicked and punched the journalist in the face and used racially derogatory words, the news and entertainment magazine Drum said in a statement.
Bloemfontein police spokeswoman Superintendent Annelie Wrensch said the complaint was being investigated.
The video, which showed four middle-aged women and one man on their knees eating the food, has been seen around the world, exposing deep racial tensions in South Africa more than a decade after racist white rule ended.
The University of the Free State in the city of Bloemfontein, 400 miles south of Johannesburg, is regarded as a bastion for Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch settlers who are often most closely linked with apartheid rule.
The two students, Roelof Malherbe and Schalk van der Merwe, who have been banned from the university's campus, said in a statement issued by their lawyer late Thursday that although it appeared as if the food had been urinated on, a "harmless" liquid had been squirted from a bottle.
The two students, said they regretted making the film, which they said they meant as a "satirical slant" on the issue of racial integration at the university dormitories.
Malherbe and Van der Merwe are "not racists and, most certainly, had no intention of humiliating or degrading the employees concerned or black people in general or of detrimentally affecting their dignity," the statement said.
However, it said the students "now regret having participated in the making of the film" and "apologize for any embarrassment which they may, unintentionally, have caused to any person or group of persons, including their parents."
Authorities at the university have launched a criminal probe into the making of the video.
On Thursday, the four female university workers expressed their hurt at the video and said they had not been aware of what they were participating in, believing they were taking part in a competition.
"We feel pain," said Emma Koko, 40, who has been working for the university for 20 years and whose son attends classes there. "It's something we were not expecting. We regard them (the students) as our children."
The video depicts a mock initiation ceremony into a campus residence, with the middle-aged black cleaners portraying students. The workers seem to know and trust the students in the video, laughing as they try to eat the food while on their knees. But according to the video footage, one of the students urinated on the food beforehand, unknown to the cleaners.
Commentary on the video in Afrikaans included sarcastic reference to the university's policy of integrating the campus dorms — being phased in only this year, 14 years after the end of apartheid.
In the statement, the two students said that the four women workers were "loyal friends" and took part voluntarily in the making of the film and "as is evident clearly enjoyed it."
The students said the workers knew the film was being made, what its purpose was and that the "brew was not contaminated."

The statement went on to say that it was "suspected that the film was published with malicious intent at a time when it would — and apparently did — purport to serve the purpose of demonstrating racism on the campus."
The university, known for its science departments, is one of a handful of institutions set up for the Afrikaans elite across the country. They all have high academic standards but are seen as conservative and have struggled with racial integration since opening their doors to black students in the early 1990s.
Black students make up 60 percent of the Free State university's 25,000-strong student body. Most of the support staff are black but over 80 percent of teaching staff are still white. Students say racial tensions on the campus remain high and that the residence where the video was made has a particularly bad reputation.

[sparkly]

I don't give a flying fuck about their useless apology, they can shove it up their asses!!!!

[SweetPea]

I'm glad the f*cks video taped it because it became the evidence of their despicable behavior.

[DitaPage*]

I told ya.

[Sibyl]

That makes me feel sick. I can't believe how much cruel some people can be

[crumpet]

They ought to be whipped and made to eat their own crap cakes.

LOL at crap cakes!!!!!

[Dixie Normos]

OH. They apologized?

It effing sickens me how only rich people can afford justice. In NA, an idiot can sue a company for 'too' hot coffee, but if you're black and live in Africa, all you get is an apology for being debased and treated worse than a cockroach.