The Chronicle of Higher Education
By MEGAN LINDOW
Bloemfontein, South Africa
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
It was all just a "harmless" prank, never intended to hurt anyone, the students say.
Sitting around a table on the lawn of Reitz Hall, their residence complex on the campus of the University of the Free State, Willie Struwig and Jan Botha, both third-year students, try to explain their bewilderment at the waves of outrage that have swept this campus lately, ever since video footage of white students humiliating the hall's black cleaning staff found its way from the privacy of their dormitory to the Web.
Released on campus late last month, the video shows five elderly black domestic workers on their knees, being taunted by white male students to drink a stew that one of the young men had allegedly urinated into (The Chronicle, February 28).
The episode has thrown this historically white Afrikaans university—now struggling with racial transformation—into turmoil. It has also, educators say, exposed deeper undercurrents of racial animosity that persist on this and other campuses around the country after 14 years of democracy in South Africa, particularly among young white Afrikaans men who feel they face a bleak future under black majority rule.
The video, made by four white students in protest against a new university policy requiring the racial integration of campus housing, was shown last September at a "cultural evening" in Reitz Hall, their exclusively white-male residence.
Mr. Botha, a psychology major, remembers watching the video during the cultural evening, where it was voted the most popular entry by the residents, and finding it funny. "It wasn't a racially motivated video," he says. "It was a comedy."
Then, recently, somebody leaked it out over the campus e-mail network, where it was quickly picked up by the local and foreign media. The callous racism shown by a group of Afrikaners who were too young to have ever experienced the cruelties of apartheid first-hand, yet were unsettlingly echoing the old racist attitudes of previous generations, was furiously condemned around the world.
"Once upon a time the 'Boere' lived peacefully here on Reitz Island, until one day when the less-advantaged discovered the word 'integration' in the dictionary," the narration begins.
Mockingly portrayed as new "initiates" into Reitz Hall, the five cleaners—four women and a man—are filmed running a race, downing beers, and playing rugby. But the clincher comes toward the end, as the students prepare a concoction of what looks like dog food mixed with garlic.
Then a young man clad in a baseball cap is shown placing the mixture on top of a toilet. Standing with his back to the camera, he appears to urinate into the mixture.
In the next scene, the concoction is served to the five unsuspecting workers, who are kneeling on the ground. Tasting the mixture, they start gagging and spitting it out while the boys laugh, telling them in Afrikaans to finish it.
Bitter Divisions
Since the video's release, two of the students have been suspended and barred from the campus. The other two had graduated at the end of last year, but all four now face criminal prosecutions. The university is also considering whether to close down Reitz Hall, a residence that many students and staff members say is a breeding ground for racism on campus. [To read the entire article, go to: http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/03/2150n.htm ]
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