South Africa stunned by echoes of apartheid past after video emerges of white students humiliating black cleaners
By IAN EVANS
February 28, 2008
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.
Full Article : dailymail.co.uk
» Racist video sparks outrage in South Africa
» Outcry in SA over ‘racist’ video
Video from YouTube:
UPDATE: MARCH 02, 2008
» Race row students are unrepentant
Mass protest planned over video ‘prank’ that humiliated black staff at South African university
» Never mind ‘the other’ – we are all to blame
We are all at fault. No matter how sincere and heartfelt our celebrations of the “miracle of democracy” and the “rainbow’s multi-hued splendour”, it is a sad fact that we did little to eradicate the racism that is so deeply entrenched in the national psyche.
» This is the real South Africa
White and black are shocked to discover how little the country has changed
I,m ashamed to be a South African.
Sorry my mistake,those people are not South Africans,they are animals!!
Stupid,ignorant “people”.
Many many years ago, the movie “South PAcific” made the point that racism is not inbred, it has to be carefully taught, cultivated.
My question to all South Africans is this. Who is teaching racism, as if the last fourteen years had never been? Who benefits from this barbaric system?
Should we, of the sports world, allow our children to come into cntact with white South Africans of the sort that were exposed in their barbarity by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? I have to remind myself sternly that Nadine Gordimer is white, so was the Rev. Trevor Huddleston.
Some serious work needs to be done among thse young white students.
One cannot “unteach” racism. It took generations upon generations to be inculcated by Europeans in South Africa, then it became institutionalized via the establishment of apartheid.
The process to undo the damage begun in 1994, initially by removing the institutional shackles and freeing Nelson, but more importantly, can only really be effectively acheived by cultural changes on the part of the whites! Simply put, the whites have to learn from their past, change their outlook, and attempt to atone the sins of their forefathers.
This will undoubtedly and unfortunately take several generations, and perhaps further bloodshed. One can take the horse to water, but can’t force it to drink.
These students are acting out what four hundred years of nurturing have instructed them to do. Four hundred years of genetic implantaion in the psyche that black is negative and deserves no respect. The only difference between them and many others is that they lack the sophistication and restraint to keep these natural impulses under check.
Waxing hypocritically will get us no where, as long as we continue to protect sacred cows of discourse. Over the past four hundred years this world has found commonality with one premise or concept if you will. And that is the notion that black reside at the negative end of the human social continuum and white reside at the opposite end. And the closer one perceives onself to be to the white end, the greater the sensitivity to the rule.
Many of us routinely offer observations and opinions that are incubated in a manner of thinking conmpliant with our acceptance of the premise that black is negative and white is positive. And so deeply woven is this into our psyche, that to point it out or to challenge opinions and observations on that basis, is to often elicit responses of racism. The sacred cow of historical discourse rule out analysing a four hundred years establismentarianisitic and institutionalized social component, common to the entire world without exception.
I would not even deign to rack my anger over this spectacle on top of what has been racked heretofore. I tend to be more icendiary with those who subtely exhibt the same attitudes of these students than I tend to be with them, the rotten fruits that fall from trees of hate. On the Cape of South Africa, day in and day out, indigenous Africans are being subjected to the same kind of humiliations and abuses that incidented their existence under the apartheid regime. When those who attained the right to take away land, to oppress people, understand that the powers that be will condmen every effort to reverse those trends, why should they mend or adapt their ways.
Africans will extinguish these aspects of their oppression when they elect to say “f” the world and lock up their resources. When they elect to reject any interaction with those who associate with them only because of material benefits from such associations.
Africans were alone on this planet for thousands of years before they evolved into different strains and offshoots of humankind. They did not become extinct then, and they will not become extinct now by reaching back and using early ancestral templates as a means of survival and development. Lock up the continent like the Chinese did with their homeland for the next ten or fifteeen years. The world will feel it and understand that a veritable aircraft cannot climb into the sky, and a computer cannot come off an assembley line, without something crucially important to its development from Africa. The time has come for Africans to play hardball.