The Chronicle: Video of Racial Degradation Roils South African Campus
Cape Town
A historically conservative, white Afrikaans-speaking campus in South Africa is in an uproar this week after a video circulated online of black, female cleaning-staff members being subjected to degrading treatment by four white male students.
The video comes at a time when the University of the Free State, in Bloemfontein, has been grappling with racial integration in student dormitories.
In the video, which appeared Tuesday, the students are shown preparing a concoction of what looks like dog food and garlic, then urinating into the mixture and serving it to the apparently unknowing women, who are kneeling on the ground, as part of an “initiation” rite. The video ends with one of the students commenting, in Afrikaans: “That, at the end of the day, is what we think of integration.”
The video had apparently been produced last year, in response to a new university policy requiring that all campus dormitories be racially mixed by January of this year. Previously, many of the dormitories had been effectively segregated, with white students gravitating to certain residences and black students to others, says Anton Fisher, director of communications at the university.
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