South Africa suffers from “racism still daily”, President Cyril Ramaphosa regretted on Monday, a week after the broadcast of a video which outraged the country, showing a white student from a prestigious university urinating on the books of a black comrade.
“Racism is still present on a daily basis in South Africa,” said the head of state in his weekly letter, describing this incident in a dormitory at the University of Stellenbosch (south) as “degrading and humiliating”.
This video of a freshman speaking English with a strong Afrikaans accent has been widely shared on social media. In the early hours of Sunday, May 15, an off-camera student asks him “why are you pissing in my room? he replies laconically, without interrupting himself, “I’m waiting for someone.”
According to the South African Students’ Congress, a student union, the young man with close-cropped hair and a beige hooded jacket would have added: “This is what we do to black boys. »
“It is as if he had urinated on the Constitution itself,” castigated the Minister of Justice, Ronald Lamola, on Monday at the opening of a conference against racism and xenophobia in South Africa.
Calling on “white parents” to educate their children with respect for diversity, the minister added that “this type of barbaric incident must be condemned and cannot be taken lightly”. The victim filed a complaint.
“We must understand why racist attitudes thrive in our schools and higher education institutions”, as well as in the workplace and in all types of organizations, insisted Mr. Ramaphosa, calling for this “act despicable” to address the issue of racial inequality.
The president further quotes Kwenzokuhle Khumalo, a fourth-year student at the Stellenbosch campus who in a fiery speech, microphone in hand in front of a crowd of demonstrators, launched last weekend: “this time, you are facing the wrong generation far from that dominated by white power under apartheid.
On this majority white campus in a majority black country, several demonstrations last week demanded the dismissal of the perpetrator.
“We want this student to be fired and for the university to create a commission of inquiry into racism,” student union representative Sifiso Zulu told Agence France-Presse.
The university condemned “strongly this destructive, hurtful and racist incident, but has yet to decide on a possible expulsion.