Four men charged with racism in South Africa
Friday, July 30th, 2010
After a three day trial a South African judge at the Bloemfontein Magistrates Court has promptly sentenced four white male ex-university students (RC Malherbe, Danie Grobler, Johnny Roberts and Schalk van der Merwe- known as the ” Reitz-4 “, pictured) to a suspended 12 months jail sentence and the equivalent of about USD 3,000 for humiliating their dormitory’s (known as the Reitz Hostel) black African domestic cleaning staff (Phororo, Sebuaseng Ntlatseng and David Molete) in 2008.
The judge said the perpetrators were allowed to pay the penalty in various installments. The judge said that the students had acted in a humiliating, inhumane way harming the human dignity of the cleaning ladies. Allegedly the students had also urinated into a flask of orange drink and duped the cleaners into drinking from it.
The four students revealed that they had acted partly to protest against the university plans to include black students in the whites-only residence. (NB: Remember that the end of whites only Apartheid officially occurred in April 1994). Nevertheless the cleaners have reportedly forgiven their perpetrators.
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