Racist video makers fate to be known next week

Screen grab of a worker retching after eating urinated on food

The Directorate of Public Prosecutions is expected to decide this week on whether criminal charges will be brought against four Free State University students who made a controversial video. It shows five black workers taking part in a mock integration ceremony.

The video, which sparked a national outcry, features black university employees on their knees eating food which had purportedly been urinated on by a white student. The students are likely to be charged with crimen injuria. Two of the students, Danie Grobler and Johnny Roberts, completed their studies last year. The other two, Schalk van der Merwe and R.C. Malherbe, have discontinued their studies.

The video by members of the Reitz Men's Residence allegedly shows a mock integration of five black staff members, four females and a man. It surfaced amid an already tense situation at the university following student riots over the institution's hostel integration policy.

The ANC has called for the students to be expelled while the DA says it will ask the Human Rights Commission to investigate the underlying causes of racial tension on campus.

The university's rector, Frederick Fourie, says his management condemns the video in the strongest possible terms, adding that it is a gross violation of the human dignity of the workers involved.

Director of UNISA's African Renaissance Centre Professor Shadrack Gutto says it's unfortunate that many gender institutions have not come out strongly to condemn the racist video which emerged at the Free State University last month. Gutto says it raises issues which have both gender and racial dimensions.