Afrikaner groups come out against video

What was depicted in the video was “particularly bad” for those Afrikaners who were acutely aware of the apartheid past and were trying to “reinvent and re-imagine” themselves, Du Plessis said.

The Business day reports what Tim du Plessis editor of Rapport had to say about Afrikaner reaction:

“It was flashed all over the world, and everyone is thinking that all of us are responsible. Not all of us are the same,” he said.

It was indeed flashed all over the world. Mhambi spent this weekend in New York, and an Afrikaans friend of mine who works as an editor in Brooklyn was queried by her black colleagues about it. She was surprised that all of her black colleagues got to know about it, before she did. It demonstrated the how keenly this incident is felt by the global black community in particular.

Mhambi is therefore very pleased Afrikaner groups made a strong joint statement this weekend condemning the racist video made at Free State Universities Reitz hostel.

Eleven Afrikaans organisations issued a joint statement at the weekend condemning the video.

The incident, in which the students made workers at the university take part in “disgusting” initiation rites, was “unconditionally rejected”, the organisations said.

It was signed by the civil society lobby group AfriForum; the Afrikanerbond; the Afrikaanse Taal- en Kultuurvereniging (the Afrikaans Language and Culture Organisation); Dames Aktueel; Dames-kring; Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurorganisasies (the Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Organisations, or FAK); Regslui vir Afrikaans (Lawyers for Afrikaans); Rapportryers- beweging; trade union Solidarity, SA Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (the South African Academy for Science and Art) and the Voortrekkers, a youth organisation.

They denounced the incident as a misguided way to highlight legitimate concerns about decisions taken by the university’s management.

“Afrikaans students in SA have valid democratic goals.

These ambitions encompass the future of mother tongue education, unlimited access to academic institutions and the quality of education.

“Incidents such as this damage these strivings,” the organisations said.

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