The University of the Free State (UFS) may have sanctioned the notorious Reitz video, which allegedly won a prize in a bizarre internal competition, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) said on Thursday.
SAHRC advocate Mothusi Lepheana told the Mail & Guardian the commission had requested further details from UFS about the residence practices that led to the making of the video and about accolades it received within the university.
The information was needed for charges of human rights violations against the four Reitz students and the university that the commission will lodge in the Free State High Court early next week as an Equality Court action.
”The video appeared to arise from university-sanctioned activities involving a competition,” Lepheana said. He was unsure whether the competition was staged only within Reitz or between residences.
And in a surprise development in the Reitz saga on Thursday, ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema came out in full support of the university’s vice-chancellor, Jonathan Jansen, after a meeting between a league delegation and Jansen on the Free State campus.
”We do not agree with any call that he must go,” Malema told reporters after meeting Jansen, who has met with heavy flak after announcing, in his inaugural lecture, the withdrawal of university disciplinary steps against the four students who made the video.
As Malema and his delegation emerged from the main administration building after the meeting, camaraderie and jubilation engulfed the gardens, where crowds stood shoulder to shoulder.
Dressed in Superga shoes, jeans and a deep-red golf shirt, Malema’s appearance prompted the crowd into a heated chant of ”Thiba ka mona, re bolaye ntswa tsena” (Cover up, we’re killing these dogs).
”We’ve met with the professor and we’ve all agreed that this university has a serious problem of racism,” said Malema to roaring students and workers.
He also said that the league could not stand in the way of students wanting to return to the university. But they should apologise and show remorse when they come back, he said.
The league agreed with Jansen that a truth commission-type process should take place at the university, he said.
Earlier in the week the league’s Free State chairperson Thabo Meeko said that Jansen should be the victim of a ”shoot to kill” policy because he had committed the crime of racism.
Malema said the league and Jansen had agreed that black and white first-year students in 2010 should make up a 50-50 ratio at all residences.
It was also agreed that an alternative be made available to black students to attend English lessons either in the morning or during the day, as opposed to night classes. Finally, there was an agreement that there should be a transformative process between whites and blacks on campus. ”Something like the TRC,” he said.
Elaborating on the SAHRC’s claim that the university may have sanctioned the video, Lepheana asked who was on the panel that awarded the alleged prize. ”The students would have had in their minds that they did something good,” he said.
There are those at UFS who ”don’t want the matter to go beyond those four boys”, he said, which was why the SAHRC wanted charges laid in the Equality Court.
In his inaugural lecture Jansen had also alluded to the award, saying that ”few outside the campus realise that what is now regarded as an offensive video production in fact won an award from the residence”.
The video had been ”preceded by a long series of racial incidents protesting [against] racial integration especially in the residences”, Jansen had said, so that ”to dismiss the video as a product of four bad apples is too easy an explanation”.
Lepheana said: ”Damages in the Equality Court are sought not merely for personal compensation but for damages inflicted via the immediate victims on all people recognised in the Constitution.
”The case is about human dignity and we want the court to set a precedent that will benefit everyone in demonstrating that no one can treat others as the Reitz workers were.”
The commission might ask the Equality Court for punitive compensation ”so no one does anything like this again”, he said.
The commission had offered training to residence heads late in 2007 and to audit residence practices relative to the Constitution. ”We knew of rights violations such as expelling pregnant students from the residences,” he said.
But staff had refused such training, claiming that residence traditions were valuable in ”moulding students”. ”’Moulding into what?’ I asked them,” Lepheana said. —Additional reporting by Sapa