University of the Free State workers Emmah Koko, Rebecca Adams, Mankoe Phororo, Sebuaseng Ntlatseng and David Molete were thrust into the media glare in 2008 when a video made by four students at the university’s Reitz hostel surfaced.
Roelof Malherbe, Johnny Roberts, Schalk van der Merwe and Danie Grobler, dubbed the Reitz Four, claimed they were protesting against university plans to include black students in the whites-only residence. In the video one of the Reitz Four is shown apparently urinating into food the workers are then given to eat; other sequences showed the workers being forced to down what looked like beers and to compete in a 100m sprint.
This week the four pleaded guilty to crimen injuria charges in the Bloemfontein Regional Magistrate’s Court and were convicted. Sentencing is expected on Friday. An Equality Court case, brought by the Human Rights Commission, is also pending. Vuvu Vena spoke to two of the workers on Wednesday — the second day of the trial
‘We saw the students in the hostels as children and we were parents,” says Emmah Koko. Her friend and co-worker, Rebecca Adams, nods in agreement. “When their parents left them there, we felt they were under our care.”
It’s Wednesday morning and we are sharing tea and chocolate cake in Adams’s orange-tiled living room in Bloemside, Bloemfontein. The atmosphere is homely. On the walls hang pictures inspired by nature: waterfalls and lush forests. The only photograph shows Adams’s husband and his friend in their heyday.
Koko takes a bite of cake and continues her story. “I was closest to the four Reitz students. They held lots of functions and asked me to cook for them. As a parent I’d do so willingly. Sometimes they’d give me something to say ‘thank you’. But they always asked with respect, like a child asking for something from his parent.”
This is Koko’s 22nd year at the University of the Free State (UFS) and Adams’s 25th. Both started out as cooks, working 12-hour days. After 1994 the residences outsourced catering to private companies, so the two women joined the university’s cleaning staff.
Koko began working at Reitz in 2003. Adams has been based at the neighbouring JBM Hertzog hostel since 1983. As they reminisce, they describe daily conversations with students and recall times when they were asked to give advice about personal problems. “We knew them better than our own children,” they say.
Adams and her husband have two daughters, aged 20 and 18. Both are in high school. Adams says her family was traumatised by the Reitz video — especially her husband. “Whenever he saw it on the news, he’d switch off the TV and go outside or straight to bed,” she says.
Koko is a single mother who lives in the Bloemfontein township of Rockland with her 77-year-old mother, her mentally disturbed 46-year-old sister and her 18-year-old daughter. She supports all of them.
Koko’s daughter was in grade 10 and dreamed of studying social work at UFS. But then she saw “the video”. It affected her so badly — with the subsequent media coverage — that she failed her exams and had to be taken to a private hospital for counselling. “She has never been the same since,” says Koko. “She doesn’t say anything about going to UFS any more.”
The video had a destructive effect on another member of the family: “Since my mom saw that video, she hasn’t been happy. Because of her age, she can’t handle it. I constantly have to explain and justify why I still have to work there,” Koko says.
The two women attended the second day of the court proceedings. They say they’re just waiting for it all to end, so that they can have their lives back.
As we sip tea from brown glass cups they consider the question: What, from their point of view, would be the best outcome of the trial?
“We want them [the students] to ask for forgiveness from all the black people in this country, not just us,” says Koko, slowly. Her friend murmurs agreement. “We’d also like them to go to places where black people live — people who have nothing — so that they can learn to live with them.”
A pause. Then Koko says: “As black mothers, we don’t choose who we parent. White or black are our children.” Adams says: “Even before Mandela was released from jail, we were not discriminating against them because we were living with them all this time.”
The two say their friends and families have supported them throughout the ordeal. Koko tells how she has “tried by all means” to keep the media away from her family.
The women agree that people in their communities have also shown support, but say: “We can never see what’s in their hearts.”
“I stay in the house all the time. I’m scared of how people will look at me,” says Adams.
“It’s not as nice as it was before.”