Reitz four guilty of unforgivable racist behavior

Newly appointed rector of the University of Free State (UFS), Professor Jonathan Jansen, has decided to pardon four students guilty of racism and, to add insult to injury, invited them back to the campus so that they continue with their studies, completely unconcerned with the harm, suffering and humiliation suffered by the victims. This decision is a gross insult to the African working women, who were humiliated by these ‘white’ children, and to all African people.

These students made the cleaners eat meat which had been urinated on, videotaped the incident and made a mockery out of it. Jansen’s reason for this scandalous decision is that it is allegedly in the “interest of reconciliation”. It does not end there but the victims will be given monetary compensation to wash their dignity. For Jansen’s information, money cannot buy human dignity and does not make perpetrators of embedded racism repent their wicked actions.

These four ‘white’ students subjected African workers and mothers to the most dehumanizing racist ordeal. Jansen’s aim was clearly to let these hooligans off the hook because so called white people get away with murder for continued racist behavior. They don’t only get away with racism.. they get way with everything including our wealth. For UFS this kind of a decision needed to be taken and conveyed by someone who looks African but is ‘white’ inside in order to camouflage racist motives.

Racism is a psychological decease that must be gouged from the minds of those who perpetrate it. We must take gloves off when dealing with racism. It is a barbaric; backward delusion which still lives in the minds of so called white people. It is orally passed from one generation to another. The fact that these ‘white’ children grew up to become racists is full proof that there is ongoing racist socialization within the ‘white’ community. Scientifically no body is born a racist; people are socialized into racist bigots.

The prevalence of racism in this country and apologetic manner with which this inhuman practice and tendency is dealt with is quite disheartening. How can we pardon racist behaviour in this day and age, 15 years after the demise of apartheid settler regime?

As for Jansen, it is not difficult to understand why he took this decision and sees nothing wrong with it. He is a house nigger who thinks better of himself because he bears a ‘white’ surname. He would not have made it to become a rector in a white racist supremacist University if he was a mentally liberated African.

Jansen continues the precedent of the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ (TRC) which first and foremost equated the victims of apartheid crime with the perpetrators thereof and also imprisoned some of the victims while perpetrators went scot-free. Not only that, the robbers kept the stolen land and wealth and the victims must accept reconciliation without restoration of the loot.

Africans cannot be treated like objects forever. The Jansen’s of this world must be stopped and the South African government must instruct him to reverse this decision like the Canadian government did with Brandon Huntley’s, a South African who made wild claims that he fled the country because of ‘racist persecution from blacks’, asylum application. The government must not just condemn, it must act decisively.

Hulisani Mmbara
Chief Editor

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