South Africans ponder the specter of revived racism

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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Who raised these boys?That's the question in South Africa, after a week in which the nation was scandalized by the release of a video shot by four white male university students in which they make the much-older black women who clean their dormitory perform a series of stunts (chugging beer, dancing together, fumbling with a rugby ball) and then force them, on hands and knees, to eat a "stew" that appears to be dog food and into which one man had apparently just urinated.The students say, in text at the end of the video, that it is meant to convey their feelings about "integration" -- in other words, in being forced to share dormitories with non-white students.The incident heaved the fraught issue of race back onto the table here, reminding South Africans that not as much has changed in the 14 years since the end of apartheid as many people would like to think.For many people here, the most shocking aspect of the video is that the students who made it are young, in their late teens or early 20s; they are "born frees," part of the generation who were young children at the dawn of democracy and who have grown up knowing a country of racial equality and hope. That was the theory, anyway. And so the chorus from South African commentators today is, "It's their parents fault. What did these kids learn at home?""This is what shocked me most -- that such a thing happens and is done by young South Africans who were never exposed to actual apartheid -- what future do we have here?" said Ezekiel Moraka, vice rector for student relations at the University of the Free State, where the young men were students. "This is very disturbing."The university, historically an Afrikaans institution in the Boer homeland once known as the Orange Free State, is pressing criminal charges against the men who made the video. Two of them had already left the school; the other two have been barred from campus.The four videographers have hired a lawyer, who insisted it was all in good fun but the boys were sorry if they hurt anyone's feelings. Student Roelof Malherbe's father, Gert, told reporters that the whole incident was being twisted and the cleaners were willing participants in a gag, and his family was not racist. Few people who have seen the white boys snickering in the video believe that."These kids were young in 1994 but the views their parents had persisted," said Sipho Seepe, who heads the Institute for Race Relations. "What we see here is the culmination of that -- they are more crude about it, but, in fact, they are no different from society, where the racism is more subtle and smart but equally devastating."The video incident came in the same week that South Africa's literati were in an uproar after a group called the Black Journalists' Forum barred white reporters from attending a "discussion" with newly elected African National Congress President Jacob Zuma. And in recent days came the first court appearance for a young Afrikaaner man who allegedly strode into a township in the northwest of the country in January and opened fire, killing four people and seriously wounding six more. He was already serving a suspended sentence for having shot a black man five years earlier.The immediate shock of the video is the women on their hands and knees gagging over bowls of suspect food. But the most disturbing moment may lie in the final shot, where the words "This, in the end, is what we think of integration" appear in Afrikaans on the screen. The video was intended to protest (or to comment satirically, if you believe the lawyer) against the university's new policy of forcing traditionally all-white dormitories to accept black students.The policy took effect in January, and white students responded by burning tires and throwing rocks. Reitz Hall, the dorm where the video makers live, remained defiantly all-white.Then the video emerged, apparently leaked by the dumped girlfriend of one of the men. Now the university says Reitz Hall will be closed.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)