Ex-students fined for racial abuse in S Africa

Updated: 17:01, Friday, 30 July 2010

A South African court has fined four white men after they pleaded guilty to humiliating black university workers in a racist video.

1 of 1 Bloemfontein Former students of city's university made racist video
Bloemfontein
Former students of city's university made racist video

A South African court has fined four white men 20,000 rand (€2,093) each after they pleaded guilty to humiliating black university workers in a racist video shot three years ago.

The men, former students at the University of the Free State in a conservative Afrikaner farming region, filmed the abuse in protest at plans for whites and blacks to share student accommodation.

The video, which included one of the men pretending to urinate into a bowl of stew and then serving it to the five workers, sparked outrage in South Africa, which is still trying to heal the wounds left by the white-minority rule that ended in 1994.

Its discovery in 2008 led to protests on campus and scuffles with riot police.

One of the country's biggest newspapers, the Star, called it at the time 'the apartheid video'.

Earlier this week the four pleaded guilty at a court in Bloemfontein, 370km south of Johannesburg, to impairing the dignity of the workers.

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