Reitz cleaners speak out
2009-10-12 07:27
London - The five cleaners at the University of the Free State who appear in the controversial Reitz video, have discussed their humiliation for the first time, in a British newspaper.
"When they filmed us… they were laughing so hard there were tears in their eyes," one of four women in the video, Laukaziemma Koko, told the British Sunday Times.
She added that she thinks about the video every day.
The trial of the four young men who filmed the video will resume on October 26 in the Bloemfontein magistrate's court.
To this day, Koko still wonders what was in that stew they were forced to eat.
Humiliating
"We are convinced it was dog food. It was lukewarm and had gristle in it - it tasted metallic and foul. They treated us like dogs, so it would make sense that they would feed us dog food. We are all worried at what they didn’t film. What else was in it.
"They say they didn’t urinate in it, but I don’t believe it. They said they staged it and they were just messing around, but we were all sick. That was the most humiliating part for us. That young men we trusted took advantage of us to make a cheap joke and fed us that horrible concoction - raw meat for dogs like we were animals. It makes me vomit just thinking about it."
Koko has been working at the university for 21 years.
She still remembers her first day at work like it was yesterday. "The rules came as a shock. I had to call the young men - the students - kleinbass, and before each shift I had to scrub my hands clean and then put on rubber gloves. I could never take them off on campus. If I touched a student’s food with bare hands, I was told, I would be fired."
Another one of the women, Rebecca Adams, said she used to be "invisible" until the video was leaked to the media.
"After it came out politicians wanted to speak to me. I met the rector for the first time. We were given tea in his office. My family was hounded by the South African media. I am not an educated woman, but I knew I was being used. Collectively we made a decision to step away from this incident. We stayed away from the university for a short while, but we all kept our jobs, we all went back to work together, although we were moved to another hostel.
"We saw those boys in a different way to how they saw us," Adams said.
Injustice
"I treated them like sons. I cleaned up their hostel and joked with them. I told them off if they made too much of a mess. We helped them when they first came into the hostel. They were young, nervous, we made them tea. They betrayed us. Stuck a knife into our hearts. We were not as intelligent as them, so they manipulated us. They told us they were playing a game.
"I don't have anger in my heart, but I understand injustice. I have travelled to work at that university for over 25 years. I see black students on campus. I see their hope and ambition. My own daughter aspires to go to university. But for me, the way I am treated, that hasn’t changed.
"My pastor told me that God wanted me to fight against injustice and that is why I became involved in this legal matter. He also asked me to forgive those boys, but it is not them I wish to forgive. It is their parents, for they made them that way."
The university's new rector, Prof Jonathan Jansen, told the newspaper that plans to integrate all students from January 2010 are going ahead.
"If we fail here in Bloemfontein, then South Africa will have failed as a nation."
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