BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa
Two students behind an alleged racist video in which five Black university workers appear to be duped into eating food tainted with urine have apologized and said they acted without malice.
Roelof Malherbe and Schalk van der Merwe, who have been banned from the campus of the University of the Free State, said in a statement issued to The Associated Press by their lawyer Friday that although it appeared as if the food had been urinated on, a “harmless” liquid had been squirted from a bottle.
The video, which showed four middle-aged women and one man on their knees eating the food, has been seen around the world, exposing deep racial tensions in South Africa, more than a decade after White rule ended.
The two students said they had been “crucified as racists” and regretted making the film, meant as a “satirical slant” on the issue of racial integration at the university hostels.
Malherbe and Van der Merwe are “not racists and, most certainly, had no intention of humiliating or degrading the employees concerned or Black people in general or of detrimentally affecting their dignity,” the statement said.
However, it said, the students “now regret having participated in the making of the film” and “apologize for any embarrassment which they may, unintentionally, have caused to any person or group of persons, including their parents.’”
