It was meant to be a satirical look at racial integration, but a South African student film gained notoriety on the web for the way black staff were treated
Four white former students in South Africa today pleaded guilty to humiliating five black workers in an infamous internet video. The case of the "Reitz Four" – named after their university hall of residence – has been one of the most inflammatory in South Africa's tortuous journey towards racial reconciliation.
The video, shot in 2007, showed five black employees of Free State University in Bloemfontein being forced to re-enact initiation rights for students. The four middle-aged women and one man were made to drink full bottles of beer and perform athletic tasks.
The final extract of the film appeared to show a white male urinating on food, then shouting "Take! Take!" in Afrikaans – compelling the campus employees to eat it and causing them to vomit.
In a surprise move at Bloemfontein magistrates court today, former students Roelof Malherbe, Schalk van der Merwe, Danie Grobler and Johnny Roberts pleaded guilty to illegally and deliberately injuring another person's dignity.
Their defence lawyer, Kemp J Kemp, conceded that while the workers voluntarily took part in a mock initiation ceremony, the accused realised that it had degraded them.
But Kemp insisted that the former students did not urinate in the mixture that the workers drank. He said they used a bottle and put it in their pants to make it look like they urinated into the mixture of Oros (squash), garlic and protein powder.
The court accepted the guilty plea and adjourned until tomorrow for closing arguments from lawyers on sentencing, unlikely to be imprisonment.
The video, which emerged on the web in 2008, triggered anger and soul-searching in South Africa, where races were legally segregated until Nelson Mandela's election in 1994. The university in Bloemfontein has been regarded as a stronghold of Afrikaners, the descendants of Dutch settlers who ruled during apartheid.
Commentary on the video in Afrikaans included sarcastic references to the university's policy of integrating the campus dorms years after the end of apartheid.
Police dispersed stone-throwing students on the Free State campus and classes were cancelled. The men's residence was also shut down after the video received worldwide publicity.
There was further controversy last year when Jonathan Jansen, the first black vice-chancellor of Free State University, dropped disciplinary action against the former students .
The move was condemned by leaders across the political spectrum as an "abortion of justice", but won support from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who chaired the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Black students make up 60% of Free State University's 25,000-strong student body. Most of the support staff are black, but the teaching staff are mainly white.
Amid tensions on the campus in 2008, lawyers for the students said although it appeared as if the food had been urinated on, a "harmless" liquid had been squirted from a bottle.
Apologising in the statement, two of the 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.
In a sign of the gravity of the case, Johan Kruger, South Africa's most senior prosecutor, appeared for the state today. Defence lawyer Kemp had represented Jacob Zuma before he took office as president last year. Prosecutors dropped the corruption charges against Zuma.
The four former students still face another case at South Africa's equality court.