One shocking incident happened in which a student from South African University near Cape Town urinated on the belongings of a fellow black student, which has led to widespread attention and condemnation in the country for “being racist”.
According to an incident, this all started when a white student broke into a black student’s room at Stellenbosch University (SU) on Sunday and urinated on his belongings, saying that this is all that white people do with the black community.
On Monday, the University of Stellenbosch suspended the accused after a cell phone video recording the incident was revealed to the public and reported by local media houses.
According to the South African Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Higher Education, Science and Innovation that the video is “disguised and repulsed” and condemned the “act of racism and discrimination.”
The statement also called upon the University’s management, Student Representative Council, and student community to build partnerships for a non-racial and inclusive institution.
Many voiced their anger, including University’s management, the South African Student Congress, and social media users who raised their voices against the incident. Many students of different races held a protest at the university on Monday.
Stellenbosch University (SU), established in 1859 as a seminary and became a university in 1918, is mainly a university for white students.
The official data indicates that in the academic year 2021-2022, 54.4 percent of its students were white, and 22.5 percent were a black community.
By Tuesday afternoon, about 50,000 people had signed the petition to expel Theuns Du Toit, who urinated on the desk, textbooks and laptop of Babalo Ndwayana, a Black first-year student at the residence hall.
This was a racially attack, and in response to these actions, according to the petition posted on Change.org, Du Toit claimed that “this is what we usually do with Black boys.”
Many on social media have said the incident is reminiscent of decades of racial hatred against Black South Africans under the apartheid system, which ended in 1994.