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ActionSA condemns the racist incident that took place at Stellenbosch University over the past weekend. The student, reported to have been urinating on the desk of a black African student who filmed the scene must face the consequences of his actions. Now said to have been suspended, it is our hope that the University will use this incident to ramp up its integration efforts to ensure that events such as this never take place in the future. 

Some years ago, a similar incident occurred at the University of the Free State where black African ground staff at the University experienced this type of abuse. 

As a country with a very difficult racially polarised and oppressive past, we can never condone actions of violence, intimidation or belittling of one another, particularly black people in our country who have suffered horrendous atrocities levelled onto their lives, livelihoods, and human dignity by the racist apartheid regime.

We call upon students at universities across the country to stand up for one another and help create environments across campuses that makes it difficult for those who seek to have us regress to pre-1994 conditions by their appalling behaviours. To send the strongest message that racism has no place in South Africa’s democratic future and that those who are violent perpetrators of racism and who are hellbent on diminishing the humanity of others will find it impossible to co-exist among us.

ActionSA will monitor the events that follow in relation to the steps that Stellenbosch University management will take to correct what took place at the weekend.

Issued by ActionSA