This thing has been completely blown out of proportion; it's sad that these are the priorities in a nation with the highest murder and crime rate in the world and a myriad of other problems. My first impression upon starting to view the video was that the cleaners are going along with it and laughing and having a good time. Second impression was that they were chosen not because they are black but because they look like funny, affable folks.

After that it gets complicated. First of all, if you look at the video closely you can see PLAINLY that the guy takes a water bottle out of his pocket during the pissing scene. The spitting and 'near-vomiting' looks totally staged. No one is 'tricked' or forced into doing anything. If they were indeed being humiliated why didn't they stop and leave? No one was pointing a gun to their heads (unlike the torture murders that occur on a daily basis). So, no coercion, no torture, no trickery.

Now, this admittedly stupid video was the students' attempt to make a humorous, albeit dumb, protest against forced integration of housing. By forced, it means something like the Americans did with bussing. You HAD to live next to so-and-so not because it was your choice but because he's black and you're white or vice versa. The 'humiliation' was part of an ill conceived joke that this is what happens to first year students who dorm in that particular hostel, and since everyone is subjected to such a hazing ritual this is the kind of stuff to expect.

Also please don't distort the story any further. In you subtitles you say she says "black whore" when he asks what sefebe means. In fact what she says in Afrikaans is 'whore maid.' Neither is acceptable, if the whole thing wasn't a JOKE.

Here's the main thing that is not being reported. The cleaners were "tricked" in the sense that the students told them this was going on a 'funny video' show on the telly and which if they won the prize of 10,000 Rand they would give them a cut of the prize winnings. Could this be why the cleaners are now "traumatized" 7 months after this incident occured while they're laughing it up during filming through the end, because they didn't get any cash?

Now I personally can't stand fear factor type of shows and the students do look like dumb frat boys with a sick sense of humor. But clearly there are more important things to worry about, particularly when noone was hurt, no one was tricked, there was no urine, and everything was staged. Frat boy pranks will be called a "crime against humanity" while the farm murders which have been classified as 'early stages of genocide'by Genocide Watch don't even make the news. The west has essentially abandoned SA after Mandela came into power but that abandonment is actually working its way out to be more like a punishment, the same way Serb people continue to be humiliated and punished for the sins of Milosevic, and in this case, South African people of a certain skin tone. And so the cycle continues.

It almost feels like we NEED people to still think that all white SAns are racists in order to justify looking the other way at the methodical retributive justice inflicted on innocent civilians in that country with the government's nod of approval.