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A video showing two white men forcing a black man into a coffin and threatening to set him on fire has gone viral, leaving those in South Africa stunned in recent days. The 20-second video has been highly circulated on social media.
The video shows the victim, Victor Mlotshwa, cowering inside a coffin as one man pushes a lid on his head and the other threatens to put petrol and a snake inside the casket.
The two men in the video, Willem Oosthuizen and Theo Jackson, appeared in court yesterday,. The two are facing charges of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, according to CNN. Both men dropped their bail applications and were then sent back to jail to await trial. The case has been postponed to Jan. 25, 2017, and until then, both will stay in custody.
Rethabile told reporters outside court that the men accused him of trespassing, and that began the interaction between the three of them. “They chased me and started beating me up,” Rethabile said, continuing, “and took me to the nearest farm where they beat me up and put me in a coffin.” According to Aljazeera News, Rethabile escaped, although it is not clear how.
“I don’t know where they got the coffin, but one of them forced me into it. They other one had a gun. For all I know, he could have shot me,” Mlotshwa said. He told reporters outside court that he wanted justice.
The Economic Freedom Fighters party led a rally outside the court, according to Reuters. The EFF, a left-wing party which campaigns for a more even distribution of wealth between white and black South Africans, has been actively speaking out against the crime on social media platforms such as twitter. “This humiliation can be based on nothing else but his blackness, which means it is in actual fact a humiliation of black people as a whole,” the EFF said in a statement.
The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) spokesperson, Alana Baranov, urged South Africans to give their input on the proposed Prevention of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill after this heinous act, according to the Times. “Legislation on hate crimes would not only combat and assist in the prevention of incidences of hate but allow for formal monitoring of cases which would provide important data on the scale of this important issue,” Baranov said.
Joe Brock from Reuters noted that this case has caused outrage in a country where deep racial divides persist 22 years after the fall of apartheid. Black people make up 80 percent of South Africa’s 54 million population yet most of the economy remains in the hands of white people, who account for about 8 percent of the population.