BLACK LIVES MATTER: NO VARSITY CUP RUGBY ON MONDAY

24 February 2016

The events on Monday 22 February 2016 at the University of the (un)Free State have shook us and the rest of conscious South Africa to our core.

Black students protesting and interrupting the Varsity Cup rugby match were savagely beaten by barbaric white Afrikaner students and their parents.

Our hearts go out to the courageous Black students of the U.F.S. No one understands the fear and constant threat of physical violence as we do. 

Please continue to protect each other.

Now is the time for us to stand up and publicly and loudly condemn this vicious attack!

Reform PUK is hereby demanding that campus management disassociate themselves with the tournament and cancel Monday 29 February 2016 match against the very same UFS that unashamedly continued the game after the attack.

A university that repeatedly professes to want equality and social justice can not continue to associate itself with a university and rugby team that viciously beats Black students. 

We join the national call to protest or disrupt all Varsity Cup games and the organization and sponsors.

Stop the match or we will arrive in our masses to disrupt it.

The comforts of whiteness will not be allowed to continue while Black students and workers' needs are sidelined.

We sympathize and offer our support to the courageous Black students of the University of Pretoria. Our struggles over a language policy that protects white Afrikaner privilege while disregarding and excluding Black students from education, mirrors ours. 

We stand in solidarity with you.

We call on all sympathizers, allies and friends to join us as we undertake this massive task. 

Knowing full well that the attitudes, privilege and ignorant mindset that cause the attacks at UFS is bred in huge quantities on this campus. 

We will not be deterred.

A luta Continua.

Update:

WHITE TEARS WILL NO LONGER TRIUMPH OVER BLACK PAIN!!

We continue to stand by the call to action of our last statement.

We have been greatly overwhelmed by the response received both positive and negative.

Our comment section is a mirror of what is happening in the greater South African context. 

We will therefore not censore anyone by deleting their comments. It is long overdue that we have honest discussions in this country and specifically on our campus. We know you already call us monkeys/stupid/barbaric etc at your braai's, doing so in our comments is not shocking but further reveals your blatant disregard for our humanity.

Our choice in words in the previous post was also intentional. How else should we describe people who beat up others for differing with them? Savage and barbaric are most applicable. 

We are not blind to the offense taken but question why the same shock is absent when those words are used to describe Black people.

We have repeatedly stated our willingness to engage with any and every one who wants to. This is unfortunately not always possible when there is a general lack of basic knowledge of the actual state of South Africa. 

NWU Pukke come fetch the products of your "niche market" who "drive past 3 other campuses to get here" from our comment section.

How tertiary students, in 2016, in South Africa can so blatantly deny the existence of White privilege and the lasting socio-economic effects of colonialism and Apartheid should be an embarrassment and indicative of the standard of education they are receiving. 

Again we echo our call for a decolonized curriculum. Or at least one that teaches the reality the privileged white students of this campus do not live in.

The outrage and subsequent threats of violence expressed in response to our declaration to peacefully disrupt 30 grown men who chase a ball and tackle each other, is overwhelming. 

Especially when contrasted to the stone silence from the very same students, parents and alumni, about:

Workers continuing to receive slave wages on this campus

Students facing financial exclusion

A language policy that excludes students while protecting others' privilege

Abhorrent translation services

Social life that shuns anyone who doesn't fit the white, Afrikaner, heterosexual and Christian mold.

Countless attempts to engage with management have either fallen on deaf ears or resulted in ineffective half baked solutions to silence us.

It is evident that in our country and our campus, the only way to be heard, especially by whiteness is to disrupt what is apparently more sacred to them then addressing real issues.

We want and deserve to be heard. It can not be business as usual when the stakes are so high.

We have every intention to peacefully and very loudly disrupt as we did at the mass meeting. 

As we have already been threatened with physical violence, we know the actions that will be taken by white spectators will be a public display of what this institution does to Black students psychologically on a daily basis.

This is the university's chance to distance itself from blatant racism and violence. We urge them to take it.

Statements issued by ReformPUK through their Facebook page, 24 February 2016

Note: Open Stellenbosch subsequently endorsed this call, 24 February 2016