A video caught Fort Hare student Anathi Madikane kicking a woman several times. Picture: Facebook.
The University of Fort Hare (UFH) has been called on to take disciplinary action against a male student after a video of him kicking a woman several times went viral on social media.
The student has been identified as Anathi Madikane, an art student in his final year. He has since apologised on social media, though a large number of negative comments on his Facebook posts show that not everyone has accepted his apology.
A series of Facebook videos currently being circulated show, in the first clip, Madikane assaulting the woman.
Two other videos show him being paraded by a large group of angry students and then admonished for his behaviour in public by the group.
READ MORE: Ramaphosa says SA in grip of violent war on women
The incident comes only four days after President Cyril Ramaphosa, during an address on Women’s Day, called for an end to what he termed a violent war on women in South Africa.
He added a summit would be held at the end of the month to mull ways to stop it.
“In towns small and large, in cities, in homes, in schools, in colleges, in universities, in parks and open spaces, a war is being waged in South Africa on women’s rights to security and equality. It is an affront to our common humanity,” Ramaphosa told the Women’s Day rally in Paarl in the Western Cape.
“We must get it into our heads that we don’t own women, nor do we own their bodies, and we should not seek to dominate them.”
He said the rampant emotional and physical abuse of women showed that government and society as a whole had failed to “live up to the promise of 1994” of a nonsexist, nonviolent post-apartheid state.
“The assault on the dignity and integrity of women has reached unprecedented levels. There is a real danger that because violence against women has become so pervasive that as a society we have gradually become unmoved and stopped seeing it as an aberration,” the president said.
Ramaphosa called on the gathering, which had been addressed by a number of members of government, to observe a moment of silence for women who have been assaulted, raped and killed in numbers he compared unfavourable with international average rates of gender-based violence.
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