2 white South Africans arraigned for ‘forcing’ black man into a coffin

Two white South African men appeared in court on Wednesday in Middleburg (South Africa) on charges of assault and kidnapping after a video showed them forcing a wailing black man into a coffin.

The prosecutor said the 20-second video, which was widely circulated on social media, showed Victor Rethabile cowering inside a coffin, as one man pushes a lid on his head and the other threatened to put petrol and a snake inside the casket.

The case has caused outrage in a country where deep racial divides persist 22 years after the fall of apartheid.

He said the two accused, Willem Oosthuizen and Theo Martins-Jackson, appeared briefly in the Middelburg Magistrate court before the case was adjourned to January 25, 2017.

The prosecutor said the men would remain in custody until the case resumes.

Rethabile said he managed to escaped, although it was not too clear how he managed to do that.

He said Willem Oosthuizen and Theo Martins-Jackson were accusing him of trespassing.

“They beat me up and forced me into the coffin,” he said.

Meanwhile, the radical left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, which campaigns for a more even distribution of wealth between white and black South Africans, led a rally outside the court.

The party said the humiliation of Rethabile can be based on nothing else but his blackness, which means it is in actual fact a humiliation of black people as a whole.

It noted that black people make up 80 per cent 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”.