By IAN EVANS

Last updated at 10:41 29 February 2008

South Africa has come face to face with its apartheid past when a "shocking" video emerged of white university students force-feeding and racially humiliating five poor black cleaners.

The four students are heard referring to the old "Boer" college way of life during the footage, which saw the elderly workers being made to drink bottles of beer, run races, play rugby and then kneel and eat meat which had been urinated upon.

News of the video yesterday sparked rioting at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, once the Afrikaans heartland of the Orange Free State.

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One of the white students can be seen urinating on the food in images from the video

The black cleaners are then forced to kneel on the floor and eat the food

The humiliating video represents what the white students think about integration, according to the narrator

Police arrested scores of black and white demonstrators as university vice chancellor Frederick Fourie fought desperately to calm tensions as tutorials were cancelled.

He said the video was made last September, since when two of the students had left. The remaining two had been suspended and the police called in to investigate.

"I am deeply saddened that students apparently see nothing wrong in producing such an offensive and degrading video," he said.

"I have publicly said several times that the UFS is not a place for racism.

"It's a gross violation of the human dignity of the workers involved. We have immediately started with a most urgent investigation on this matter."

The video is thought to have been made in response to the university's integration policy on student accommodation. Up until the end of the last student year in December, the 3,000 students on campus lived separately.

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The cleaners were humiliated on camera

Attempts to change that this academic year led to riots last week with students complaining they had not been consulted. The video was made in a male-only digs which are still all-white but that is due to change under the new policy.

The narration on the video starts: "Once upon a time the 'Boer' lived peacefully here on Reitz Island( the name of the student hostel), until one day when the less-advantaged discovered the word 'integration' in the dictionary."

The amateur footage shows garlic being put into a dish full of meat which looks like dog food. The narrator is heard saying: "We know they're less privileged so we're adding a bit of meat."

Another student puts the bowl on the toilet and urinates into the mixture. The concoction is then handed out in plastic glasses to the cleaners.

All five – four women and a man - spit out the first mouthful, but try to finish it amid loud encouragement from the students. The video ends with the words: "That, at the end of the day, is what we think of integration."

The footage then shows one of the students asking a cleaner: "What does 'sefebe' mean in Afrikaans?" She replies: "a black whore".

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The horrifying video sparked riots at the university today

It is unclear how the footage was released or how long it had been circulating at the university.

The video was last night widely condemned. The SA Students Congress said: "The barbaric behaviour of the Afrikaaner students in that university still resembles the old apartheid order."

Liana Van Wyk, a spokeswoman for the opposition Democratic Alliance, said it was "shocking and inhumane".

She added: "It looked like they were willing [participants] but they didn't know what purpose the video served ... it was quite humiliating at the end to see the quite senior ladies on their knees eating the meat."