Women students recall how they were beaten up at rugby match

Bloemfontein - Several women - black and white - have told News24 how they were beaten up at a Varsity Cup rugby match in Bloemfontein on Monday evening.

One of the assaults was captured on video.

A drama and theatre arts student at the University of the Free State, Ju-Mari Pretorius, said she was hit over the head with a megaphone, when she tried to stop protesters from entering the gates of the Varsity Cup match. 

Pretorius who attended Oranje Meisie School in Bloemfontein said: “One of the protesters hit me from behind, when I turned around to ask what he was doing, he knocked me into the ground with a megaphone.”

Apelele Mtamzeli, a post graduate at the university, told News24 that she was in a lot of pain after she was beaten up at the same event.

“I was lying on the ground and I could feel a man punch me on my belly but soon after that I managed to run away," she said,

"It was not nice seeing women being beaten,” added Mtamzeli.

Pretorius, an arts student, said she was handing out freebies and trying to recruit students to join the AfriForum Youth campaign, "Red Afrikaans [Save Afrikaans]".

“We were only girls at the gate and when we saw the protesters, we tried to stop them from entering gate 1 at Shimla Park,” Pretorius said.

She suffered a minor concussion and a few bruises on her ribs and arms.

This disruption was during a rugby match between UFS and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU).

A close friend of Pretorius, Pieter Strauss, shot the video of the assault.

“There is absolute no way to justify the incident. You can never raise your hand to a woman,” Strauss said. 

The identities of the women's assailants is not known.

This article first appeared on News24 – see here.