'I'LL ERASE YOUR BLACKNESS'

“I WILL erase your blackness.”

These words still haunt two Beaufort West students following what they believe was a racial attack by a man captured on camera spraying them with what he claimed was “holy water” using a pesticide sprayer.

The two students, whose identity is known to the Cape Times, believe that the liquid inside the sprayer was in fact bleach.

One of the students told the Cape Times that they had been on their way to a nearby takeaway after midnight on Monday, when they were confronted by the man, a neighbour, who threw rubbish at them saying it belonged to them.

Attacking them with the sprayer, she recalls: “He [said he] was removing the blackness, he is going to change us to white. We don’t deserve to be here, this is not our town, we should go home.”

“He didn’t stop. I think his wife or girlfriend pulled me by my hair and I fell.”

The altercation went on for a while before the man with the sprayer went to their house.

The student adds: “I am traumatised, we are so scared. He said it was holy water he was spraying on us to take out the demons. If it was holy water, why were our clothes damaged, why were our eyes red and itchy from the chemicals?”

Instead of reaching the takeaway, the women said they headed straight to the police station and cops said they would respond to the media in due course.

Beaufort West mayor Sias Reynolds called on the community to allow the law to take its course.