I love Hitler, says SRC president

Dlamini was unrepentant when media asked him about the comments. File photo
Image by: Alon Skuy

Wits University's SRC president Mcebo Dlamini prompted outrage yesterday when he wrote "I love Adolf Hitler" in a Facebook post.

He later told Wits' student newspaper Vuvuzela: "What I love about Hitler is his charisma and his capabilities to organise people. We need more leaders of such calibre."

Dlamini was unrepentant when media asked him about the comments.

He said: "There is an element of Adolf Hitler in all white people and I still maintain that. They have blood in their hands.

"We are not saying George Bizos went [out] and killed but [that] white people colonised us, displaced us and enslaved our people."

He said of Hitler: "In as much as he was bad, there is a good side of him. He managed to uplift the spirit of the German people, after it had went [sic] down in 1938."

The university's vice-chancellor, Professor Adam Habib, said Dlamini's statements were deeply offensive.

He told eNCA: "I have referred the matter to our legal office to investigate the issue and to see whether disciplinary charges should be put to him."

The SRC distanced itself from Dlamini's views, with general secretary Senzekahle Mbokazi saying: "As the SRC we condemn the actions of Hitler in the strongest terms and we find equally deplorable the generalisation that all white people have elements of Hitler in them. We emphasise that these statements were not made in our name. In no way do we condone the human rights atrocities of the Holocaust."

Nathan Pollack, chairman of the SA Union of Jewish Students, said Dlamini's comments were particularly inappropriate in light of the recent xenophobic attacks and constituted "a complete act of racism".