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Johannesburg -
The SA Human Rights Commission could investigate allegations that a Limpopo business park allocates toilets according to race groups, it emerged on Wednesday."We are aware of this incident and our provincial office is on its way to [Louis Trichardt] to verify these shocking allegations," spokesman Isaac Mangena said in a statement.
"If they are indeed true, we will immediately launch an investigation."
The Sowetan reported that business tenants at the Vleissentraal office block in Louis Trichardt convened a meeting after alleging they were told to use separate toilets.
The tenants told the newspaper they had had enough of the segregation and humiliation.
"There are four toilets in this building. One is for black females, one for black males, one for white and coloured females, and the last one is used by one white male," a businessman, who did not want to be named, was quoted as saying.
"The toilets are always locked and before we can use them we have to ask for the keys from the white lady managing the building."
Other tenants, who did not want to be named, also spoke to the newspaper about the alleged racism.
Attempts by the Sowetan to get comment from the building owner were unsuccessful.
Mangena said it was shocking that there were still reports where facilities were reserved exclusively for the use of white people, 20 years into South Africa's democracy.
"We would like to reiterate that racism has no place in a society such as ours, which just came out of many years of state-sponsored racism, and we need to do everything to eradicate it," he said.
