Student-made film showed elderly black cleaners being humiliated.

Four white South African men reached a deal on Wednesday to pay fines for making a video showing elderly black cleaners being humiliated, including by drinking what was purported to be urine-tainted soup.

The video shot by the four former students at the University of the Free State in a conservative Afrikaner farming region came to light about two years ago, sparking outrage in a country working to heal the wounds of its apartheid past.

The four pleaded guilty in a Bloemfontein court on Tuesday, asking for forgiveness from the victims who worked at a university dormitory.

"They have agreed to a fine but they have not agreed to an amount," Mothusi Lepheana, head of the Free State Human Rights Commission, told Reuters by telephone from the court, about 230 miles southwest of Johannesburg.

The defendants were seeking fines of 5,000 rand ($680) each while the state was seeking 15,000 rand. The court was expected to announce its decision on Friday, legal officials said.

"They didn't consider jail time. It was not raised by the state or anybody," Lepheana said.

The video showed the four women and one man running a race barefoot while wearing their cleaning uniforms and being taken to a bar where they drank alcohol and danced to Afrikaans music in what was portrayed as an initiation ceremony.