It is difficult to know whether to laugh or to cry.
So, white refugees are streaming out of the burbs with their loot in big sacks on their aching backs, heading for Canada? The Great Trek II has begun and Brandon Huntley has gone to prepare a place for us in Saskatchewan or Churchill Manitoba? Hmm, can’t wait.
You have to ask: what has Canada done to deserve Brandon Huntley?
But then you remember. Oh, yes! His application for refugee status was successful. The panel that interviewed him accepted that he had been attacked 7 times (including 3 stabbings) by black people. Because he was white. Because he “stands out like a sore thumb”. They accepted that Brandon’s attackers called him a “white dog” and a “settler”. Ag shame, man!
So Canada opened the door. So Canada deserves what it gets. And watch out! Here we come, with our braais and boerewors and quaint views about the world. Canada you’re gonna love us!
Part of me is delighted by Brandon and the silly Canadian immigration board panel that accepted him in. He might well be exaggerating to bolster his immigration case, but it is certainly within the realms of possibility that his story is true.
The country’s crime levels are out of control. There is racial anger swirling around the body politic. The “race card” gets played at every turn by cheating and failed politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen. It’s enough already.
But while we rub our hands in glee when the weak puncture the pretensions of the powerful, it is important to remember that the real and most numerous victims of most sorts of crime in this country, especially violent crime, are poor and black. And what has consigned these victims to the bottom of the pile is Apartheid and its ongoing consequences. It’s difficult to think that someone called “Brandon” in the grip of trying to convert his tourist visa in Canada is justifiably placed at the centre-stage of South African history.
Nic Borain 
So Mr Huntley tried all sorts of stunts to stay in Canada, including marrying a local, and the one that works is his refugee application. Crime’s bad, unemployment’s bad, poverty’s bad, etc. And this affects all of us, but some more than others. Except that in our case, the “some” that’s affected more happen to be the majority black. Take unemployment, simply because the data is more readily avalaible. About 30 out of every 100 black africans in the job market are unemployed. For whites, it is under 5 out of every 100. The unemployment rate among whites is about half what it is in the USA and less than half what it is in many European countries. “We are the victims. Affirmative action’s taking all our jobs.” Yeah right. I’d argue that Mr Huntley represents a failure of the apartheid system, in the sense that he was unable to make a success when things were insanely stacked in his favour, who now uses blacks as his excuse.
Thanks Dismal, I am 100% with you …. especially thanks for those stats … can you source them? I know I would hugely appreciate that, so I can use them myself some time. It is looking like Brandon is something of a scammer and if it can be shown that he lied … then Moubray here he comes again! Cheers, Nic
Your response is a good one, Nic. The real measurement of such thing is quality of life. Well, I for one still feel privileged to live here (here is Port Elizabeth, by the way) and know for sure that I have a quality of life which is better than 90% of people in South Africa, probably 90% of people on the planet….don’t know about other planets. So….with levels of inequality so high, doesn’t there come a point where our (the privileged few) situation is inevitably threatened by fear??? I don’t think I could stand to live in constant fear. I have been there, in other contexts. I am still enjoying freedom. But if my child was threatened; if I lived in fear every night…well, I might just have to go somewhere else. And I could probably do so, being privileged. This is not essentially a race issue at all; it’s about class. They still coincide to some extent in South Africa, but not entirely. As everybody knows.