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Canada gives refuge to white South African

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The World’s Alex Gallafent reports on an immigration case in Canada that’s angering leaders in South Africa.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. It’s fair to say that South Africa knows a thing or two about racism. For decades the country’s black majority lived under the oppression of white rule: apartheid. Now South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress, is making a new accusation of racism against a Canadian authority. The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.

ALEX GALLAFENT: The target of the ANC’s anger is a Canadian immigration board. It’s granted refugee status to a 31-year-old South African man named Brandon Huntley. Huntley claimed he was being persecuted at home for being white. He reportedly told Canadian officials he couldn’t return to South Africa because he’d been attacked seven times by black men between 1991 and 2003. He said he’d been stabbed four of those times. But the African national Congress disputes the characterization of the attacks against Brandon Huntley and the Canadian ruling in his favor. His spokesman Ishmael Mnisi.

ISHMAEL MNISI: The African National Congress views the granting by Canada of a refugee status to South African citizen Brandon Hanley on the grounds of Africans would persecute him as racist. We find the claim by Huntley to have been attacked seven times by Africans due to his skin color without any police intervention sensational and alarming.

GALLAFENT: The ANC spokesman adds that South Africa’s government is able to protect all its citizens regardless of race. But the Canadian Immigration Board said that Brandon Huntley presented clear and convincing proof the state’s inability or unwillingness to protect him. Huntley’s lawyer is Russell Kaplan. Kaplan is a South African native who himself moved to Canada 20 years ago. He says the board reached its decision after hearing testimony from other white South Africans that they too had been attacked.

RUSSELL KAPLAN: The big question throughout was you know was this just an act of criminality or was there racial motivation part of it? And every single time there was evidence that they were not just victims of criminality. There was a racial component in the incident.

GALLAFENT: Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board also concluded that Huntley had been unable to find work in South Africa because of the government’s affirmative action policies. But this South African woman says that white people, such as herself, should have no fears about living in the country. Brigitte Lightfoot is with Homecoming Revolution. That’s a group that encourages skilled South Africans living abroad to return home.

BRIGITTE LIGHTFOOT: I myself have lived overseas for six years and I’ve been back for eight months and we really don’t feel that there is this racial prejudice against white people. We think it’s a wonderful country. We think there’s a lot of opportunity for people of all colors and we encourage those people who want to make a difference and return home to do so.

GALLAFENT: Out on the streets of Johannesburg opinions are mixed about the Canadian ruling. One man, Aluwani Matshavana, doesn’t believe Brandon Huntley’s claims of attacks against him.

ALUWANI MATSHAVANA: Actually I think this guy is sick. But even though if they’re happening to you how can you just run away from your country, where you live, where your ancestors are, and everything that you believe in.

GALLAFENT: Apartheid ended in South Africa in 1990. Almost 20 years later this black South African, Aluwani Raswini, sympathizes with white people such as Huntley.

ALUWANI RASWINI: South Africa is mostly focusing on black people too much these days. Like white people aren’t given enough emphasis. Basically they’re just paying for their sins for just too long.

GALLAFENT: Brandon Huntley has refused to discuss the details of his case. He says he fears reprisals against his family still in South Africa. But he told one Canadian newspaper that he’d “opened people’s eyes.” A Johannesburg daily took a different line. An editorial in today’s Times argues that the ruling, “says more about Canadian perceptions than South African reality.” For The World I’m Alex Gallafent.

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