Seeking Asylum

"[The IRB] never explained why it felt the singing of this ['Shoot the Boer'] song by political leaders at political forums or the updated Genocide Watch opinion could not have legitimately inspired a further subjective fear of political persecution."
"While it could have had good reasons for doing so, the absence of any explanation by the [IRB] makes it hard to understand."
"[In its ruling the IRB had said], Criminals kill, steal and rape for their own advantage at all times. Women and young girls are therefore no more likely to be victims of abuse than members of other population groups. ... 
"Rape does not become a gender-neutral crime merely because all people in the country face some risk of other types of violence."
Justice John O'Keefe of the Federal Court of Canada

AFP/Getty Images   A white South African family told a Canadian refugee board hearing that they were increasingly afraid of living in that country because since they left, leaders of the ruling African National Congress, including President Jacob Zuma (above), had sung the anti-apartheid song Kill the Farmer, Shoot the Boer, even after a South African court ruled it was hate speech.

 

Justice O'Keefe found the ruling by the Immigration & Refugee Board of Canada "puzzling", revealing "serious misunderstanding of the law", and that the IRB member who made his ruling placed undue reliance on "trivial detail" in his assumption that the claimants, Charl and Naira Nel and their daughter were lying when they expressed a fear of remaining as white South Africans in the country they were anxious to depart. The Nels had made application for refugee protection in Canada.

Their claim of fear of rape and violence committed against the white South African population by the black majority was rejected by the IRB adjudicator, but upheld by the Federal Court which gave its support to continue their asylum claim. That claim is now set to be returned for a new determination, after the Federal Court had argued the family's claims of gender-based fear of violence against women and their race-based fear of black threats against whites had been mishandled.

The Nel family of three had left South Africa in 2010, applying for refugee protection in Canada, informing the IRB of their fears of becoming victims of crime and violence. Their descriptions of South Africa as a place of endemic violence and horrendously frequent rape is more than borne out by the facts where South Africa is generally identified as a country where social unrest, poverty, high crime rates and soaring incidents of rape distinguish it within the international community.

The Nels testified their fears had increased given their awareness of leaders of the ruling African National Congress, South African President Jacob Zuma included,  had sung the anti-apartheid-era song Kill the Farmer, Shoot the Boer (Boer is taken to include all white South Africans now, not merely the Dutch Colonialists of history), irrespective that a South African court had ruled the song to represent 'hate speech'.

Furthermore, pointed out the family, Genocide Watch, an organization monitoring genocide around the world, had upgraded the risk of genocide against the white population in South Africa since 2010, the time of the family's arrival in Canada. The Nels had appealed the decision of the Immigration &
Refugee Board to turn down their request for haven as refugees from South Africa, to the Federal Court.

Because it has good relations with South Africa, Canada accepts few refugee claims by citizens of South Africa; none has been accepted this year, nor the year before. Three had been accepted in 2012, but in 2009 when the IRB had granted a white South African asylum in Canada, the South African government protested the decision as "racist", while politicians, newspaper editorials and talk radio in South Africa rejected the decision as an insult to the country.

None of which alters the reality of South Africa as a still-dysfunctional, poverty-stricken, low-employment, high violence and rape-rampant country whose government may yet decide to follow the steps of Robert Mugabe by disenfranchising its white population through expropriating farms owned and operated by white South Africans, as has been bandied about in the near past.