There’s a joke in South Africa that it’s so easy to claim asylum here, even the Swiss could do so. It’s easy to believe. At our local shopping centre in Johannesburg, the security guards hail from various safe African countries – Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi. All are on refugee permits that are renewed every few months, often with a bribe.
If there’s murderous intent among South Africa’s poorest, it’s not directed at white people
There are countless illegal migrants and refugees from as far away as Pakistan and Bangladesh. Ironic then that president Cyril Ramaphosa is making such a fuss about the 49 Afrikaners who have been granted asylum in the United States.
During his visit to the White House this week, Ramaphosa was ambushed by US president Donald Trump, who raised the plight of white farmers in South Africa. It made Ramaphosa squirm, but Trump is only partly right about the situation on the ground. And if he thinks a genocide is underway, he is wrong.
Whites account for 7.3 per cent of the population and less than two per cent of murder victims. This is not, of course, a gentle country. South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. There have been horrific murders on white-owned farms; victims have been raped and tortured before being killed. But it’s a mistake to think these people were murdered due to the colour of their skin. The majority of those who meet a sticky end are black.
Violent crime is not, of course, much of a concern for Ramaphosa and his ministers who live in luxury, surrounded by guards. When they venture out, they travel in motorcades, blue lights flashing and police cars front and back. Meanwhile, they insist that the rest of us – including farmers, who live in rural isolation, far from help – have nothing to fear. Easy for them to say.
So did the 49 farmers who left for a new life in America have reason to be scared? Perhaps.
People have their own limits on what danger they are willing to live with. Some can endure uncertainty; others see danger all around.
But whatever motivated these folk to leave, Trump is wrong if he thinks all white farmers share their view. He is also wrong if he thinks a rural white genocide is underway. And this isn’t the only misapprehension.
When I come to Britain, I am invariably asked whether South Africa’s crippling unemployment — notably among the black youth — could be solved by nationalising farms and splitting them into five or 10-acre plots where youngsters could at least grow food. My response: ‘Why don’t you carve up Warwickshire so the jobless of London can do the same?’.
The black population is mostly young, urban, literate and hungry for work. Education is compulsory, kids know Pythagoras and Shakespeare and many families have moved to town in less than a generation and grown up on series like Friends and Big Bang Theory. In a country with little in the way of social support or welfare, everyone finds something to do, but herding goats is not on the list.
For a journalist, there’s no better way to check the political temperature than by visiting a black beer hall in one of the townships. I do it frequently, hearing concerns of the masses who live crowded in shacks, largely out of work, the streets unpaved and the air scented by litter and pit latrines.
Whereas in the suburbs just a few miles from here, my home — with lawns and a swimming pool — is behind a seven-foot wall topped with a 60,000-volt electric fence, crime is part of daily life in the townships. There are few streetlights and muggers and pickpockets lurk in the dark. When a thief is caught, justice is dished out instantly: with sticks and rocks.
Yet in these beer halls where I stand out as the only white person, I have never faced a harsh word, or felt threatened. The crowd is courteous and welcoming; they tell me of their struggles to pay rent, or send money home to a rural grandmother and how distraught they feel when a son or daughter must go to school with broken shoes. If there’s murderous intent among South Africa’s poorest, it’s not directed at white people. But politicians don’t come here for a drink.
For all the awkwardness of a country that’s really a dozen nations hemmed in by a border created by the British, along with a shocking murder rate and streets not safe to walk by night, South Africa is a tolerant land cursed by misunderstanding, both abroad and at home. The local press that veers to the left is obsessed with ‘femicide’. Believe their reports and you’d think that women face death every time they walk down the street, whereas the majority of murder victims are male. The press also pays disproportionate attention when a white rather than a black person is killed; this may explain why the plight of farmers gets such publicity.
The truth is that most South Africans enjoy living here. Good luck to those who have opted for a new life in America. But don’t expect their departure to mark the start of a mass migration of white farmers across the Atlantic. Given how many migrants come to South Africa, there are clearly worse places to live.
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