A white South African who had overstayed his work visa in Canada, applied for refugee status on the grounds that should he return to South Africa, black South Africans would “persecute” him. He was granted refugee status by an immigration board tribunal in Ottawa last week. According to media reports the tribunal chair ruled that there was “clear and convincing proof of the state’s inability or unwillingness to protect him” and added: “I find that the claimant would stand out like a ‘sore thumb’ due to his color in any part of the country.” Serious. Every South African–especially poor blacks who are majority of the victims of violent crime–can make such a case. Will Canada grant them refugee status? As for the second: that white people stand out in South Africa. That is so nonsensical, that it does not deserve comment.

The claimant, Brandon Huntley, also told the tribunal: “There’s a hatred of what we did to them and it’s all about the colour of your skin.” I must have missed a race riot or forms of retributive violence against whites in the last 15 years since the end of Apartheid. Instead, poor black South Africans have turned on other blacks (immigrants, their neighbors) and largely hold the state and the ruling party (both majority black) responsible for their plight.

This is the kind of nonsense peddled on blogs by a section of expatriate white South Africans. That it was taken serious by a Canadian court boggles the mind.

What is also odd is from reports of the case is that violent crime–which as I said already, affects mostly blacks–is defined as a race war against whites. You got to be kidding me.

This is all surreal yet there is some in and outside South Africa who will defend this.

By the way, this is a new tactic. In the past, a family of white South Africans applicants claimed there’s too much sun in South Africa in their application to live in Canada. They won their case. Here in the US, a white South African woman was not so lucky.