INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

White Squatter Camps In South Africa Point To Post-Apartheid Inequality Created By ANC-Led Government

By Jinger Jarrett
Published on: 10:18 PST, Mar 27, 2016

An estimated 400,000 white South Africans live in white squatter camps in South Africa. High unemployment, a global financial meltdown, and policies created by the Communist African National Congress-led government under President Jacob Zuma have caused these largely Afrikaans speaking people to fall on hard times.

The Daily Mail UK reported that there are about 80 squatter camps where white squatter families live. They have little food, little or no running water, and no electricity. Shanty houses are surrounded by clapped out cars as children play along the dusty wasteland in the scorching sun. What water is available is infested with mosquitos, breeding illness and disease. The number of whites living below the poverty line is growing in South Africa as the ANC-led government has created little opportunity for these working class South Africans.

The children who play among the cars and shanties were born after the end of apartheid in 1994. Seeking to undo what they considered racial inequality in South Africa, the South African government instituted a policy called Black Economic Empowerment. Similar to affirmative action in the United States, the purpose of the policy was to give black South Africans an advantage in the job market.

What happened was that white South Africans were eventually closed out of the job market as blacks were automatically given jobs based on race. Often unskilled, South Africans who live in these white squatter camps are given little sympathy because it is believed that they profited from apartheid.

As previously reported in The Inquisitr, little focus has been given to white South Africans in view of the attacks against immigrants in the country. Although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its final volume in 2003 and all pardons for crimes under apartheid were issued, whites have continued to face persecution for events that took place under apartheid. Human Rights Watch focused on attacks against immigrants while ignoring white genocide and farm murders.

Farm attacks and murders against farmers in South Africa have made it the most dangerous occupation in the world. Although police have said that the attacks and murders are related to robbery, the brutality of the attacks, including rape, torture, and murder, and the fact that the victims are largely white, paints a different picture of what is happening to farmers in South Africa.

Although the estimate on whites living in poverty in South Africa is thought to be 400,000, this is out of a white population of about 4 million while the country’s population is about 50 million. Those who live in white squatter camps may receive a stipend of about $40.95 while they are often denied access to basic healthcare services.

Leigh Du Preez of the South African Family Relief Project (SAFRP), a charity in South Africa, said that those in the white squatter camps have little chance of finding a job, and he also pointed out that many of those living in the camps were born after apartheid ended.

“As soon as they read your application and see you are from a white squatter camp, they turn you down. It’s very difficult to get a job if employers know you live in one. They (the children) were supposed to be born into a free and fair South Africa. Does this look fair?”

So far the South African government has failed to address the economic problems of those living in white squatter camps, and the current government, led by the African National Congress and President Jacob Zuma, have been hostile towards white South Africans, going so far as the president singing “Kill The Boer” at ANC rallies, a song calling for the murder of whites in South Africa.

[Photo by John Moore/Getty Images]

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