South African Police Commissioner Says Criminals Greedy But Not Racist

South Africa's new police commissioner Bheki Cele is seen at the Presidential Guesthouse in Pretoria, Wednesday, 29 July 2009 (GCIS/SAPA)
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

JOHANNESBURG 2 September 2009 Sapa

CRIMINALS GREEDY BUT NOT RACIST: CELE

Criminals do not target people because of their skin colour,
national police commissioner Bheki Cele said on Wednesday.

"Criminals in South Africa... they look at what you have, rather
than looking at your face," Cele said at a Southern African
Regional Police Chiefs Co-operation Organisation meeting in
Johannesburg.

He was reacting to a decision by Canadian authorities to grant
South African Brandon Huntley refugee status for alleging that the
government could not protect white South Africans from criminal
attacks by "African South Africans".

"My house was broken into and some stuff was taken... and I
remain black. Surely, my house was never broken into because I am
black," said Cele.

Huntley told immigration officials in Canada that black people
had attacked him on seven different occasions and that white people
were not safe in South Africa.

He did not lay any charges with the police after any of the
incidents, The Star newspaper reported on Wednesday.

"I've opened people's eyes," Huntley told the daily.

Canadian authorities granted him refugee status, to the ire of
the ruling African National Congress.

The South African government was not asked to make any
presentation in the case.

The chairman of the board who made the decision, William Davis,
ruled that Huntley "was a victim because of his race rather than a
victim of criminality".

"The evidence... shows a picture of indifference and inability
or unwillingness of the government and the security forces to
protect white South Africans from persecution by African South
Africans," said Davis.

Home affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said the decision was
based on "absolute rubbish", while the ANC described it as racist.


JOHANNESBURG 2 September 2009 Sapa-dpa

NEWS FEATURE: BLACK SA CRIME VICTIM SAYS BLACKS ALSO "PERSECUTED"

Thuli Ndlovu doesn't buy the claim of fellow South African,
Brandon Huntley, the country's first-known "crime refugee", that he
was singled out by criminals because he was white.

Canada's refugee authorities sensationally granted Huntley's
refugee status in August after accepting his assertion that he was
marked by criminals in South Africa because of his skin colour and
that the South African state was unwilling or unable to protect
him.

Cape Town native Huntley, 31, applied for refugee status last
year after his work permit ran out. Huntley said he had been mugged
and stabbed during several attempted robberies and been called a
"white dog" or "settler" by his "African South African" attackers.

The immigration and refugee board found "clear and convincing
proof" that Huntley was a "victim of his race rather than a victim
of criminality" and of an "indifference and inability, or
unwillingness, of the government and security forces to protect
white South Africans from persecution by African South Africans."

The ruling has caused a firestorm of controversy in South
Africa, which has a well-documented violent crime problem but where most of the victims are not whites, but poor blacks, whose stories go unnoticed.

Like Thuli, a 36-year-old tour guide and social worker from
Soweto township outside Johannesburg. "First it was my auntie," she
says, listing off the victims of violent crime in her family.

Thuli's aunt used to run a shebeen (unlicensed tavern) from her
home in eastern Johannesburg. It was there Makhosi was gunned down in front of her two children and patrons in the early hours of one
Sunday morning in 2000.

"I think they were trying to rob here but something went wrong
and they shot her," Thuli says.

The family were still mourning Makhosi, when four months later,
on a Lenten Good Friday, they were back at the graveside, burying
Thuli's brother.

Thokozani Ndlovu, 24, was attacked by two unknown men while
returning home to his pregnant fiance in Soweto from his job in a
bottle shop one evening.

They took his cellphone and wallet and, when he fought back,
pumped his head, chest and stomach with bullets. After his death,
his fiancee suffered a miscarriage.

And then there was Thuli's own brush with death in 1998 when she
was walking from the bus to her backyard home in another part of
Soweto.

After being robbed at gunpoint of her phone, money, watch, ring,
even earrings, she was shot twice for trying to get away, fearing
the next stage was rape.

After six months in hospital she was back on her feet, but one
bullet is still lodged in her spine and beeps when she passes
through metal detectors. No one was ever arrested in connection
with the murders. "They said they didn't have any lead," she said.

Understandably, Thuli disagrees with Huntley's claim that whites
are being singled out by criminals.

"They want what you have, whether you're what or black. It's
about unemployment (of 27.9 per cent)," she says with a resigned
air.

The South African government said it was "disgusted" at the
ruling which the ruling African National Congress called "racist."
Human rights groups, including the South African Institute of
Race Relations (SAIRR) and South African Human Rights Commission, also rubbished Huntley's claims of persecution.

"While South Africa is a very violent society the vast majority
of the victims of violent crime are black," SAIRR noted.

Whites, who make up 9 per cent of the population of 49.3
million, are generally safer because they can afford to pay for
private security, SAIRR deputy president Frans Cronje said,
referring to the legions of private security guards that watch over
the homes of the wealthy.

While a racial motive was sometimes detected in crimes, there
was no "general pattern of racial attacks on white South Africans
by black South Africans," SAIRR said.

And the racism, as the CEO of the Human Rights Commission
Tseliso Thipanyane points out, cuts both ways.

Unions representing white farmers in South Africa allege a
racial motive to the high number of violent farm attacks, but a
number of attacks by trigger-happy white farmers on farmworkers or
community members in recent years have also smacked of racism.

Popular reaction continued to pour in to radio phone-in
programmes and internet sites Wednesday, with most condemning
Huntley but a few saluting him for highlighting the crime scourge.

"I've opened people's eyes," Huntley told Johannesburg's The
Star newspaper.