Stephen Harper Is Attempting to Polish Up His Act

President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana with W.E.B. DuBois and Shirley Graham DuBois, along with Kojo Botsio, Ghana Foreign Minister in 1963.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Steven Harper is attempting to polish up his act

By Norman (Otis) Richmond

Stephen Harper’s government was severely criticized for its treatment
of Suaad Hagi Mohamud, a 31- year old Somali-born Canadian citizen, who was trapped in Kenya for three months. Mohamud, whose ordeal included nine harrowing days in a Nairobi jail, said that she "thought my government would back me up." Mohamud, unfortunately thought more highly of her government than her government thought about her.

The conservative government is appealing a decision by the Immigration and Refugee Board to grant asylum to Brandon Huntley, a 31 year old white South African who feared racial persecution in the former settler colony. He lives in Ottawa and spent three years as an illegal in Canada before asking for refugee status in 2008.

This rare flip-flop by Harper’s government came as a result of fierce
international condemnation.

“Our department’s lawyer as well as those from (Department of Justice) reviewed the IRB decision”, said Alykhan Velshi, spokesperson for immigration minister Jason Kenney. Huntley complained that his life and his livelihood were threatened in the new South Africa. A Canadian immigration and refugee board panel ruled recently that Huntley could stay in Canada because he presented "clear and convincing proof of the state's inability or unwillingness to protect him."

It's likely the first time a white South African has been granted
refugee status in Canada claiming persecution from black South
Africans, said Russell Kaplan, Huntley's immigration lawyer. The South African government has ordered its ambassador to Canada to demand answers over the decision to grant refugee status to a South African because he is white.

Press reports say Huntley demonstrated “a picture of indifference and inability or unwillingness” by South Africa to protect “white South
Africans from persecution by African South Africans,” Williams Davis,
a member of the refugee protection division of the Immigration and
Refugee Board wrote in his decision.

Huntley‘s attorney Russell Kaplan, called Davis’ decision “a landmark case because as far as we know this is the first case in Canada of a white South African at risk for his life at the hands of African South Africans.”

Huntley did not win refugee status because he had been attacked, said Kaplan, but because he was “at risk of persecution “in a country with an overwhelmed police and discriminatory hiring policies. The police just cannot cope with all the crime that is taking place.”

But spokeswoman for South Africa’s Department of International
Relations and Co-operation, Nomfanelo Kota, described the decision as 'disgusting'.

A government statement read: 'We find the claim by Huntley to have
been attacked seven times by Africans due his skin color without any
police intervention sensational and alarming. Canada's reasoning for granting Huntley a refugee status can only serve to perpetuate
racism.”

Huntley grew up in the affluent Cape Town suburb of Mowbray, close to the slopes of the Devil’s Peak next to Table Mountain. He told the
paper: 'If you have got the money, you can protect yourself.' Most
middle class South African can afford 24-hours armed security,
electric fences, guard dogs and security beams.

It must be mentioned that the official unemployment rate for white
South Africans is 4.6 percent, compared to 27.9 percent for black
South Africans, despite the affirmative action drive.

Many white South Africans have packed up and left, moving to Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, blaming crime and positive discrimination in the job market in favor of non-whites many of whom received little or poor education opportunities during apartheid.

The Canadian government is incorrectly credited with being progressive on the South African question.

We are constantly told that African people are in debt to Lester B.
Pearson. However, a new book, “The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy” by Yves Engler, pulls the cover off this maple leaf myth.

Says Engler, “Contrary to popular understanding Canada mostly
supported apartheid in South Africa. First, by providing it with a
model. South Africa patterned its policy towards blacks after Canadian policy towards First Nations.”

He goes on the quote another source: “South African officials
regularly came to Canada to examine reserves set aside for First
Nations, following colleagues who had studied residential schools in
earlier parts of the century.”

It must never be forgotten that the Canadian government did business with the apartheid regime and opposed the liberation including the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC).

Nelson Mandela was not always the nice guy in the eyes of the Canadian state. Their relationship with the ANC was initially hostile and then it became ambivalent. The Canadian government did not recognize the ANC until 1984.

In August 1987, then foreign minister Joe Clark laid out the
government’s position.

Said Clark: “Canada has been able to develop a relationship of trust
with the African National Congress that it is hoped to have helped to
strengthen the hand of black moderates.”

Remember “constructive engagement? Didn’t the Canadian and British governments not follow the lead of U. S. President Ronald Wilson Reagan on this issue? W. E. B. Du Bios said the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line. The color line continues to plague humanity in the 21st .

Steven Harper’s government is attempting to polish up its tarnished
international image. Harper is viewed by African people and
progressive forces globally in the same light as Britain’s Tony Blair,
as another one of President George W. Bush’s poodles.