White South Africans deserve protection from racial violence, too

Peter Dutton.

If you lean to the left, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton probably represents one of the most re­cal­citrant, reactionary con­serva­tives in politics today. He ticks all the boxes. Just ask Julian Burnside QC. As a white male from the red-neck state of Queensland, Dutton is totally unreconstructed and, unlike most of his colleagues, has not been re-educated in the finer points of political correctness. At question time, when responding to allegations of ill-treatment of unlawful migrants in detention, he neglects to declare his white privilege. He shamelessly stands for Christmas and Anzac Day and, horror of horrors, wants our children to pledge their allegiance to Australia.

He dares to criticise Victoria’s soft “civil libertarian” judges and even blames them for the prevalence of South Sudanese violence. Rather than turn a blind eye, he provocatively profiles the Lebanese Muslim community by singling them out and unfairly tendering evidence to show that “out of the last 33 people who have been charged with terrorist-related offences in this country, 22 of those people are from second and third-generation Lebanese-Muslim background”.

In short, as The Saturday Paper editorialises, “The man is a moral void. His actions as a minister have debased this parliament. He is a cartoon of overreach and indifference, the proud jailer of innocent refugees.”

Now Dutton wants to allow white South African farmers into Australia as part of a special humanitarian program.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale smells a rat. He believes this is a covert “return to the White Australia policy”. According to Di Natale: “There’s no debate as far as I’m concerned, the bloke is an out-and-out racist.” Di Natale called it remarkable that Dutton would seek to give preferential treatment to people on the basis of their skin colour. “This is not a dog whistle, it’s a fog horn.” Good point. White lives don’t matter.

Di Natale doesn’t question the suffering of white South African farmers. Even the South African government admits to it. Pretoria simply denies the attacks are deliberately targeted and says they are just part of a wider violent crime problem. But, then, how could post-Mandela South Africa admit to racism? That in the past 21 years 1757 white farmers have been murdered in 12,245 attacks? Or that this year alone there have been 15 murders from 109 attacks? What the statistics don’t show is how many innocent whites have been brutalised, tortured and raped.

When Zimbabwe began confiscating white farmers’ land it resulted in landholders and many of their workers being murdered, beaten, raped, tortured and harassed. Not one person has been prosecuted for any of these crimes. Now, following a motion from the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters party, the South African parliament has voted overwhelmingly to amend its constitution to expropriate white farms without compensation.

When EFF head Julius Malema claims the constitutional change is retribution for the “criminals who stole our land”, increased white bloodshed seems certain. Malema is a populist politician who uses racial hatred and threats of violence to advance his militaristic, fascist party. His influence far exceeds his less than 10 per cent voter support. He incites racists with his hate speech. He openly warns of “going for your white man in PE (Port Elizabeth). We are going to cut the throat.”

The media is largely silent. Supporters brush aside Malema’s racial vilification with claims of “white fragility”. They say he is simply expressing pent-up black frustrations. So far he remains unpunished. On the other hand, a white real estate agent, caught racially insulting a black policeman, received a three-year jail sentence, making her the first person in the country to be jailed for this offence.

In South Africa the white minority still owns 72 per cent of all farmland and confiscation is a clear violation of the post-apartheid promise to protect minorities.

But to quote Malema: “The time for reconciliation is over. Now is the time for justice.” Lest there be any doubt, the ruling African National Congress confirmed: “The ANC unequivocally supports the principle of land expropriation without compensation.”

In light of this, it is curious that Pretoria should haul in Canberra’s high commissioner for a diplomatic dressing down over Dutton’s remarks. Surely his description of the “horrific circumstances” facing white South Afri­can farmers was not an exaggeration?

For Australia, South African farmers should make good contributing migrants. Yet when Dutton champions this he is charged with racism, demonstrating just how inane the debate has become.

To say that we want people who want to come here, abide by our laws, integrate into our society, work hard, not lead a life on welfare, is surely to state the obvious.

But Di Natale and other multicultural warriors are outraged. Is it because crime rates among some of the non-white migrant cohorts they promote are disproportionately higher than for the general population? That the children of those migrants often fail to assimilate? That migrants from North Africa and the Middle East are three times likelier than Europeans and Asian migrants to be out of work in the first five years of settlement? That the fastest growing income-support pension is dispro­portionately drawn by people born in the Middle East?

What Dutton has exposed is the blatant hypocrisy that condemns racism everywhere except when the target is white. South Africa’s constitutional change is clearly race-based yet, rather than confront this reality and support the Home Affairs Minister’s offer of sanctuary, our Prime Minister and Foreign Minister cravenly bend to Pretoria’s demands by pretending skin colour is not the issue.

Better to offend the conservative, humane Dutton than face the wrath of morally superior posers at home and abroad. What a farce.