BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson, has examined the challenges white South African’s face and questioned if they had a future in the country in a recent documentary. Simpson also wrote an article detailing his opinion. The opening paragraph of the article reads:

Apartheid South Africa looked after white people and nobody else. Now some of its white communitites face a level of deprivation, or of violence, which threatens their future in the country.

Simpson visited the country with this question: “Whether white people genuinely have a future here?” The answer he received more often than not was: “Yes, but.” Upon Simpsons visit he was taken to a white squatter camp by an Afrikaans campaigner from the AfriForum organisation, Ernst Roets. The squatter camp is called Sonskyn Hoekie. Simpson also learned from Roets that there are over 80 sqatter camps in Pretoria alone. Roets even suggested that there are over 400 000 poor whites that live in conditions like this.

ANC spokesperson, Keith Khoza, responded tho the ‘dilema’ of white violence being portrayed in the film. Khoza said:

South Africa has never been in a situation where whites have been singled out and persecuted…Instances of crime and poverty affect all South Africans regardless of the colour of their skin.

Khoza went as far as to state that: “Europe’s most popular content-based site,” with a reported 13,2 million visits monthly, is suffering from an “apartheid hangover.”

Even the Democratic Alliance had their say regarding the article which they felt “create[d] the impression that black people don’t suffer in the new South Africa, where they most certainly do.”

[Source: Mail & Guardian, BBC News, BBC, YouTube]