SOUTH AFRICA: FOUR DECADES ON, WILL THERE BE JUSTICE FOR NEIL AGGETT WHEN INQUEST REOPENS MONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020?

DEATH IN DETENTION

Four decades on, will there be justice for Neil Aggett when inquest reopens Monday?

By Greg Nicolson• 17 January 2020

Jane Starfield mourns dead security police detainee Dr Neil Aggett outside John Vorster Square, 9 February 1982. Photo by Gallo Images / Sunday Times). Less

Almost 40 years after he died in custody, the inquest into anti-apartheid doctor and trade unionist Neil Aggett’s death will be reopened on Monday 20 January. The Aggett family may finally receive some justice, but the policemen who were allegedly responsible have died while the state dragged its feet.

The inquest into Neil Aggett’s 1982 death in detention will finally be reopened on Monday 20 January at the Johannesburg High Court as activists and family members look to overturn the finding that he committed suicide.

 

Aggett, a doctor and organiser for the Food and Canning Workers’ Union, was found hanged with a scarf in his cell at Johannesburg’s infamous John Vorster Square on 5 February 1982 after he was arrested the previous year by Security Branch officers and spent 70 days in detention.

Despite evidence that Aggett was brutally tortured and his family’s belief that he was not suicidal, a 1982 inquest led by magistrate Pieter Kotze found he had committed suicide and no one was to blame for his death.

 

The reopened inquest is scheduled to last five weeks and will be presided over by Judge Motsamai Makume. In April 2019, former justice minister Michael Masutha authorised the reopening of the inquest into Aggett’s death after the family had spent years trying to persuade the authorities to investigate.

Makume, the NPA and law firm Webber Wentzel, which is acting pro bono for the Aggett family, agreed in September 2019 that the reopened inquiry would begin on 20 January 2020.

 

According to reports, Aggett’s family rejected the claim that he committed suicide, but during the 1982 inquest advocate George Bizos, representing the family, argued that the officers who tortured and interrogated him induced his suicide.

 

The original inquest heard from 52 witnesses and gathered over 3,000 pages of evidence. An investigation from Foundation for Human Rights, which has pursued the Aggett case and pushed to hold apartheid-era perpetrators accountable, found evidence that witnesses lied as Security Branch officers sought to protect each other.

 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) heard that after being arrested with his partner Dr Elizabeth Floyd, Aggett was tortured by a team led by Major Arthur Cronwright and Lieutenant Stephan Whitehead. There’s evidence that he was subjected to electric shocks, assault, had a wet towel wrapped around his head, and was made to perform strenuous physical exercises.

 

Multiple people who were detained at the same time as Aggett told authorities how they experienced similar treatment, according to the Foundation for Human Rights. At least one said he saw Aggett being forced to do exercises and heard him being beaten.

 

The first inquest heard how Aggett reported his treatment in detention to a magistrate who visited the Johannesburg police station and he also submitted an affidavit to a police investigator. He submitted the affidavit on 4 February 1982 and was found dead the next day.

 

“It is possible that Aggett died during a subsequent session of torture,” reads a briefing note from the Foundation for Human Rights, which has pursued the Aggett case and pushed to hold apartheid-era perpetrators accountable, ahead of the inquiry’s reopening.

 

Aggett was the 51st person to die while detained by the Security Branch and the first white anti-apartheid activist to die in detention. A reported 15,000 people attended his funeral.

 

Andrew Boraine, a fellow anti-apartheid activist who was detained around a similar time as Aggett, told Daily Maverick on Friday that it was important to pursue cases like Aggett’s “because the consequences of not following up apartheid crimes is dealing with current transgressions with impunity”.

 

Boraine said Aggett’s death came at a time when there was a battle between liberation movements over non-racialism and black consciousness. “It showed that there were white activists that weren’t just prepared to get involved in the struggle for liberation but were prepared to die for it.”

 

Speaking to Daily Maverick on Friday, Khulumani Support Group director Marjorie Jobson remembered Aggett from when they lived in a community of highly organised activists in Johannesburg’s Langlaagte Deep while Aggett was working the night shift at Baragwanath Hospital and doing his union work during the day.

 

The Food and Canning Workers’ Union, a predecessor to the Food and Allied Workers’ Union, was one of the first non-racial trade unions, according to Jobson, and Aggett led the historic strike against Fattis and Monis in 1980.

 

The TRC found there was sufficient evidence that Whitehead and Cronwright caused Aggett’s death. The TRC referred the case, along with around 300 others, to the NPA to investigate and prosecute. Neither Whitehead nor Cronwright testified or applied for amnesty.

 

Whitehead died in April 2019. Cronwright is also dead. Very few of the over 300 cases the TRC recommended be investigated and prosecuted were ever pursued by the NPA.

 

The reopening of Aggett inquest follows the 2017 reopening of the inquest into anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol’s death. That inquest overturned a 1972 ruling that Timol committed suicide by jumping off the 10th floor of John Vorster Square and found he had been murdered by Security Branch officers.

 

Timol’s nephew Imtiaz Cajee had long campaigned to reopen his uncle’s inquest and other investigations into the deaths of activists who died in detention during apartheid.

 

He said on Friday that he had “mixed emotions” about the new Aggett inquest. It is significant for the Aggett family and encouraging for other families striving for justice, but the NPA’s delay in pursuing such cases, despite repeated pleas from families, has reduced the chances of finding the truth as alleged perpetrators and witnesses die.

 

“Why has it taken so long?” asked Cajee, calling for an investigation into the authorities and politicians accused of trying to sideline investigations into apartheid-era crimes.

 

The 2017 Timol inquest overturned the activist’s cause of death but achieving further accountability has been a slow process.

 

Former policeman Joao Rodrigues was charged with Timol’s murder but the case has been delayed due to Rodrigues’s failed permanent stay of prosecution application and pending appeal. The court recommended that former officers Seth Sons and Neville Els be charged for lying to the inquiry, but Cajee said investigations into the pair are ongoing over two years after the judgment was delivered.

 

“The conclusion that can be drawn is that there’s no political will,” said Cajee.

 

In 2019, former TRC commissioners called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to launch a commission of inquiry into the failure to prosecute the cases they referred to the NPA.

 

They wrote: “Even though the TRC had handed over a list of several hundred cases to the NPA with the recommendation that they be investigated further, virtually all of them were abandoned. All these cases involved gross human rights violations such as torture, murder and enforced disappearances in which amnesty was either denied or not applied for (the TRC cases).”

 

Jobson worked with the Neil Aggett Support Group and helped pressure the Hawks to investigate Aggett’s death in 2013. She works closely with victims of apartheid and shared the news of the Aggett inquest reopening with her networks. The responses from victims and their relatives were overwhelmingly similar: if that case is finally going to court, what about ours?

 

“For truth and for full disclosure, it’s never too late,” Jobson told Daily Maverick on Friday.

 DM

NEWSFLASH ARTICLE IN THE DAILY MAVERICK, 20 AUGUST 2019

Justice Edwin Cameron urges fight for constitutional values as he steps down from the Bench

By Greg Nicolson• 20 August 2019

20 August 2019: Justice Cameron delivers his final judgement. Justice Edwin Cameron's last day of work as a judge in South Africa's Constitutional Court. Picture: James Oatway

Less

48 Reactions

Lauded legal mind and activist Justice Edwin Cameron delivered his final judgment in the Constitutional Court on Tuesday before calling for the fight for constitutional values to continue.

Justice Edwin Cameron was hailed on Tuesday as a courageous South African who has continually stood up for the rights of the marginalised in society and upheld the Constitution with his integrity and intellect during his 25 years as a judge and more than 11 years in the Constitutional Court.

Cameron, who is retiring, delivered his final judgment in the court on Tuesday before a special session was held to honour his service to South Africa as an activist, jurist and judge.

His colleagues, government leaders and representatives from legal associations celebrated his work in the apex court and spoke glowingly of his work ethic, integrity and commitment to humanity.

“Thank you for introducing me to quiche, Edwin,” joked Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, saying Cameron was the only justice to have invited him to his chambers for lunch.

He called Cameron a “brave and bold” man for publicly disclosing he was HIV positive while stigma abounded. Cameron further tackled the topic in his celebrated book Witness to AIDS.

“When HIV and AIDS was or attracted stigma, he stood and declared openly, I’m HIV positive. He knew the attitude of South Africans at the time,” said Mogoeng.

“His love for the multitudes of South Africans and many across Africa and beyond could not allow him to shut up,” Mogoeng continued.

The chief justice said Cameron, 66, was “the epitome of non-racialism” and was almost always calm, even while the court was tackling difficult issues. Professor David Bilchitz said Cameron’s public stance as a gay, HIV-positive man had inspired him in his public life. He cited the play Angels in America: “We won’t die secret deaths any more. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.”

In a testimonial sent by British lawyer Timothy Dutton SC, he recalled Cameron’s “massive capacity for hard work”. Dutton said Cameron had completed his law studies at Oxford in five rather than nine terms and had a supreme intellect, heroism and courage.

“By fixing your eyes on each one of us, you make us feel that there is no other person in your life that matters more. This is the quality of stardust,” said Dutton.

Jeremy Gauntlett SC recalled Cameron’s time working as an advocate on the Bar in the late 1980s and early 1990s, calling him a “gifted intellectual troublemaker”.

Gauntlett said Cameron brought to the court an “Olympian bearing, sense of engagement but detachment. He has brought to bear the remarkable gifts of lucid thinking and exactitude of expression”.

Justice Minister Ronald Lamola said Cameron was a role model as a citizen and a jurist and was likely to be called upon to serve in some form as a retired judge. He said the justice had fought the rights of vulnerable groups and was part of the independent judiciary which prevented mass looting and the country potentially becoming a failed state.

When Cameron finally spoke to the packed courtroom, standing room only, he said the court faced enormous pressures during his tenure and is likely to face greater pressures in the future.

“After almost 11 years here, what strikes me as most enduring about this court is its commitment to the future, to our country’s future, to a future for its young people,” he said, acknowledging the babies in the audience. “As public values have been sometimes dimmed in the grim tissue of lies, deception and double dealing through which our country has had to survive in the preceding decade, this court has continued to look forward and to look ahead.”

Cameron said the justices had striven to understand the depth and complexity of the issues brought to court, which sometimes saw justices divided but always saw them grounded in their commitment to the Constitution.

“In this I do not think, chief justice, that any single one of us feels the slightest self-satisfaction, complacency or self-congratulation, not at all. There’s still too much to be done and the perils facing our country and the rule of law remain too large,” said Cameron.

“The fight for our constitutional values is now more urgent than ever and future-directed and future-regarded commitment is more vital than ever,” he concluded. DM

MARIKANA, SEVEN YEARS ON

Another year, another Marikana commemoration – but betrayal, neglect and injustice are still there

By Greg Nicolson, Chanel Retief and Yanga Sibembe• 16 August 2019

Photo: Lonmin employees gather on a hill called Wonderkop at Marikana. (Greg Marinovich)

59 Reactions

‘They say in this country we’re free, but only some are free, others are not. A policeman has the power to kill and it’s not a big deal. Justice is not a real thing. I have not seen it.'

Zameka Nungu on Wednesday stirred pap on the stove in between washing dishes in her two-bedroom apartment in Karee Hostel, Marikana. An Amcu calendar was pinned to the wall.

It was Nungu’s day off from her job cleaning the K3 shaft at Lonmin, the platinum giant recently taken over by Sibanye-Stillwater, the same shaft where her husband Jackson Lehupa worked before he was shot by police 11 times — in his back, shoulder, thighs, buttock, groin and feet — on 16 August 2012.
Life has changed for Nungu in the seven years since the Marikana massacre. Her children lost their father and she had to move from Mount Fletcher, Eastern Cape, to the platinum belt to take up a job working for the same company many believed was complicit in her husband’s murder.
There has been one constant since the day SAPS officers killed 34 striking mineworkers, with 78 more injured at the scene of the massacre — the feeling of betrayal, neglect and injustice.

Police officers open fire on striking mineworkers outside the Nkageng informal settlement on August 16, 2012 in North West, South Africa.  (Photo by Gallo Images / Foto24 / Felix Dlangamandla)

Since then, there have been a handful of actions taken to achieve accountability and improve the livelihoods of mineworkers and the Marikana community. They have largely come in spite of, and not because of, efforts from government, the platinum company and SAPS.
“They say in this country we’re free, but only some are free, others are not. A policeman has the power to kill and it’s not a big deal. Justice is not a real thing. I have not seen it,” said Nungu.

 

Police officers open fire on striking mineworkers outside the Nkageng informal settlement on August 16, 2012 in North West, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images / Foto24 / Felix Dlangamandla)

Mineworker Mlungiseleli Makhatshwe, who still wonders how he survived the police onslaught while he was part of the strike seven years ago, said:
“It pains me that no one has been held accountable for what happened, that the police who were responsible have never been held accountable. There are families who lost loved ones. I also lost my comrades. It’s very difficult because these policemen are free, but us as mineworkers are still oppressed.”
Eight police officers face criminal charges in the North West High Court. They were charged in 2018 for concealing how one injured miner was left to die in a police vehicle on 16 August 2012 and for causing the chaos on 13 August 2012 that led to the killing of two SAPS officers and three mineworkers.
Activists have welcomed the charges, but they are related to the five deaths on 13 August — a gruesome precursor to the massacre — and appear hard to prove, a strange first step for the NPA, which has evidence from the two-year Marikana Commission of Inquiry of more direct failures in SAPS leadership on 16 August as well as cases of cold-blooded murder.

 

Mineworkers gather to plan a way forward near the Nkaneng informal settlement on 14 August 2012 after clashes at Lonmin’s Marikana mine claimed nine lives. The gathering happened two days before the Marikana massacre. (Photo: Gallo Images / Foto24 / Felix Dlangamandla)

While the cops aren’t the only ones to blame, they have been the most successful in avoiding accountability. Ten people were killed in the week leading up to the massacre. The Marikana Inquiry failed to make conclusive findings, but it heard arguments that striking mineworkers killed two SAPS officers and two mine security guards in the week leading up to the massacre. Three mineworkers thought to be against the strike were also killed.
Until the SAPS officers were recently charged for issues largely unrelated to the massacre, however, accountability has only gone one way. Hundreds of striking mineworkers were initially charged for causing SAPS to kill their own comrades and 17 mineworkers have long faced charges for the violence in the week leading to the massacre. Like the other dependents of those killed, Nungu only became a part of the violence once her husband was slaughtered. She still wants to know the truth about what happened and to see the culprits charged. She also wants the state to pay her and the other widows and their dependents the compensation they deserve.

 

Lonmin employees gather on a hill called Wonderkop at Marikana, outside Rustenburg in the North West Province of South Africa August 15.  (Photograph by Greg Marinovich)

“There is a narrative out there that the president compensated the families of the slain miners. However, we have only received a portion of what we were promised,” she said.
“We’re not saying money will replace the void left by the death of our husbands, or that it will erase the pain, but it would be something to show that government cares about us.”
In 2018, the government agreed to pay compensation for loss of support to the families of those who were killed. The families are arguing they should be paid R1.5-million each for the pain they suffered beyond losing their breadwinners. Those injured are still fighting to receive any compensation.

In the wake of the massacre, Lonmin offered jobs to the family members of the deceased and offered to pay the school fees for their children, education which at least one report has suggested is sub-par.
Living conditions were a major driver behind the 2012 strike and Lonmin committed to improvements such as upgrading single-sex hostels for workers to bachelor and family units, but Marikana residents complain that little has changed, either for workers or the surrounding community still dependent on the economy generated by the mine.

 

Lonmin employees gather on a hill called Wonderkop at Marikana, outside Rustenburg in the North West Province of South Africa August 15, 2018. Photo by Greg Marinovich

Local activist Wiseman Dibakwe, who has worked for a nearby mine since 2013, said:
“The 2012 massacre could have been something that is teaching the government, the mines, the community, the municipality that they must get together, they must come with a solution to solve, eradicate poverty, unemployment.”
“Go around the location, you’ll see the community are suffering that because they believed that one day things will be right, but since the whole years that I’ve been staying here I’ve never seen any progress.”

The 2012 strikes, first at Impala Platinum and then Lonmin, focused on the fight for a living wage, a basic salary of R12,500 a month. Salaries in the platinum sector have since moved closer to that goal, but workers say those increases aren’t yet making a significant difference in their lives.
“After the strike, there was a change. We were able to earn a slightly better salary. Though even today we haven’t reached that R12,500, which we were promised in the aftermath of the strike, but at least it’s a bit better,” said mineworker Austin Mofokeng, who was part of the 2012 strike. “The working conditions can only improve when our employer takes us seriously. For example, when we’re underground, they could have a doctor or nurse nearby so that if there is an emergency (we) can get medical assistance as soon as possible.”

 

Photo by Greg Marinovich

Demands in Marikana often centre on two institutions. The first is the mining company. The community wants it to help improve services and boost the local economy, while workers want decent living standards and improved wages and conditions. But after Sibanye-Stillwater recently took over Lonmin, many workers just want to avoid potential job losses and uncertainty as they continue to fight for better wages in current negotiations.
The second is the government and its leader, President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was accused of causing the massacre when he called for “concomitant action” during the 2012 strike while he was a Lonmin shareholder. “The government hasn’t even come to us, even when president Zuma was in power, he never once came to Marikana to apologise for what had happened in his country. Zuma is no longer in office and there is a new president, Cyril Ramaphosa. He too has never come to see us. Plus, if there is one person who knows what happened at Marikana, it’s him,” said Nungu in her workers’ quarters.
It’s unlikely Ramaphosa will ever visit, despite his commitments. The president rarely faces criticism over Marikana after the commission of inquiry found he was not the cause of the massacre and the plight of the workers and community has largely disappeared from the public eye.

It also appears unlikely that there will be any significant moves towards achieving justice or developing the community soon, despite ongoing efforts from a committed group of lawyers and activists.

“My life was great when my husband was around,” said Nungu, who now has to fill her husband’s shoes at the mine in order to provide for her children.
“I only agreed to this job because I didn’t really have a choice, I needed the money. So I agreed to take up my husband’s space, even though it was difficult”. DM

Mama Winnie honoured, at last

 

By Greg Nicolson• 14 April 2018

Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has left Orlando for the last time. Committing to her spirit of strength and defiance, speakers at her funeral on Saturday vowed to honour her legacy by fighting the many falsehoods that saw her sidelined.

 By GREG NICOLSON.

The heavens opened and the rain started falling moments before SANDF officials raised Mama Winnie’s coffin, draped in the South African flag, to take her on her final journey.


Tens of thousands of mourners at Orlando Stadium rose to bid farewell to the Mother of the Nation.

Photo: Mourners gather at the Orlando Stadium to pay tribute to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Photo: Leila Dougan.
 
Debate has raged over Madikizela-Mandela’s legacy since the 81-year-old passed away on 2 April in Johannesburg. The debates, and complexities of the struggle icon are set to continue. But on Saturday, her family and comrades used her funeral to both celebrate her enormous contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle and hit out against those who campaigned against her.


“It is difficult to accept that she is no longer with us,” cried her daughter Zenani Dlamini, “because she was always so strong.” Dlamini struggled to speak before giving a moving speech honouring the example her mother set for women. The crowd, which included former presidents Jacob Zuma, Kgalema Motlanthe and Thabo Mbeki, roared in approval.

Former president Jacob Zuma attends Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s funeral. Photo: Leila Dougan.
“Long before it was fashionable to call for Nelson Mandela’s release from Robben Island it was my mother who kept his memory alive,” she said, thanking the many young women who have pledged solidarity with Madikizela-Mandela since her passing.


“Like her, you show that we can be beautiful, powerful and revolutionary, even as we challenge the lies that have been peddled for so long,” she said, referring to her mother being sidelined by the ANC and much of society for her radicalism.


Apartheid security agents have gone on the record revealing the extent of their propaganda campaign against Madikizela-Mandela. Her supporters have continued to correct claims that she was responsible for the 1989 death of Stompie Seipei. She also faced heavy criticism for her infidelity while married to former President Nelson Mandela, which her daughter said would have been ignored were she a man.

“As each of them disavowed these lies, I had to ask myself – why have they sat on the truth had wait until my mother’s death to tell it?” She warned the “hypocrites” who hid the truth and marginalised her mother. “Don’t think for a minute that we’ve forgotten,” she said. Madikizela-Mandela’s contribution to the struggle must be honoured as we rediscover her history, she added.

ANC supporters made up most of the crowd at the packed Orlando Stadium, but a significant number of EFF supporters attended the funeral. EFF leader Julius Malema, who was close to the political icon, said Stompie’s mother was in the audience as were Madikizela-Mandela’s critics who distanced themselves from her and the actions of her Mandela United Football Club.

EFF leader Julius Malema arrives at the Orlando stadium. Photo: Leila Dougan

“Sell-outs, we see you,” roared Malema. “We mention these instances just to make them aware, we know what they did to you,” he said, claiming her detractors were weeping while failing to acknowledge their actions. Malema said she asked him to return to the ANC but he responded, “But which ANC do we go to?”

President Cyril Ramaphosa apologised that it had taken so long for the ANC to honour Madikizela-Mandela. “I’m sorry mama that we delayed this much,” he said, delivering the eulogy. He said he would request the ANC to confer its highest honour on her.

“As we bid her farewell we are forced to admit that as Mama Winnie rose, she rose alone. Too often we were not there for her as she tried to rise,” he said. Recalling a recent conversation with her daughter Zenani Dlamini, he said she cried when she said her mother had lived a difficult life.

“Zenani’s tears revealed Mama Winnie’s wounds.”

“Mama Winnie’s life was about service, service to her people. It was a life of compassion,” said the president. Speaking on Madikizela-Mandela’s sustained activism while many ANC members were in prison or in exile, he said, “She felt compelled to pick up a spear that had fallen. It was a spear that throughout the darkest moments of our struggle she wielded with great courage.”

Ramaphosa said she defied apartheid ideology and male superiority. “She exposed the lie of apartheid.” He continued, “Yet through everything Mama Winnie endured they could not break her, they could not silence her.”

Responding to Malema, the president said, “The wounds you are talking about are real wounds but today is the time to heal those wounds.” Madikizela-Mandela had wanted him to visit Marikana, the site of the 2012 massacre, with Malema and Ramaphosa said he would go with the young firebrand “to heal the wounds”.

The funeral brought together political foes, the ANC and EFF and the stadium reverberated as they sang in praise of Ma’ Winnie, although most EFF supporters left after Malema’s speech. EFF leaders encouraged their members to act with discipline during the funeral.

EFF supporters join ANC members to pay tribute to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Photo: Leila Dougan

ANC politicians such as Gwede Mantashe, David Makhura, Bathabile Dlamini and Jeff Radebe also addressed the funeral that included performances by Thandiswa Mazwai, Zonke and Sipho “Hotstix” Mabuse. Model Naomi Campbell was a surprise speaker.

Madikizela-Mandela was largely remembered for defiantly standing up to the apartheid government and relentlessly pushing the ANC’s struggle for freedom. She was persecuted by the government and suffered imprisonment, torture and banishment as she was the strongest ANC voice within the country during the struggle.

Grandson Zondwa Mandela spoke of everyday heroes and said her spirit lives on in women who strive to carve out a livelihood. “She was one of us. She was one of you. She was one of the people. She was just a woman who dared to survive.”

Family members, President Cyril Ramaphosa and dignitaries walk beside the casket of the late stalwart, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as it is led out of Orlando stadium. 14 April 2018. Photo: Leila Dougan

Madikizela-Mandela’s coffin left Orlando Stadium accompanied by a military parade for Fourways Memorial Park where she was due to be buried in a private ceremony next to her great-granddaughter Zenani Mandela.

The funeral procession leaves the Orlando Stadium. Photo: Leila Dougan.

Ramaphosa finished on Saturday: “She lives on in all of us. She inspires our actions. She guides our struggles. She remains our conscience. May her soul rest in eternal peace. May her spirit live forever.” DM

Main Photo: The casket carrying the body of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is led out of Orlando stadium as it begins to rain, on 14 April 2018. Photo: Leila Dougan

GREG NICOLSON - I AM DEPRESSED AND EMBARRASSED TO SAY I AM AUSTRALIAN

I am depressed and embarrassed to say I am Australian

• Greg Nicolson
• 16 Mar 2018 (South Africa)
• From Daily Maverick 
• Nicolson left his hometown of Melbourne to move to Johannesburg, beset by fears Australia was going to the dogs. With a camera and a Mac in his bag, he ventures out to cover power and politics, the lives of those included and those excluded. He can be found at the tavern, searching for a good story or drowning a bad one.

Home Affairs Minister Dutton is ready to accept white South African farmers before immigrants from a real war zone like Syria, rejecting doctors and engineers in favour of whites who might be able to till the land. I want to offer complexities, but I can't. The Australian minister is racist and confirmed every South African suspicion about my home country.

There are two common questions people ask when they decode my accent. They take a second and then ask me where I'm from. I pronounce Austraya as “Australia”, but still pronounce aunt as “ant” rather than “aren't”. 
 
“Why did you come here when so many people are trying to go there?” white South Africans often ask after I tell them I'm not from New Zealand or, shudder, England. 
 
“Isn't Australia racist? Didn't you kill all the Aboriginals?” black South Africans sometimes ask. Most people don't care or wait until the third beer before moving on from asking, “So, what do you do?”
 
The first question is easy. I explain how I moved to Johannesburg and stayed for both love and laziness, a love for the city and the partners I've been fortunate enough to meet, and laziness to pack up my apartment and try somewhere else.

The second, on racism, is more difficult. “Yeah,” I grimace.
 
I think of my family and friends in Melbourne and want to discuss the complexities of systemic racism in Australia. I want to mention those I know who are at least welcoming and the few who tirelessly fight for equality.
 
As many times as I want to say “not all of us”, the conclusion is the same. The idea of Australia can't be separated from racism. We preach “a fair go” but far too often think that those who don't conform to the ill-defined and crude myths of what it means to be “Australian” should “go back to where you came from”.
 
When Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton made his comments this week, I thought about Australians at home and abroad. We're law abiding, scared of committing minor crimes, but we grew up with an anti-authority independence, allowing us to travel the world and master planking. But we're not good listeners; we're poor public speakers. Our fragility means we become defensive when challenged and struggle to listen to an opposing argument.
 
Dutton said white South African farmers deserve special attention because of the hardships they face due to farm attacks and land expropriation. His department is investigating fast-tracking humanitarian or other visas to get them to Australia.
 
“If you look at the footage and read the stories, you hear the accounts, it’s a horrific circumstance they face,” he said. “We want people who want to come here, abide by our laws, integrate into our society, work hard, not lead a life on welfare. And I think these people deserve special attention and we’re certainly applying that special attention now.”
 
I want to offer complexities, but I can't. He wants white people. The Australian minister is racist and confirmed every South African suspicion. 
 
“Let them go,” laughed some of my black South African friends after hearing Dutton's comments. In 2016, Statistics SA said 26% of South Africans emigrating from the country moved to Australia, more than the UK, US and New Zealand.
 
Local comedian Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show in the US, has mocked white South Africans fearing political instability. “Every since our first democratic elections in 1994, Nelson Mandela was about to become president, people started panicking,” goes the joke.
 
“There were people, you'd hear them: 'I'm leaving! I'm going to Australia. I'm going. It's been fun, Mary, but it's time to go, hey. It's time to go. They're going to take over now',” Noah says in a white woman's accent, describing what everyone has heard.
 
Most South Africans who moved to Australia were able to because of the money and skills they inherited from apartheid and colonial privileges. For decades, if not centuries, the best properties, jobs and education opportunities were reserved for whites.
 
Some white South Africans have been pushing to be accepted as refugees. There was a petition to allow whites to return to Europe. One South African was accepted as a refugee in Canada, claiming he was persecuted by blacks, before that was revoked. Another family were rejected for spreading “white-supremacist hate literature”. Supposedly, 12 South Africans have received humanitarian visas from Australia in the last five years but it's unclear who and for what.
 
Dutton's comments follow a sustained campaign by white interest groups bluntly trying to convince the world that the murder of white farmers in South Africa amounts to “genocide”. Groups like Afriforum, a powerful and well-funded organisation established to defend the interests of Afrikaners, have for years fought to protect local white interests.
 
I didn't know whether to respond when my cousin posted the article this weekend on Facebook. Is it even worth trying to explain the most complex society I have experienced to people who want to see things in black and white, to those who might have heard the names Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, but have no idea of the debates over their legacies?
 
I have a duty, the South African in me said, post your comment. The Australian said I should shut up, don't rock the boat. In all things discourse, I've learnt to choose the South African side. It's a country divided that has perfected controversial discussion.
The Daily Telegraph, an Australian paper owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, published a horrifying feature detailing attacks on white South African farmers. The piece described assaults, robberies, murders and rapes suffered by farmers.
 
Farmers feel under attack, probably because of their race; their land is about to be expropriated without compensation, and they should be granted asylum in Australia, went the thesis. It provided an insight into the minds of those who closed highways to highlight farm attacks. The piece said more about the farmers and the article's Australian audience than South Africa.
 
Come to Mzansi. There are a few things you learn pretty quickly. The Daily Telegraph's journalist appears to have spent so much time with Afriforum that he didn't notice black people make up the large majority of the population.
 
His article used scary quotes from Julius Malema and Black First, Land First, but didn't feature a single interview from a black South African. Not a farm worker, a black farm owner, a politician. Not one black South African, even though whites only account for 9% of the population here.
 
“The brutality is almost unheard of. There should be a special allowance for people who are the victims of these crimes,” Erns Hattingh, who had moved to Sydney, was quoted as saying.
 
In a country so divided, you also learn that statistics are debatable. The article repeats Afriforum's figures on farm murders as fact, which fact-checking website Africa Check has consistently said are unreliable.
 
Dangerous crime in South Africa is a reality, one that we all live with. In Australia we might talk over a BBQ. In South Africa, a braai.
 
The Australian journalist took statistics cooked over a braai and made them a national topic. There's no factual basis to say white farmers face a higher crime rate than other South Africans. They might be a target for violent crime because they are isolated and are assumed to own guns, but if Australians care about crime here they can read any newspaper, any day, and learn the reality.
 
The unreliable data Australian pundits are using, in fact, includes black people killed on farms. The hack, Paul Toohey, either didn't bother to find out the facts or interview any black farmers or farm workers. He didn't mention whether black South African farmers are going through the same experience, or whether most South Africans according to the stats, should also qualify for humanitarian visas in Australia.
 
The last time Australians really cared about South Africa was during the Oscar Pistorius trial. It was weird to see them lined up, their biases on display. Tragically, such brutal killings happen every day here and white farmers are no exception.
 
Sympathy, for who, for what, we might say. The article mentions the coffin case, where racist white farmers forced a black victim into a coffin and threatened to set it on fire. But it was only cited as a setback for the white movement. Few farm attacks on whites involve a political or racial motive, but a simple Google search will reveal the racially motivated attacks perpetrated by whites on blacks.
 
Why all the focus on the article published by The Daily Telegraph? Days after it was released, a journalist from the same newspaper asked Dutton about white farmers receiving a special deal, or “jumping the queue” as Australians like to say.

 That's when Dutton embraced his racism.
 
“They are following the Zimbabwean path,” said the Liberal Party's Bronwyn Bishop. During colonialism and apartheid whites violently took land from blacks. The democratic government, led by Nelson Mandela, committed to transferring land, still largely owned by whites, to black South Africans. Due to poor policies and failed implementation, the government failed.
 
Parliament recently decided to explore whether the Constitution needs an amendment to allow land expropriation to occur without compensation. A myriad political factors are involved and the issues are still being debated. What's key is that South Africa didn't seek to punish whites or seek reparations after apartheid.
 
Instead, it favoured “reconciliation”. White South Africans still own the majority of the land, the wealth, and on average take the top jobs. Just imagine Australia being controlled by a minority who invaded the country. How would you feel? Try telling Jewish people that the Nazis weren't so bad.
 
Australia's Bishop said Mandela's legacy is dead. Yet Mandela's chosen successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, is now President of the country. Unlike Zimbabwe, South Africa has legitimate elections and no leader has served beyond their mandated term. 

Corruption might be rife, but the country's institutions established to defend democracy have often proved their independence. Otherwise most of my colleagues would be in jail by now.
 
The issues are heated. Black and white South Africans regularly use vulgarities against each other, but the Equality Court calls both to order and takes action against hate speech, against any race.
 
I wonder if my Australian compatriots care or whether they remain in their zero-sum game, both left and right believing they're the champions of the world while taking far fewer refugees than most countries. Germany has survived, despite opening its borders to migrants (read: black migrants), so why can't we?
 
Australia has been condemned by every international agency that matters for outsourcing the processing of asylum seekers to nearby islands dependent on our funding. Dutton is ready to accept white South African farmers before immigrants from a real war zone like Syria, rejecting doctors and engineers in favour of whites who might be able to till the land.
 
What must I answer now? The Liberal Party might be trying to appease a certain demographic, but its stance is clearly racist. Multiple Australian governments have failed to acknowledge what they have done to indigenous nations,
Before trying to give well-off South Africans a pass, Dutton should should try to resolve the inequality between white Australians and those of the First Nations.
 He must take Australia out of its pariah status in the international community and treat asylum seekers with respect.
 
Australia treats black and white migrants differently. I'm going home in the next week with my black South African girlfriend. I'm scared. Will someone shout at her on the street? Where are the white racist elements who recently protested?
 
I feel depressed to say they're with Dutton. Like other white countries around the world, Australia will never embrace “multiculturalism” unless it means conforming to whiteness. This week makes me embarrassed to say I'm Australian.

 DM

Greg Nicolson