WHITE SQUATTER CAMPS IN THE NEW S.A

1-million of the 3-million Afrikaners destitute, unemployable, homeless -

• Within twelve years of ANC-rule, the top-educated, multilingual, technically-expert Afrikaner nation -- whose Western skills had turned South Africa into the commercial powerhouse of Africa -- are being plunged into stone-age misery and permanent destitution, barred by ANC-laws from the entire labour market only because of the colour of their skin...

Sept 8 2007 Rapport newspaper writes this week: "South Africa's 3-million Afrikaners -- all multilingual people with a high standard Western education and a protestant work ethnic -- are being forced back into the stone-age by the current ANC-regime's laws which bars 'whites' from the labour market.

Rapport newspaper published an extensive survey of the current living conditions of the Afrikaner community -- and has found that one-third of the entire nation's current living conditions now have become just as bad as they had been during the bleak years of the scorched-earth campaigns of the British occupation of the Boer Republics during the Anglo-Boer war which ended in 1902 and the following great Depression -- when the 'poor white' problem in South Africa was even highlighted by an international Red Cross report and funds were sent from overseas to try and raise their living standards.

• The housing crisis for the country's 1-million destitute Afrikaners in fact has now taken on criticial proportions, warns Dr Dawie Theron of the Helping Hand Fund - which is sponsored by contributions from members of the Solidarity Trade Union.

Writes Rapport: "Drive through Danville in the Pretoria district, through the Daspoort tunnel to Booysens, Pretoria-Gardens and Daspoort.
"size of the s are all the same surface, but look over the fences and you see the Wendy Houses, the shacks, and the tents stuffed in behind the main houses where the destitute Afrikaners now live.
And these are only a few examples of how the face of poverty has changed in South Africa. "Poverty touches all South Africans, but not all the poor are necessary only blacks and neither are only the whites rich."

• "In fact a large, new poor white problem - with the identical squatter towns filled with white families also seen just after the Anglo-Boer War and during the Great Depression, when people moved from the countryside to the cities, is developing once again."

"It's no longer unusual to see Afrikaner-whites begging in the streets now -- and according to the youngest official statistics from 2006, there were 900,000 unemployed 'white' people in South Africa last year all living in total destitution and unemployable under the current ANC-laws which bar such 'whites' from the entire labour market.

380,000 of these unemployable Afrikaners were men, and 610,000 were women in 2006. And they are unemployable in spite of high skills and education levels -- only because of the ANC-regime's blacks-only hiring laws for the entire labour market.
In the 2006 survey, some 7,000 Afrikaner families lived in squatter huts or some kind of informal structure such as a tent or a caravan. Some 11,000 to 12,000 Afrikaner families are said to share rooms and living space.

"Three years ago, Prof Lawrence Schlemmer already pointed out that 430,000 of the country's 4,5 million 'white' people where too poor to live in 'traditionally white neighbourhoods' any longer."
Dr Dawie Theron of the Helping Hand Fund of Solidarity Trade Union said the housing crisis for the country's 1-million destitute Afrikaners 'has now taken on critical dimensions'.

• "Moreover, these destitute people's urgent need is being brutally exploited by their fellow whites as just another way to make money," Dr Theron said.

The number of shelters for Afrikaner-destitute familes have soared over the past four years - and not all of them are suitable for human habitation, he warned.


For instance in Daspoort, Pretoria, there is a shelter for the homeless where more than twenty Afrikaners live together on one erf - most rely on a monthly $87 disability pension to survive on.

From this small amount of money they have to hand over more than half to the shelter. Other occupants are elderly pensioners who get about $82 a month.

• These people can afford no more than one meal a day if they are lucky, because most of their income is handed over to the landlord.

De Wet Potgieter, who submitted this report, writes that there, he visited one elderly woman who 'was sitting inside her Wendy House, shivering beneath a duvet in the wintertime. Behind her was a signed poster of the SA country-singer Ken Mullan. On the corner, a man was fixing a bicycle for some extra cash."
"North of Pretoria, there's shelters where 75 people are crowded together on one smallholding for which the retired pensioners have to pay $35 a month and the rest have to work to get food and a shelter.'

"A Church recently installed toilets and a kitchen here. Unprotected power lines hang over the Wendy houses, the shacks and the tents where barefoot Afrikaner children, chickens, pigs and goats all play on the same dirty soil."

"In contrast there's another shelter some kilometres away with decent infrastructure, a clean and neat refuge where the destitute Afrikaners are being empowered by learning new skills." However this is only for men and each have a task each day. Some are taught to cook in a well-equiped 'bush kitchen".

"In one of the buildings, a team sits together, stringing plastic flowers into bunches for the manufacturer of funeral bouquets."
They pay a part of their income thus earned to the shelter. A camp commander was appointed to solve internal problems and maintain disclipline.

Former leprosy colony Wesfort, turned into a squatter camp:
Just beyond Danville, West of Pretoria is the cultural-historical Westfort former leprosy colony, founded i8n 1898.

Since its doors were officially closed in 1997, it was a ghost town until destitutes of all races and ages moved in and made it their own.

Over the past few months, more than 1,250 families - some with nine children - have poured into Wesfort. Some 300 of these are children who attend the local Danville school.They even use the bathtubs, covered with planks, as beds.

In the now ironically-named Pretoria Gardens suburb, there's a prime example of how destitute people are being abused by ruthless 'land barons'

The seven-roomed house is rented out at the rate of R1,800 a month per room - including utility costs. Thus the owner earns about R12,600 a month from the misery of destitute Afrikaners.

• Even the garage behind the house has been turned into a living space for two families with four children which has to pay a monthly R1,800 each just to live there.

• Even the old outside toilets have been turned into living spaces - in those small rooms, there are five men and an elderly woman, each paying R450 a month...

• In the very back of the erf, there are three tiny shacks, each containing a tiny kitchen, bathroom and bedroom - one just the size of a standard single-car garage.

• The rental for each of these three shacks is R1,800 each. And next to these three shacks, there's a garden-enclosure made of reeds in which a human being lives for R1,800 a month.

These are just a few examples of the destitution in which Afrikaners are now finding themselves countrywide.And these are people who are educated and multi-lingual, with often very high skills levels. Many are unemployable artisans, teachers and nurses -- all working-class Afrikaners whose job skills are being deliberately rejected by the ANC-regime only because of their ethnic-background.

Most of these people are too scared to complain about their plight. And it's also clear that the present-day government would not intervene in trying to solve the poor-white question as the previous government had done, Potgieter writes.
"Communities will have to get involved much more in providing aid to these fellow-Afrikaners and to try and raise them out of this poverty.

"We can't just look away and say 'it 's not our problem'," he concludes.

Research by De Wet Potgieter, news editor of Solidarity's communication department.

http://www.news24.com/Rapport/Nuus/0...179682,00.html

Helping Hand Fund, Solidarity Trade Union:
corner of Eendracht and D F Malan Streets
Kloofsig, Centurion
email: helpendehand@solidariteit.co.za
Telephone: 0861 25 24 23