After overcoming their shock at the Canadian decision to give refugee status to a 31-year-old white man who claimed to be “persecuted” by black criminals, South Africans have quickly recovered their sense of the absurd.
South Africans are among the world’s funniest, most irreverent, scathing and acerbic commentators on daily events – equalled perhaps only by the Russians who joked their way through the dying decades of the Soviet Union. And they’ve switched on their highly tuned sense of the surreal to find some kind of meaning in the Brandon Huntley decision .
Mr. Huntley, as most readers know by now , is the white South African who managed to persuade a Canadian refugee board member to award him refugee status in Canada on the grounds that he would “stand out like a sore thumb” if he was forced to return to his homeland. He claimed that he was “persecuted” by black muggers and robbers who attacked him merely because of his skin colour.
South Africans were outraged at first, but soon they appreciated the ridiculousness of it all. Their reactions now are veering toward the droll and satiric.
One newspaper, the Mail & Guardian, suggested that the Canadian official who made the refugee decision would be a perfect sucker for a Nigerian email scam. The newspaper promised him a $1-million award for his “brave decision” in the Huntley case, and added: “As soon as you send a $50,000 (US) handling fee, the money will be transferred to your account.”
The newspaper also praised Mr. Huntley for his “dofness” – a South African term that remains obscure to me, but apparently is the perfect description of Mr. Huntley’s attitude towards life. “This is a man who is so damned lazy he couldn’t be bothered to report to police the seven vicious attacks on his person,” the newspaper said. “Respect.”
South African cartoonists have had a field day with Mr. Huntley and the Canadian refugee decision. Lumberjacks and Mounties have figured prominently in their satires of wooly-headed Canadian thinking.
Canada and Mr. Huntley even made a surprise appearance in “Madam and Eve,” the most popular cartoon strip in South Africa, revolving around the adventures of a typical white South Africa housewife and her black “domestic” (i.e., her maid). In the latest episode, Eve’s fearless 8-year-old cousin Thandi suggests that the housewife’s elderly mother should take a hint from the Huntley case and seek refugee status in Britain to escape the torment of having a maid who brings her chilled gin-and-tonics every day at 5 p.m.
But it is South Africa’s satirical news website, hayibo.com, that has enjoyed the most sport with the Huntley case .
“Survivors of the genocide in Darfur have issued a formal apology for overstating their case, saying they were forced to reassess the extent of their plight once confronted with the terrible story of South African refugee Brandon Huntley” the website reported in its mock coverage of the case.
“Sudanese refugee Abdul Wardi . said he could only imagine how tough things must have been for Hartley. ‘He spent a whole winter living in a basement in Ottawa. Could anything be worse?’”
