Poor Whites - how many are in internal refugee camps and informal shacks or living rough in South Africa?

Poor Whites - how many are in squatter camps and informal shacks in South Africa? ------------ The South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) said in a press release on 12-11-2009 that 'since 1996, the proportion of Whites moving into informal dwellings has grown the fastest of all population groups. Whites are a minority of less than 3-million, blacks number 40-million. Thus it’s also logical that black shackdwellers outnumber White, mostly Afrikaners shackdwellers by about 300 to one. These statistics appear in this year's edition of the South African Survey, published by the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR). The press release originally appeared on: http://www.sairr.org.za/press-office/press-releases/survey-8-press-release-12-11-2009-2.pdf but is no longer available on their site. The South African Surveys of the SAIRR can be downloaded from: http://irr.org.za/reports-and-publications/south-africa-survey The Facebook page of SAIIR: https://www.facebook.com/pages/South-African-Institute-of-Race-Relations/86579745433 In the period under review (2008/9) , the number of White households living in informal dwellings rose by 197%; Indians households registered growth of 92%; the number of White households living in open-space shacks grew by 309% while those moving into backyard shacks rose by 101%. For Indians the corresponding figures were 100% and 81%. This confirms the 2008 countrywide census by the Helping Hand charity of Solidarity trade union, which found that more than 800,000 Afrikaners were living in ‘informal housing’ by that year in about 102 squatter camps and backyard-settlements at that time. The often shocking photographs of the camps and its dwellers were taken by a well-known South African photographer. -- In contrast, the number of black households residing in informal dwellings grew by a relatively low 25%, albeit from figures of 1,386 637 to 1,732,604 in the period under review. For coloured households, the increase was from 57,582 to 62,365, or by 8%. -- The SAIRR report notes that overall, “there was a significantly higher growth in the number of Afrikaner (they refer to this ethnic minority as a generic ‘White’ group) households residing in backyard shacks (46%) as opposed to those who erected their structures in open spaces (16%) between 1996 and 2007. This might be an attempt in some instances to ‘circumvent eviction laws’, the SAIRR writes. -- In the case of the Indian and ‘White’ populations they experienced more growth in open-space shacks than in backyard informal dwellings mainly because this former home-owning class now are losing their properties. http://irr.org.za/reports-and-publications/south-africa-survey/south-africa-survey-online-2008-2009/demographics-1 Kerwin Lebone, a researcher at the Institute, said there seem to be different motivations for the different population groups to move into informal dwellings. For the Indian and ‘White’ population groups, Lebone said, the loss of jobs, income and subsequently their homes are the primary impetus for moving into shacks. "There are few documented cases where Africans [blacks] inhabit shacks because they have lost their homes," said Lebone. "For the majority of Africans informal settlements represent a cost-effective manner of breaking into the economic mainstream." In general, blacks seemed to migrate from rural areas, where the prospects of employment were bleak, to areas that could offer economic advancement. [meaning that the niggers move closer to White areas where they can beg for money, that failing ... rob Whites] -- There is a puzzling disparity between these two SAIRR reports: -- The same institute reports (a) that ‘Whites represent the highest-income group in the country’ : "Press Statement- "Disparities in wealth continue to plague South Africa - 23rd November 2009 -- but they also report (b) that ‘Whites’ (which we know are primarily Afrikaners) are moving into squatter shacks at a much more rapid rate than do blacks, Indians and coloureds. http://www.sairr.org.za/press-office/press-releases/survey-8-press-release-12-11-2009-2.pdf The main reason for this growing 'white poverty' according to Anthea Jeffery of the SAIIR are the black-economic-empowerment laws. -- Details of the rise of this poor white class can be found in her book: "BEE: Helping or Hurting". https://www.facebook.com/86579745433/photos/a.10150700503615434.712798.86579745433/10154678893550434/?type=1&theater --- BEE law amendment: the ANC's propaganda to justify these racist laws: http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=670735&sn=Marketingweb+detail&pid=90389&utm_source=Politicsweb+Daily+Headlines&utm_campaign=745c3f4bd9-DHN_Aug_6_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a86f25db99-745c3f4bd9-130065669F-- Journalist Finnbar O'Reilly photographed and described poor whites in Krugersdorp -- -- article"Return of the 'poor white' problem 28 March 2010 - http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71627?oid=168336&sn=Detail -------------- However -- clearly there are two kinds of ‘Whites” as there have always been, also during 'apartheid' namely – the Afrikaner working- and middle-class, who now are proportionally becoming poorer the fastests and moving into marginal land-sites and ‘informal housing’ faster than any other population group. And then there are those ‘other Whites,’ the English-speaking liberals who are supported by big-business enterprises and indeed still earn the highest incomes in the country. But the SAIRR does not differentiate by ethnic-identification – it’s politically not correct – so the real facts about Afrikaner poverty remain hidden behind inaccurate and confusing research reports. Only by perusing the reports from Helping Hand, the charity run by Solidarity trade union can one ascertain the true facts. Helping Hand: tel (27) 0861 25 24 23 diens@helpendehand.co.za ExpatCares: donations from expats to Helping hand charity: http://expatcares.com/ In 2014, Helping Hand ran more than 1,300 projects to help needy poor whites and these are expanding. In other words, the poverty amongst whites is growing. They currently have 30,000 donors and supporters making them the biggest charity in South Africa to help poor-whites specifically. One of their projects was to provide more than R2million's worth of emergency loans from April to June last year to non-striking (white) platinum-miners which brought the Rustenburg area to its knees and caused massive poverty. Even a well-known muslim charity provided emergency food-aids to these white mineworkers. They provided more than R16,6million's worth of bursaries to 948 white and coloured students. In 2014 Helping Hand also fed a daily 4,000 toddlers through its "Kosblikkie' project and provided training to some 1,000 parents and teachers through this project. They also bought schoolbags and educational materials for 4,600 poor white and coloured Afrikaans-speaking children and provided psychometric testing and educational training to more than 100 children. The policy of Helping Hand is to educate the poor so that they can help themselves. But they also provide food-aid to poor-white squatters and especially the poor white and coloured elderly Afrikaans-speakers - and have a list of all the camps and small backyard settlements of poor whites they are made aware of. -- Solidarity: Contact numbers: Tel.: (27) 012 644 4300 0861 25 24 23 https://solidariteit.co.za/en/ There are dozens of other charities and individuals who try and find help for empoverished whites on facebook too. Each provide details of the camps under their control: such as for instance Afrikaans singer Sunette Bridges' Kleinfontein agricultural smallholding where families are housed and the purpose is to re-educate 'unemployable' white people. She only recently incorporated 80 of the 300 poor whites who were forcibly removed from the 19-year-old Coronation Park squatter camp in Krugersdorp by the local authorities at Kleinfontein which is near Pretoria. These 80 people included a great many children and frail elderly who are now being housed in large army tents while brick dwellings are being built for them. --- ( Urgent plea for food-aid from Afrikaner squatters who were forcibly removed to Munsieville garbage dump: Afrikaner squatter Faan de Jager -- who was forcibly removed by the ANC-regime with his elderly parents to the Munsieville garbage dump from their long-time camp at Kroningspark in Krugersdorp -- has issued an urgent plea for food and help: Nov 24 2014: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=588705757942822&set=o.116298045063416&type=1&theater ) ===================== Return of the 'poor white' problem Finbarr O'Reilly 28 March 2010 Finbarr O'Reilly on the 450,000 white South Africans living below poverty line KRUGERSDORP (Reuters) - Sitting in a deck chair at a white South African squatter camp, Ann le Roux, 60, holds a yellowing photo from her daughter's wedding day. Taken not long after Nelson Mandela became the country's first black president in 1994, it shows Le Roux standing with her Afrikaans husband and their daughter outside their home in Melville, an upmarket Johannesburg neighbourhood. Sixteen years later, she lives in a caravan and a tent shared with seven other people, including her daughter and four grandchildren, at a squatter camp for poor white South Africans. She is one of a growing number of whites living below the poverty line in South Africa who blame affirmative action and the ANC-led elected government for their plight. Le Roux had to sell her house after her husband died and she lost her job as a secretary at the city planning council -- where she had worked for 26 years -- after she took time off work to recover from the loss of her husband. "They wouldn't take me back because of the political situation," she says, looking down at the fading photo."Our colour here is not the right colour now in South Africa," Le Roux says, echoing the complaint of many impoverished whites, mostly Afrikaners who are descendants of early Dutch and French settlers. While most white South Africans still enjoy lives of privilege and relative wealth, the number of poor whites has risen steadily over the past 15 years. White unemployment nearly doubled between 1995 and 2005, according to the country's Institute for Security Studies. Hard times Seeking to reverse decades of racial inequality, the ruling ANC government introduced affirmative action laws that promote employment for blacks and aim to give black South Africans a bigger slice of the economy. This shift in racial hiring practices coupled with the fallout from the global financial crisis means many poor white South Africans have fallen on hard times. At least 450,000 white South Africans, 10 percent of the total white population, live below the poverty line and 100,000 are struggling just to survive, according to civil organisations and largely white trade union Solidarity. South Africa's population is about 50 million. Many poor whites have ended up in places like Coronation Park, in Krugersdorp west of Johannesburg, a leafy former caravan site beside a water reservoir and a public picnic park frequented by middle-class families at weekends. Ringed by yellow-brown hills of earth dug up by generations of gold miners, the park was used by the British as a concentration camp for Afrikaners during the Anglo-Boer war at the start of the 20th century. Now it's home to some 400 white squatters living in cramped tents and caravans and sharing a single ablution block. Cats and dogs roam noisily through the camp, dodging heaps of rubbish, piles of scrap metal and abandoned car parts. Water is heated and food cooked on open camp fires. The local council cut electricity to the camp after failing to evict the white squatters. The council wanted to develop the area into a wide screen viewing area for soccer matches ahead of the soccer World Cup, which South Africa hosts in June and July. Some residents, including three black South Africans, have lived there for years. Others arrived in recent weeks. "If you're out of work and you haven't got money, where must you go to? No one wants to help you -- this is the only place to go to," says Dennis Boshoff, 38. Zuma shocked South African President Jacob Zuma visited a white squatter camp near the capital Pretoria last year ahead of his election, saying he was "shocked and surprised"."The vast number in black poverty does not mean we must ignore white poverty, which is becoming an embarrassment to talk about," Zuma said at the time. White poverty in South Africa is a politically sensitive subject that gets little attention, but it is not new. Under apartheid, introduced in 1948, whites enjoyed vast protection and sheltered employment. The weakest and least educated whites were protected by the civil service and state-owned industries operating as job-creation schemes, guaranteeing even the poorest whites a home and livelihood. But with that economic safety net now gone, South Africa's unskilled whites find themselves on the wrong side of history, gaining little sympathy from those who perceive them as having profited unfairly during the brutal apartheid years. Strangely, after reporting in 2008 from its own survey that they had found 800,000 white squatters living in about 106 settlements countrywide, two years later the trade union Solidarity was quoted as saying that 'there are around 430,000 whites who live in squatter camps around the capital Pretoria alone there are 80 squatter settlements." There are over 2,000 much larger black squatter camps across South Africa. Formerly comfortable Afrikaners recently forced to live on the fringes of society see themselves as victims of "reverse-apartheid" that they say puts them at an even greater disadvantage than the millions of poor black South Africans."Blacks get more than whites. They're being pulled forward against us. That's why all of us are here. It's very unfair because they told us it was going to be equal, but it's not equal," said Boshoff. This feeling of victimisation and abandonment by the state has forged at the camp a collective sense of fatalism, isolation and firm reliance on their Calvinist religion. Each of the camp's ramshackle huts and tents is adorned with religious paraphernalia and an Afrikaans language bible. Many poor white communities also struggle with alcoholism, violence and abuse but at Coronation Park, social problems have declined. "We kicked a lot of the worst ones out and the fighting and violence has gone down," said Hugo Van Niekerk, who has managed the camp over the past few years. Van Niekerk, who solicits donations and helps community members find odd jobs, successfully fought an eviction order last year from the local municipality but he expects little help from the council or government on housing."We won't get houses from this government. If we were black maybe yes, but we are white." (Follow up) In 2014, the local city council obtained a court-order and forcibly removed these white Afrikaners and their children from their homes of 19 years and bulldozed their huts. http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71627?oid=168336&sn=Detail