Brazilian’s bid ‘to save SA whites’

Published May 26, 2015

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Cape Town - The man behind a controversial, but popular, petition calling on the European Commission to allow South African whites to “return” to the continent, considers himself a Good Samaritan helping to save them from “total ethnic cleansing”.

Support for the campaign skyrocketed over this weekend, starting with a handful of signatures on Friday. But early on Tuesday, the petition on Change.org had 24 156 signatures, just 844 shy of its target.

And in an interesting twist, the man spearheading the campaign has no roots in South Africa. Rodrigo Herhaus de Campos, lives in Joinville, the largest city in Santa Catarina State in Brazil.

When approached by the Cape Argus on social media, the network engineer and coder was initially hesitant to speak.

However, when asked why he had chosen to help South African whites he said: “I just thought I could help white South Africans avoid total ethnic cleansing and the right to return (to Europe) could be a way to solve this issue.

“I’m against the actual racist laws in SA,” referring primarily to equal employment hiring practices, “that provide special state privileges to blacks in detriment to white people”.

His views are outlined on his petition page, where he begins with a foreboding message that South African whites currently face “ethnic cleansing and persecutions at the hands of the ANC government, Economic Freedom Fighters, and various individual anti-white aggressors”.

To support this, he claims that over 4 000 white farmers have been brutally murdered since 1994. It’s a similar statistic to one repeated by Afrikaans musician Steve Hofmeyr during his protests against the “oppression” and “slaughter” of white people in 2013.

But these statistics were later debunked by Africacheck after the website consulted with the Institute of Security Studies and police crime statistics to dissect Hofmeyr’s claims. The report found that white people only represented 1.8 percent of murder victims and there were nowhere near to 4 000 farm murder victims in that period. The report also concluded that white people were far less likely to be murdered than any other race.

However, the dubious statistics have not stopped people signing the petition.

“My life and the lives of my children are at risk daily. We love SA but are no longer welcome here in the country our ancestors built.

“We have no option but to ask for your help,” wrote Capetonian Susan Mulder, who signed the petition on Friday.

 

Whether 25 000 signatures will make a difference remains to be seen. But, a local political party has already stepped up to become a local liaison for the campaign.

Front Nasionaal Suid Afrika, which was founded to represent the people of European descent living in South Africa, posted on its page that it was supporting the petition.

The party’s youth wing leader, Dean Dart, said: “We have agreed to liaise and support the petition in regards to creating awareness of the fact that people of European descent are living under a government which does indeed discriminate along lines of race.”

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Cape Argus

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