lolent crime has grip
on South African society

WHAT STRIKES the
visitor who returns to South
Africa after a five-year
absence is the increase in
violent crime.

The easing of aparth2id shouid
have brought less, not more. But
that is not so.

Nearly all white housebolds
have bars on the windows and
subscribe to private security
systems. And fear of an even
more violent future was a factor
in the anti-apartheid referendum.

Motorists of all colors travel
with the doors locked and are
nervous when they stop at traffic
lights, especially at night.

By coincidence or not, ihe situ-
ation began to change for the
worse two years ago, when liber-
alization began.

Hundreds of so-called political
prisoners have been released, most
of whom had been schooled in vi-
olence.

The black proletariat smells
power, and the commu-
nist-dominated African National
Congress is now stuck with the
militancy it fostered, whether it
wants it or rot.

Large-scale unemployment is
also a factor. The South African
recession is worse than ours, in-
flation is running at 16%, and
whites are turning to farm labor
and other work formerly done by
blacks. Sanctions haven’: helped,
either.

Meanwhile, just like Lenin, our
stars-in-their-eyes clergy and our
even sillier media seem to believe
that worse is better. Hence theit
support for continuing sanctions
even while the rest of the world is
dropping them.

Violence is not confined to the
black townships, where Zulus and
Xhosas are fighting a race war.
Daity, there are stories about
black burglars needlessly killing
old and defenceless whites. Bars
on the windows? No problez.
They get in through the roofs.

It is reminiscent of the bush-
war tactics favored by terrorists in
Rhodesia, especially in the rural
areas,

Awhite pensioner was robbed
in his home, shot several times
and then taken into the woods
and burned. When tried, his
killers gave the black power
salute.

it is possible to paint too dark a

Doug
Gollins

aut
ON THE OT

picture, so let me put this in
Perspective. You could be in the
country :or vears and never be af-
fected by any of this, just as you
can visit the U.K. and never hear
an IRA bomb go off.

In over a month on the tourist
route, we never saw one viclent
incident. And all the whites we
spoke to were optimistic about the
future.

(Grey Eyes did have her hand-
bag snipped off her shoulder in
Johannesburg without even know-
ing about it. But that could have
happencd anywhere.)

There are restrictions on
weapons, but a white South Afri-
can told me he could buy an
AK47 any time he wanted one.

He also told me that ‘the
pluses in South Africa stili
outweigh the minuses.’’ But there
is a big difference between what
was and what is.

A race relations survey claimed
that the increase in crime has
seriously increased the risk of
large-scale emigration of white
skills.

In one three-month period in
Durban alone, 268 vehicles were
hijacked, 220 of them at gun-
point.

In the country as a whole,
stated the South African chief of
police, burglaries had been taking
place at the rate of 25 an hour.

tn 1990, 20,000 women were
raped, 95% of them black. By
other blacks.

From the beginning of the year
to the end of March, 46 policemen
were killed.

Voyageurs Canada °92
exchange program set
125 NV youths to visit Ottawa

THE FEDERAL North:

Vancouver riding has been
twinned with the riding of
Ottawa-Centre for the
Voyageurs Canada ’92
youth exchange program,
North Vancouver MP
Chuck Cook recently an-
nounced.

Voyageurs Canada 92 is the larg-
est youth exchange program in
Canadian history.

“The program will provide an
opportunity for up to 125 youths
from North Vancouver to visit the
nation’s capital,” said Cook. “I
think it’s a terrific program which
will do a loz to build under-
standing between different regions
of the country.””

The Voyageurs Canada °92 ini-
tiative is a joint program between
the Department of the Secretary
of State and Canada’s 295
members of Parliament in part-
nership with Air Canada.

It will give youth from North
Vancouver the opportunity to
travel free to Ottawa and learn
more about the city and its citi-
zens.

The program is open to Cana-
dian citizens and landed im-
migrants between the ages of 16
and 21 as of July 1, 1992.

Applications can be picked up
from Cook’s office at 7-117 East
ISth St., North Vancouver, and
must be returned to Cook’s office
no later than midnight May 8.

For more information call
Cook’s office at 980-6781.

As the poet Tennyson put it,
authority forgets a dying king.

Violence in the townships is far
worse than any Sharpeville, of
which the world has heard so
much. In three weeks, 217 blacks
died in ‘‘unrest-related incidents,”
21 of them in a single weekend.

“God is shaking his head,”*
lamented a police office when a
colleague was assaulted, then
thrown on top of his car and
burned.

South Africans are getting used
to it. The 21 deaths rated page
three in a Johannesburg newspa-
per. The story on page one was
South Africa’s great showing in
World Cup cricket.

As for Nelson Mandela, Joe
Clark’s hero, three days after
South African whites voted for
change, he said he would destroy
the country’s economy unless food
taxes were removed.

That's black-style statesmanship
for you.

The infamous Winnie, the
Madame DeFarge of Black South
Africa, was in favor of ‘‘necklac-
ing’? — the comrades’ barbaric
policy of death by fire for dissi-
dents and even for children who
went to school against ANC
orders.

She should have been tried for
murder in the Stompic affair but
instead got six years for assault
and has yet to see the inside of a
jail.

Now she is said to have arrang-
ed the death of a doctor who
could have given evidence against
her.

Do our liberals worry about
such things? Of course not. They
belong to the Jane Funds school
of thought and their standard of
morality is reserved for whites.

Conor Cruise O'Brien has his
doubts, though. The great Irish
journalist made news while we
were there by announcing that a
South Africa run by the ANC
would be ‘‘an awfu! place.”’ He
therefore quit the Anti-Apartheid
Movement, which is an ANC lap-
dog both there and in Canada.

He should have a word with
those clever types in Ottawa who
are waiting for Mandela to say it’s
OK for them to lift the remaining
sanctions.

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