“In 2008, South African Brandon Huntley was given refugee status in Canada by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB). The unprecedented decision, based on Huntley’s claim that as a white South African he was the victim of racial persecution in South Africa, caused a firestorm. Interest in the case was particularly intense in South Africa itself where the decision was derided in the media and the South African government lodged a formal protest with the Canadian government. This paper argues that to attribute the Kaplan view purely to the negative personal experiences of the Kaplan family in South Africa is to take too narrow an interpretation. The central elements of the Kaplan view are not unique to the Kaplan family but are produced and reproduced by the white South African diaspora in Canada more generally. The evidence for this assertion comes from a survey of 1,485 South African immigrants in Canada conducted by SAMP in 2010, some 80% of whom had left South Africa after 1990.”
