SA expats flock to BNP

Recruitment to the far-right British National Party (BNP) is rife among South African expatriates to the UK, according to a report by anti-fascist magazine Searchlight.  White southern Africans, some with a history of hate crime, are prominent members and large contributors to the BNP. With the far-right movement seemingly dormant in South Africa, most of those involved are more able to thrive with organisations abroad that largely share their views. The BNP, however, are hopeful of winning seats in the upcoming European elections for the West Midlands and North West regions of England because of the economic crisis, low voter turnout and the ongoing expenses row in England shattering confidence in both the Labour and Conservative parties.

Arthur Kemp, a Holocaust denier linked to the murder of ANC leader Chris Hani in 1993, is the most prominent South African in the BNP’s ranks, running the party’s website and spotted last week handling their campaign leaflets for the June 4 elections. A number of expatriates, however, such as Kemp and Lambertus Nieuwhof, who received a suspended sentence for his part in the blowing up of a mixed-race school in 1992, are now British citizens. Marius Roodt, a researcher at the South African Institute of Race Relations, said that although people like Kemp held abhorrent views they had the right to say what they thought and it was the BNP’s right to employ who they liked. “As much as we may not like it, these people have the right to work for whoever would have them.”

Of major interest to the BNP are wealthy South African business people and well-paid financial services professionals, especially in light of a leaked memo from their leader Nick Griffin, which states the party is ?90 000 (R1.1 million) short of its ?390 000 campaign fund raising target.

Neil McAllister, another South African BNP activist who lives in Surrey, frequently recruits for the party and passed Kemp names of South African businesses to contact as potential financial backers.

There also seems to be a keen recruitment drive for younger people without chequered pasts or direct links to apartheid such as Rachel Hill, a 24-year-old English woman who grew up in South Africa after her parents emigrated. After leaving school in Pretoria she returned to the UK and joined the BNP two years ago.

A spokesperson for the UK’s Home Office said that even if a person had known links to far-right extremism in other countries the Home Office could not make a blanket statement on who it would and would not let in the country or monitor what they did once in the UK, rather it would have to be taken on an individual basis.

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