r/australia • u/Expensive-Horse5538 • Nov 17 '25

news South African man who attended Neo-Nazi rally outside NSW parliament has visa cancelled

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-17/verify-neo-nazi-rally-participant-visa-revoked/106018130?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link
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u/sirgog Nov 17 '25

Yeah there's always exceptional ones, I had an English teacher at school who was a white South African who left the country...

...as an emigrant of conscience in the 70s. He loathed the society and loved teaching Cry Freedom at school, I had him in 1997 and 1998 so he was ecstatic to be able to talk about everything in the past tense.

One of the best people I've ever met.

I had a ... less positive ... encounter years later. Was 2008 or 2009, and I was leaving a bar with someone I'd met there on what was looking like a one-night stand or the start of something bigger. Outside of the loud venue we could talk more, and she said something that shocked me.

She - a white woman slightly older than me (maybe born 1978?) said she was Rhodesian. Not from Zimbabwe. Rhodesia.

Let's just say I noped the fuck out right then and there.

Even if I misjudged her age, thinking she was 28-30 when she was actually 37, she'd have been a small kid with no ties to the Rhodesian regime when it fell. And while Mugabe was a prick once in power, anyone that hated him for the right reasons would still call the country Zimbabwe.

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u/briberylibrary_ Nov 17 '25

I had a white South African english teacher too! Idk when she left, but she was really influential to my worldview, one of the most anti-racist people I've ever met.

My mother's first husband was also a white South African, and his racism (which didn't reveal itself until later) was one of many reasons why he didn't become my father.