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SYDNEY - Australia's treatment of Aborigines has been criticised by a South African government minister, who says white people in this county are "still law".
Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota has questioned why people in South Africa continue to emigrate to Australia, in response to a letter written by Vi Rathbone, the grandmother of Wallaby star Clyde Rathbone, who came to live here in 2002.
Ms Rathbone wrote that she emigrated to Australia after a close relative was attacked in South Africa.
But Mr Lekota has told The Cape Times newspaper he wondered if her move was motivated by the fact that, unlike in South Africa, "white people were still law" in Australia.
He said that while in the past black people in both countries had been denied rights and were treated as non-citizens.
And while Aborigines may have rights on paper, they still did not enjoy the full benefits of being citizens.
"Until 1967, Aboriginal Australians were not counted when the census was done," he told The Cape News.
"They were not counted, like kangaroos were not counted.
"They were put up in those Aboriginal reserves, in the same way we were shepherded into the so-called bantustans and homelands."
Mr Lekota said that today in South Africa black people enjoyed full political rights alongside white South Africans.
But in Australia, he said, "Aboriginal Australians remain trapped in the poverty of those reserves" and were not in government.
- AAP
