SOUTH: AFRICA .
1 ' Resettlement " Generates Anger, Despair
8AT..CCTC2E31,1S31 THE 111$ 17
AN Some JO0 persons?; part of a
. group of POO squatters expelled from
' Orw Towi and sent toheir assigned
t Aiic 'homeland', the Transkei, in
. August, returned last week in.de-
fiance of government regulations. In
cluding the latest returnees, an
: estimated 750 of those recently
relocated from South Africa's second
(Jargestcity have by now made. the)
v 1600-mile round trip back in search
. of Ipst jobs, ch ildren aid h usbands. :
And the South Africa Council of
, Churches a devoted, the months of
. August to prayer, reflection, andac
, tion on the resettlement issue: Bishop
Desmond Tutu, the council's general
secretary, called resettlement ' "in
stitutionalized violence. . .. which
., deliberately, not acidentally, destroys
black family life." v
"We don't enjoy moving people, " -Minister
:pf - Cooperation and
Development Piet r Koornhof :.
countered . pi the Financial Mail
(Johannesburg) Hast month. But the
actions are '"development oriented,"
he argued, and necessary "because
people want to be with their own peo
ple." : ,v,,,a'- .
Former. Washington Star reporter
Kenneth R. Walker, now reporting
for ABC News, yisited several South
African resettlement areas during a
trip sponsored by a Ford Foundation
grant. The Star, which published his
five-part series just before it ceased
operations in August, identified
Walker as "one of the few black
American reporters recently allowed
in South Africa." The following arti
" cle is reprinted from The Washington
. Star, August 3, 1981, copyright
reserved. v
QWA QWA A, South1 Africa
"Here is where we die ' said the ag
ing, leathery-faced black woman,
who found herself in this relocation
camp after a series of evictions forced
by South Africa's policy of apar
theid. MThere is no place else."
It took four changes of address for
Mphala who thinks she must be 65
but is not sure -- to reach the camp.
It is located in a near-desert
wasteland, about three hours by car
from Johannesburg, shielded from
outsiders by its remote location and
marked off by barbed-wire fence.
Descendant of only native South
Africans so far as she knows, Mphala
is here because the government insists
she is a foreigner in the 87 of South
African territory that has been
designated for whites only.
The resettlement camp, theoretical
ly, is- a way station. Ultimately, the
.government says, blacks, who Out
number whites in this country by
more than four . to. one, will be
grouped info ten so-called indepen-i
dent states tribal reservatl'pnsbx
thcirortgthaT JeriitattiOMupV
uig me worst irt ot South-Africa's
land. ,
Meanwhile, an estimated twenty
families a day on the average, 140
persons are sent to resettlement
camps, according to the Black Sash, a
private relief group of 'anti
government white women. Some
camps, only a few years old, have
mushroomed to contain hundreds of
thousands of blacks.
Officially, the resettlement areas
are off-limits, even to South African
journalists. But with the help of a
number of South Africans, including
clergy, relief workers and relatives of?
camp dwellers, it was possible to visiT"
Qwa Qwa A ami several other camps
during a recent two-month trip
through South Africa.
In some of them, the principal
dwellings were canvas ! tents, "in
others, they were shacks built of tin, .
cardboard, or discarded crates. Ex-
ccpt that there are no soup lines in
resettlement camps, many strongly
resemble 'Resurrection City, the
squatter camp- erected in the
Washington,-D.C. Mall in 1968 by .
poor American protesters.
Most of the camps lie in vast, arid
and rocky fields, although some ad
join scenic, arable land used to grow
food for distant markets. They are
, reacned only, by following tortuous,
unpaved paths far from normal traf-
Each site is marked by long lines of
water seekers, either at the rare func
tional tapxw in anticipation of the in-
frequent visits of a water truck.
Very young children, often naked
' and with bloated stomachs, and near
r ly always cowering behind the skirts
of old women, are the most promi
nent inhabitants of Qwa Qwa A and
most other resettlement camps.
More than a third of the infants in
these camps die before their first bir
thday, according to the South
African Council of Churches. At
Qwa Qwa A, the infant burial ground
is a vast field with small mounds of
earth all around and with remnants of
dolls, other toys and eating utensils
strewn Tabout.
A stranger appearing in a camp is
nearly always greeted by old women
begging for food. They say virtually
all able-bodied persons have simply
walked away illegally in search of
jobs and sustenance illegally
because blacks in South Africa are
barred by law from simply changing
residence at will, they also are forbid
den to seek employment without a
'pass book,' the identity document
without which an African in South
Africa has no legal existence.
For Mphala, a one-room cor
rugated tin shack in Qwa Qwa A is
the latest of her four homes.
She was born in a hut on a white
farm in the northern Transvaal, one
of the five provinces into which South
Africa is divided. Her ancestors had
been there ever since members of her '
ethnic group, the Ndebeles, were
divided among the Afrikaner farmers
after being defeated in the great 19th
century tattle-raiding wars, she said
through an interpreter. T
Mphalaiurned her face to the high
sun ajnd squinted quizzically when
asked to explain the government's
population, relocation policy. "If you
mean why we must move, I don't
know," she said. "I know only that
we live four places, choose none.
Family was eight, now four." .
The four included th - i nfonr
;randchildren. She agreed to talk on-
"The children are hunnrv .V H c5rf
more as an observation than a plea.
The wandering began, Mphala
said, when her family was evicted
from her ancestral home after the
farmer, like so many Others since
mechanization and terrorism made
black tenants expensive and risky,
simply locked the gates one day.
"We go first to nearby farm where
we have family," said the old
woman, hands clasped behind her
while tracing her bare but unmarked
feet in the parched brown dirt.
"Then, boss on that farm say, 'Men
can stay to work, women and small
ones must go.'"
Her two sons and a son-in-law
stayed to work. She walked to the
main road and hitched a ride on a
truck to a town, in Bophuthatswana,
one of the 'homelands' into which
.t . -v. , ,
p blacks are being impressed:
. i But the Tswana homeland chiefs
v.aia not want members of other tribes
in their midst, so the family moyed
again. Eventually they wound , -up
here, by order of the government.
.. The wOmen v occupy themselves
-either by standing in water lines or
weatherproofing their shacks when
they have them with a mixture of
, mud and dung.- "Or we just sit,"
Mphala said, . ."
Women in Qwa Qwa A eagerly of
fered beaded heirlooms, such as fer
tility dolls, wedding mats and aprons
-v , handed down for generations, in ex
change for money for food.
The unique Ndebele artifacts had
not been available commercially until
recently, but with the growth of the
resettlement camps, the artifacts- have
begun to find their way into chic
Johannesburg art boutiques. v
The herding of . blacks into rural
reservations goes back nearly to the
beginning of the beginning of the cur
rent century, but it has been only in
the past twenty years that the pro
gram has shifted into high gear.
The 1913 laws creating the reserva
tions were mainly intended to
segregate the Africans and to ensure a
. supply of cheap labor, , but the
political ascendacy of the Afrikaners'
.National Party in 1948 made the
removal of blacks from the white
areas a political imperative.
Ultimately, there would be no
black. South Africans, declared apar
theid theorist and then Prime
Minister Hendrick Verwoerd, Na
tional Party leader from 1958-66.
Faced with an exploding black
population and rising complaints"
from whites seeking protection for
their economic privileges, Verwoerd
looked to the reservations for his
solution. The blacks would be moved
to the reservations renamed
"homelands" 'and destined to
v become "independent states." All
that remained would be the
"repatriation" of .all the Africans to
their new nations.
Black laborers, of course, would
continue "to service the white
economy," Verwoerd declared, But
they would be only "sojourners"
foreign guest workers of a sort
with no South African political rights
whatsoever.
Enforcing Verwoerd's mandate has
cost more than two million blacks
their homes, according to data com
piled by churches, relief groups and
the Institute of Race Relations, a
private civic action group comparable
to the Urban League in the United
States. '
Although they bear the brunt of it.
.
i " - . ' . - -
i . it
s'
v"-" iv
"
J
Squatter dwellings outside Cap Town. Africa NewsS.A
Africans are not the only ones af
fected by population relocations.
.About half a million persons
, classified as Indian or 'colored' (mix
ed race) have been forced out of their
homes under the Group Areas Act,
an additional law that mandates the
demarcation of land in the 'white
area' for racially exclusive settlement.
The removals have contributed
greatly to the radicalization of these
communities, which generally occupy
a position in society,between that of
whites and Africans. In addition,
many hundreds of members of these
communities, faced like all non
whites with serious housing shor
tages, have been forced to reside il
legally in the white areas, and to stay
inside during daytime hours.
Perhaps none of South Africa's
apartheid policies generates more
furious and widespread opposition
than resettlement.
The policy has meant the splitting
of families (in some cases permanent
ly), the stripping of any hope for
citizenship in the birthplace of one's
ancestors, the loss of jobs or pro
spects of getting one, and slow,
hungry and thirsty deaths.
In moral indignation, leading
clergy and academics have vowed to
halt resettlement. Affected urban
communities have threatened violent
resistance.
...
A policy of unprogrammed
malnutrition," one U.S. diplomat
called the population resettlements.
"Genocide ' is the description used
by all of the more outspoken South
African lay and church relief
workers. "It's a deliberate and
premeditated effort to remove and
reduce the African population," said
Marianne Roux, a, professor at
Rhodes University in Grahamstown,
a city in the eastern Cape.
"I don't think it's deliberate
genocide, but it comes to mind," said
Ina Peerlman, a-relief worker with
the Institute of Race Relations.
"When I think of people spending
winter Out there, I get absolutely ill. It
is obvious that the government's
policy is to sweep those people under
one vast rural carpet, and hope that
the whites don't notice. And thev
don't." '
"The government has a moral
responsibility for the deaths it is caus
ing," declared Nancy Charton,
another Rhodes University professor
and a resettlement specialist whose re
cent book on the policy was banned
by the government. "The whole of
white South Africa has a moral
responsibility to do something about
this." -
Kenneth Walker from the
Washington Star
Relocations Leave South Africa
"Under Urbanized''
Although official
figures on resettlement
are not available, various
experts have estimated
that two to three million
South Africans have
been uprooted during the
past three decades.
The underlvine reason
for virtually all removals
is found in the govern
ment's policy of dividing
the country into
politically separate,
racially-defined areas.
As stated in a 1967 inter
nal government memo:
"It is accepted eovern-
ment oolicv that the Ran.
tu blacks are only tem
porarily resident in the
European white areas
of the republic, for so
long as they offeraheir
labor there."
The memo was
quoted by Gary Thatcher
in a nve-part series on
resettlement, "South
Continued pa taRe 2fft
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