[Urbanstudy] life for south africans evicted ahead of the world cup

[lalitha kamath]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/01/south-africa-world-cup-blikkiesdorp

Life in 'Tin Can Town' for the South Africans evicted ahead of 
World Cup
Campaigners say 
conditions in Blikkiesdorp or 'Tin Can Town' are worse than in the 
townships created during apartheid
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	* David Smith in 
Cape Town 
	* guardian.co.uk,			 Thursday 1 April 2010 21.50 BST 
	* Article history
 
Youths playing football in Blikkiesdorp, 
Cape Town. Photograph: Gareth Kingdon
Children squint as wind whips the grey sand into their faces. A 
teenager braves the flies and stench of a leaking outdoor toilet to draw water from a standpipe. He stares vacantly along regimented rows of 
corrugated iron shacks encircled by a tall, concrete fence. No grass or 
trees grow here.
This is Tin Can Town, or Blikkiesdorp, described by the mayor of Cape Town as a 
"temporary relocation area" (TRA), but by its residents as a 
concentration camp. Many say they were forcibly evicted from their 
former homes and moved here against their will. And for this they blame 
one thing: the football World Cup.
"It's a dumping place," said 
Jane Roberts, who lives in the sparsely furnished structure known as 
M49. "They took people from the streets because they don't want them in 
the city for the World Cup. Now we are living in a concentration camp."
Roberts, 54, added: "It's like the devil runs this place. We have no freedom. 
The police come at night and beat adults and children. South Africa isn't showing the world what it's doing to its people. It only shows the World Cup."
President Jacob Zuma's government insists that sport's biggest showpiece is 
already benefiting the whole nation, creating jobs, improving 
infrastructure and transforming its image abroad. It has lavished some 
R13bn (£1.15bn) on world-class venues, with none more breathtaking than 
the Cape Town Stadium that will host England in June.
Yet a short 
drive from the city's expensively upgraded airport, a drive few tourists are likely to make, boys kick up dust and stones in Blikkiesdorp 
because the spending spree failed to provide them with a park.
Campaigners argue that this bleak place in Delft township shows that Africa's first World Cup has become a tool to impress wealthy foreigners at the 
expense of its own impoverished people. Residents say it is worse than the  townships created by the 
white minority government before the end of racial apartheid in 
1994.
In view of cloud-capped mountains, Blikkiesdorp was built in 2008 for an estimated R32m (£2.9m) to provide "emergency housing" for 
about 650 people who had been illegally occupying buildings. To 
visitors, the column after column of one-room shacks, each spraypainted 
with a designated code number, are disturbingly reminiscent of District 
9, last year's hit science fiction film about space aliens forced to 
live in an informal Johannesburg settlement. Residents said this week 
there were about 15,000 people struggling to live in about 3,000 of the 
wood and iron structures, with more arriving all the time. City 
officials claimed these figures were inaccurate but said the site was 
designed to cater for 1,667 families in total.
In some cases 
families of six or seven people are crammed into living spaces of three 
by six metres. They complain that the corrugated walls swelter in summer temperatures of 40C and offer little protection from the cold in 
winter. Tuberculosis and HIV are rife. Babies have been born at 
Blikkiesdorp and, still unknown to the state, officially do not exist.
Brutality
The shacks are laid out in strict lines with little room for individual 
homemaking, though some residents have tried to build extensions, 
gardens and informal convenience stores, often protected by barbed wire. Above them loom poles with lighting and power cables that give the 
residents electricity. But between the shacks there is no paving, only 
roaming dogs, scraps of rubbish and grey sand that swirls in the wind.
There are no shower facilities and the standpipe taps lack bowls, so water 
tends to leak into the ground and under people's homes. Toilets are 
found inside grim concrete cubicles so small the locked door presses 
against the user's knees. Many have leaking roofs and are broken despite repeated promises to fix them.
Sandy Rossouw says she was among 
366 people evicted from the Spes Bona Hostel in the district of Athlone 
three months ago because a stadium there is to be used for training by 
some of football's biggest stars. She is now one of five family members 
who squeeze into one bed in her shack at Blikkiesdorp.
"We were 
forced out of our hostel because of the World Cup," Rossouw said. "The 
hostel is on the main road to the stadium, only about 200 yards away. We didn't want to move because we're used to it and it's close to 
everything. But they said if we didn't get out, they would move us out 
with law enforcement.
"Here the whole place is under starvation. 
We can't even afford to make a pot of soup for our children. We send 
them to school without bread. People sell everything to get food and 
walk three hours to Athlone just to get a loaf of bread. When you do 
eat, there is sand in your food – you can feel it on your teeth.
"We were promised in January the toilets would be repaired but they're not. You've got eight families to a toilet and it's unhygienic."
Rossouw, 42, is among several residents who accuse the police of brutality. 
"It's like a jail, like a concentration camp," she continued. "If you're not inside at night, the police beat you. A few weeks ago they pointed 
an R5 rifle as if they were going to shoot people. They swore at us: 
'This isn't fucking Athlone. You should go back to your place.'"
She argues that the fanfare around a month-long football tournament is 
hypocritical when people are going hungry. "I think they must cancel the World Cup because people are starving. They are renovating buildings in Cape Town for half a billion rand; why can't they spend that money 
here? It breaks my heart.
"When rich people come to the World Cup 
they must come to Blikkiesdorp first to see for themselves how people 
are living. It's worse than apartheid."
Among those suffering is 
Fatima Booysen, 40, who has lived in shack J22 with her husband, 
Abraham, and two daughters for more than a year. She said: "I can't 
shop, the rain is coming in, the child is sick. A lot of people have got TB now.
"It's very cold in winter. When you stand up in the 
morning you feel frozen, you can't feel your hands or feet.
"The 
children don't want to go to school. I've got a one-year-old grandchild 
who's sick today and has gone to hospital."
Residents say that 
unemployment is high and a lack of postal deliveries or official 
addresses makes it hard to find work. They also criticise their remote 
location, which requires them to pay for minibus taxis to the city, and 
say that children have been killed in accidents on Blikkiesdorp's 
thoroughfares and when crossing a nearby motorway. Crime is said to be 
high, with drug gangs moving into unused shacks, but the police offer 
little relief.
Court action
Badronessa Morris, 47, 
complained: "The police treat us like animals. They swear at us, pepper 
spray us, search us in public, even children. At 10 o'clock you must be 
inside: the police come and tell you to go into your place and turn down the music. In my old home we used to sit outside all night with the 
fire."
Morris was among families evicted from an informal 
settlement on the Symphony Way road. "We were one happy family on 
Symphony Way. Now we've moved to Blikkiesdorp it's like we're in chains, fighting each other, putting each other in jail.
"I know we were 
moved because of the World Cup. They don't want people to see shacks on 
the road in South Africa. They want everything perfect for the World 
Cup."
Other people have gone to court to resist a possible move to Blikkiesdorp. Last December five families living near the Athlone 
stadium were told their homes would be demolished to make way for a car 
park.
Llewellyn Wilters, 52, who has lived in his house for seven 
years, said: "I took a drive to Blikkiesdorp to check it out and don't 
think it's going to work. How are we going to take the kids to school 
and get to work?"
He added: "We were born in this area, we went to school here, we know the area and know all the people here. Why must we move out?"
Shack dwellers have mobilised against evictions in 
well-organised protests that make powerful use of new media. Pamela 
Beukes, 29, secretary of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, 
condemned the rise of Blikkiesdorp: "They're creating a tin city. 
They're doing worse things than the apartheid regime did to the people. 
Under apartheid they gave us a brick house.
"The World Cup was 
supposed to bring a higher standard of living. But it's making it lower. People are saying, 'I don't want to watch soccer because it's the 
reason I was evicted.' It's as if we're lesser beings."
The city 
of Cape Town denies the accusation that it is dumping people in 
Blikkiesdorp because of the World Cup. Kylie Hatton, a spokeswoman, said in an email: "It is not true that the City of Cape Town is moving or 
displacing residents in informal areas in the runup to the 2010 Fifa 
World Cup.
"It is important to note that the TRA has been 
constructed for emergency accommodation needs and is provided by the 
city, and exceeds national housing requirements."
She added: "We 
have significant challenges regarding vandalism in the area, and in some cases our contractors have had to return to the site over four times to repair broken toilets, taps and electricity cables. This often then has an impact on services in the settlement."
But Blikkiesdorp is 
only one manifestation of a deeper disquiet in South Africa about the 
benefits, or otherwise, of hosting football's biggest festival. In 
Durban there are further demonstrations over evictions and reports that 
street children are forcibly being removed from the city centre to 
"safe areas" far away.
Tens of thousands of informal traders 
complain that they will lose income because of Fifa-imposed "exclusion 
zones" around stadiums which permit only approved businesses. Regina 
Twala, who has been selling cooked meals and snacks for 35 years, told 
South Africa's Sunday Independent that she and fellow workers had been 
ordered to vacate their premises outside Ellis Park stadium.
Unemployment

The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign said: "The lives of small 
businesses and informal traders in South Africa have been destroyed by 
this World Cup. If we are not allowed to trade near stadiums, fan parks 
and other tourist areas, how can we benefit from tourism?"
The new stadiums heralded a construction boom, but many of the workers who 
built them have already been laid off and are without work.
Caroline Elliot, international programmes officer for the anti-poverty group War on Want, said: "Behind the spectacle, the World Cup is exacerbating the struggle of poor South Africans who are facing evictions, lack of 
public services and unemployment. The South African government needs to 
tackle these problems as an urgent priority."
Andile Mngxitama, a 
political commentator and columnist, is about to publish a pamphlet 
entitled "Fuck the World Cup".
He said: "We never needed the World Cup. It is a jamboree by the politicians to focus attention away from 
the 16 years of democracy that have not delivered for the majority of 
black people in this country. We'll be trapped with white elephant 
stadiums."
He added: "The World Cup is not about football or 
so-called tourism. It's about politicians hoping it keeps us busy for a 
month and making enormous amounts of money for themselves and their 
friends."



      
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