HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
July 10, 2004 Tourists to this country are almost immediately confronted with an enigmatic sight: the so- called "squatter camps", often in between enclaves of obvious wealth. These pathetic huddles of tiny dwellings are put together with rusty bits of corrugated iron, PVC plastic, hardboard -- in fact, any kind of material to be found on the average city trash dump. Why, is the inevitable question, has this been allowed to happen? How do these people live? Why is nothing being done to help them? Squatter camps have no proper sanitation, and water often has to be carried long distances in jerry cans. Most squatters have no jobs, and the prevailing question is how they manage to exist at all in such circumstances. It is not possible to answer this question ... The other question is: where did they come from in the first place, these essentially homeless thousands? Unfortunately visitors are often told that these places are "a legacy of apartheid". For once, this is not true. During the apartheid years the so-called "influx control" laws existed. These were not fair, and to an extent limited the free movement from place to place of people of colour. In another sense it tended to keep people on their ancestral lands or in rural areas, and allowed the then government to keep a kind of control over any unrestrained influx to the cities and towns of (mainly) Blacks. Naturally this law was repealed when the Black- controlled ANC government took over in 1994. They actively encouraged the emigration from ancestral and rural grounds to towns and cities, to strengthen their position at the voters' polls. And in the understandable euphoria of 1994, they promised "a million new houses within five years" to their loyal constituents -- a promise which no government on earth would have been able to fulfill. Two other factors exacerbated this overwhelming trek to the cities and towns. The Blacks had long believed, whether rightly or wrongly, that wealth lay in the cities and towns, and that uncountable opportunities and jobs were to be found there. Moreover, they believed that their government would provide ... This, of course, was all a myth, and family upon countless family landed up in a squatter camp, jobless, poorer than ever before, and essentially homeless. The second problem was that border control slowly deteriorated, and people from other African countries crossed into South Africa illegally and simply vanished into the crowds. With Nelson Mandela as president, the wealthiest country in Africa was seen as El Dorado: another myth. Thousands of houses have since been built by the government, but most of these had to go to people already established and working in the area, and who had had their names on town council housing lists for ages. Quite rightly they were first in line for new houses with facilities like bathrooms, flush toilets and other amenities. The newcomers, the squatters, of necessity were, and still are, low on the housing list. Where possible, help is extended to people in squatter camps, through churches, charitable organisations and private people. Blankets, clothes and food are collected for them. Schools have been established. Through private enterprise there might be créches, or a playground and community hall erected. There is usually a clinic or a mobile clinic where the sick are treated and medicines distributed for free. However, the squatter problem is overwhelming and still the people pour in, to towns and cities. The country cannot really cope with this problem. It does not have the money, jobs or resources to tackle it. In a sense, everyone suffers! The squatters are in most cases probably far worse off in their flimsy self-made shelter that they ever were in the rural areas, where they could keep livestock and grow vegetables. These "camps" are health hazards and, as can be understood, are breeding grounds for TB and AIDS. Because the huts are built close together of combustible materials, accidents involving fire are commonplace: a candle fallen over, a paraffin stove setting fire to a hut. It is no fun to read in the papers that four, five huts have burned down and two children were burned to death ... The person living in his well-kept newly-painted house in a clean and quiet suburb might rise one morning to see that five squatter huts have been erected overnight on a piece of council land next door to his plot. He knows this is the start of a new squatter camp, and it cannot be expected of him to be happy. So the wealthier people in their settled suburbs, where squatters have moved in on pieces of land among them, are upset and outraged. These people are not always, as many would want to believe, wealthy whites. South Africa has a fast-growing Black and Coloured middle and upper class as well. As a house is one of our greatest investments, there is absolutely no joy in realising that the value of your house has tumbled overnight due to the squatters next door. Crime will increase, as will burglaries, hijackings and drug trafficking. Why not, some might ask, prevent these death- trap camps which are not fit for human habitation? Why not send the people back where they came from? Two reasons: they strengthen the ANC vote in what might have been be a mainly White area. So the politicians who lured people to small towns and big cities are partly to blame. And secondly, the new Constitution has deeply entrenched the rights of the individual. Although squatting on privately owned land is not allowed, the owner must evict the squatters within a very short time (48 hours, I think) otherwise he'll need court orders and lawyers, which will cost him lots of time and money. If the land belongs to nobody, or to a city council, squatting is not illegal. So it's simple: nothing is done to stop them. One could still have had hopes that sometime in the future the government would get a grip on the squatter problem, through the provision of more jobs and decent housing -- however humble the latter might seem to visitors. Unfortunately, even with free contraception of all kinds freely available, the birth rate among the poorest of the poor is extremely high. There is a government grant of a mere R160 per month per child -- a pittance in any monetary unit -- and it is a deplorable fact that desperate Black parents encourage their teenage daughters to fall pregnant in order to claim that grant. So it would need more than the wisdom of a Solomon and the riches of Croesus to improve the squatter situation. South Africa has only a small percentage of taxpayers among its ever-growing population, and, quite obviously, cannot adequately cope with its poverty-stricken masses. ------------ About the author: Joanie Woods is the pseudonym of an Afrikaans writer. She has been a lecturer at a mixed-race teachers' training college, and has written 5 novels in her home language. She can be reached at: gullcry@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
