By Norm Dixon
JOHANNESBURG — It was like a scene out of an old news reel from the dimmest, darkest days of apartheid: big, burly, white city council security officers — armed with bulldozers and sledge hammers, mouthing racist and derogatory comments — descended upon a newly erected squatter settlement just before nightfall. Within hours, 800 shacks had been destroyed and the building materials confiscated.
It was irrelevant to the powers that be in the council that Johannesburg was in the grip of a bitter cold snap, and that hundreds of children and old people would be forced to spend the night in the open in below-zero temperatures. To add insult to injury, council traffic cops booked taxis that attempted to pick up the homeless people and their possessions.
This scene came not from apartheid's sorry archives, but was screened on the television news here just this month. On June 8, the Democratic Party-controlled Johannesburg City Council showed the world that where the rights of property owners conflict with the needs of the homeless and destitute, it stands firmly for the former. Gone was the last shred of credibility for its claim to be the "liberal" party of human rights.
A day later, the DP's bully boys were at it again, demolishing 69 shelters near Eldorado Park. The council vowed to oppose further land "invasions" and dismantle "illegally erected" shacks.
Intervention by the African National Congress-controlled PWV regional government forced the council to find emergency accommodation for the displaced squatters in vacant public buildings in the inner city.
Almost 1000 people moved onto council-owned land in the southern Johannesburg suburb of Liefde en Vrede (which, ironically, means "love and peace" in Afrikaans) less than 24 hours earlier. The fully serviced land had been vacant for more than a year after a planned housing development for Taiwanese immigrants collapsed in the aftermath of the murder of Chris Hani in 1993. The council claims it was soon to put the plots on the market.
The ANC, condemning the council's actions, said that it "would appear that the democratic elections and the implications thereof simply passed" the DP and the Johannesburg City Council by. It described the removals of squatters as "arrogant", "racist" and "uncaring".
The Pan Africanist Congress accused the council of being "high-handed and inhumane". The demolitions, it said, were carried out in a "typically police state mentality fashion".
Homelessness growing
The evictions have focused attention on South Africa's housing crisis. In the PWV province alone, it is estimated that 1 million people need decent housing. Throughout South Africa squatter settlements have mushroomed on the outskirts of major cities. Shacks have even begun to appear in parks and on footpaths in central Johannesburg. Hundreds of thousands of people live in so-called "informal" settlements. In the cities after dark, homeless people, many just children, huddle in any available doorway or shelter.
In its Reconstruction and Development Program, the ANC has promised to build 1 million homes over the next five years. Even if this target is achieved, it is estimated that apartheid's housing backlog will continue to rise for at least the first four years.
The National Housing Forum, a body that brings together the major players in the housing industry as well as NGOs representing the community, estimates that at least 240,000 houses will need to be built each year just to keep up with population growth. The ANC's housing minister, Joe Slovo, aims to reach a target of 300,000 homes a year by 1999.
Publicly owned and built houses do not figure prominently in the ANC's housing plan. Instead, the private sector is expected to play a dominant role. Slovo has stated that the private sector's tendency to opt out of the lower end of the housing market would be countered by providing a "safety net" to protect banks and financial institutions against rent boycotts or mortgage defaults. A state-owned housing bank will be created.
A housing subsidy scheme will soon come into effect. People who earn below R1500 a month (A$600) will be eligible for subsidies of R12,500 (A$5000). The grant will be paid to a private developer, bank or financial institution once a property has been transferred to its new owner.
Some NGOs will be involved in the delivery of housing. However, the building industry is calling on Slovo to minimise NGO involvement because of "inefficiency", as the conservative Financial Mail complained recently, resulting from "the labyrinthine but politically correct process of reaching consensus within entire communities".
The South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) has criticised the subsidies as insufficient to provide a home of minimum standards.
Squatting inevitable
The pace of the delivery of housing will make further land invasions inevitable in coming years. As a squatter leader from the Nancefield camp near Soweto told the Sunday Times here recently, "The occupation cannot just stop because the government has said it will build houses. These promises maybe will be met, or they will not ... They are telling us now this can't happen overnight. That is a different tune from when they were mobilising our people before the election.
"At least for the next five years, when the government is still sitting in parliament saying it won't happen overnight, these people will have privacy; their needs will be addressed."
While the ANC governments in PWV and nationally have condemned the Johannesburg City Council's demolition of the Liefde en Vrede camp, they both have called for a moratorium on land invasions.
Slovo said on June 7 that land invasion did not contribute to alleviating the housing shortage. He also sought to reassure land owners: "This democratic government is committed to respect constitutional rights in land against any unlawful infringement and unlawful occupation. Squatting cannot be condoned."
Slovo has accused some who organise and lead land occupations of being "outsiders" without the interests of the squatters at heart. Squatting would have a detrimental effect on the housing strategy, he said.
PWV housing minister Dan Mofokeng has said that structures would be established with representatives of political parties, civic associations, ratepayers' groups, local authorities and trade unions to ensure a land invasion moratorium is observed.