SOUTH AFRICA: Evictees forced to squeeze into shanty towns

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

JOHANNESBURG, 13 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - Shanty towns often materialise on the outskirts of South Africa's cities over night: a single shack quickly multiplies to 10, until the once empty landscape is transformed into a sprawling network of corrugated iron dwellings for the poor.

While many of the inhabitants are migrants from across the continent, the results of a new survey compiled by a South African NGO suggest another source for the huge numbers of people living in the shanty towns.

The NKUZI Development Association has quantified for the first time the issue of illegal eviction of farm labourers and their dependents from white-owned farms in South Africa. And, according to the NGO the practice is widespread, involves intimidation and is often carried out with the help of the authorities.

The National Eviction Survey, which took two years to complete, reveals that up to 950,000 black South Africans have been illegally evicted from white owned farms in the 10 years since the end of apartheid - 200,000 more than were evicted during the final 10 years of the former regime.

In total the National Eviction Survey estimates that 1.75 million people have been evicted since 1985, and many of these have been left with no option but to live in one of the many shanty towns that have sprung up across the country during that time.

Over a year ago George Madisha and his family were forced to join the ever increasing army of shanty town dwellers.

He claims in December 2004 his landlord threatened to kill his family if they refused to vacate the home where they had lived for 14 years. Following the alleged threat Madisha (47) and his wife Elizabeth (42) left to spend the night building a makeshift home on a patch of scrubland close to their farm dwelling in Laizonia, Gauteng.

But a few hours later, three masked men came to his home and fired shots through the front door. As his three children, Jane (14), Sarah (10) and Glenda (7) cowered inside, the men burst in and pistol-whipped George's cousin, Jack Thoba, who had agreed to watch the kids.

"One of our girls managed to escape and phone the police from a neighbour's house. But before the police came they took our eldest, Jane, into the bush and raped her at gunpoint. We never went back to the house after that," said George, who had been granted permission to live on the farm by its previous owner, for whom he had worked.

When the NKUZI report states that an illegal eviction has occurred it means there was no legal process involved in the eviction.

Although South Africa's new constitution, which was adopted in 1996, states "no one may be evicted from their home or have their home demolished without an order from the court", the NGO maintains only 1 percent of the evictions involved a legal process.

NKUZI programme manager, Marc Wegerif, insisted those targeted for eviction were society's most vulnerable, with 77 percent of the evictees' women and children related to deceased or retired farm labourers.

"The people most affected by the evictions are very poor and have little education. So even though new laws were brought into protect their rights they rarely avail of them," he said.

"These disempowered people, over 30 percent had no knowledge of their rights at all; they are people who have been pushed around all their lives. But those who challenged the evictions were often able to prevent them, because once a person has been granted permission by a landowner to live somewhere a legal process must be entered into before a legal eviction can take place."

Indeed, George Madisha maintained the only reason he and his family left their home was because of the threat to his family.

"I didn't know it was illegal for the farmer to throw us off the land," he said, "but we would have left anyway because of the threats."

But there have been relative success stories for farm workers prepared to stand up for their legal rights. Retired farm labourer Nicolas Shirinda is considered a local hero for the manner in which he has withstood attempts to evict him from the arid patch of farmland 20 km from Pretoria he calls home.

For the past three years the 75-year-old's landlord has been trying to clear him off the scrub land he has lived on for 47 years while working for the previous owner, even though he is legally allowed to remain where he is.

Shirianda describes the situation as continued harassment. However, he has refused to budge, and after taking legal advice from the NKUZI Development Association, decided to take action through the courts to protect his rights.

"The farmer who owns the land has turned the water off so we have to go 10 miles every day to get it. He has dumped all the cow dung beside my house and he has fenced off my plot, trying to cage me," he said.

"But I do not want to move; I am too old to start again, so I will wait to hear what the court has to say."

The survey's results have led farming groups to question the methodology used by NKUZI to arrive at the figures, and blame others for the state of affairs if the statistics are verified as accurate.

Despite their participation in the survey, AGRI-SA, a pressure group for South Africa's commercial farmers, insisted the NKUZI statistics appear excessively high and are probably flawed.

"We feel the numbers are not correct, although we have no information to the contrary either," said AGRI-SA spokesperson, Annelize Crosby. "But it is very difficult to verify if these evictions occurred, as the report deals with events from the last 20 years and there are no alternative statistics available to make a comparison."

She went on to insist that if the survey results were accurate, the government was to blame for the farm dwellers plight.

"If one were to accept that the figures are correct then this is a very serious accusation against the government. Illegally evicting someone from his or her home is a criminal offence so in theory it should be easy for the state to prosecute.

"While it is up to every one to ensure illegal evictions don't occur, it is primarily a government area, all we can do is put peer pressure on the alleged guilty parties," maintained Crosby.

The Department of Land Affairs was unavailable for comment.

The reasons behind such large-scale evictions by white landowners were both economic and security based, according to the survey.

A rise in labour costs due to the introduction of the minimum wage and increased international competition had led to farmers reducing their workforce. Others sought to change the nature of their businesses, such as turning their farms into game reserves, because of a fear that HIV/AIDS would cause huge workforce shortages in the future.

As for the large number of evicted women and children, the survey stated "farmers do not want people who are not actively working on the farm there, because they feel it is a security risk".

While the survey results have been legitimately questioned, South Africa's Human Rights Commission has repeatedly stated over the years that serious human rights violations have been occurring in this area.

Wegerif concluded that most of the evictees either ended up in poor townships or squatter camps because no provision has ever been made by the government to properly accommodate them.

He added that if illegal farm evictions were left unchecked the fallout would add further fuel to the wider problem of landownership and land redistribution in South Africa, a dilemma that could potentially destabilise a country that has achieved so much since the fall of apartheid.

Wegerif suggested that if farmers were to secure a long-term future and avoid the fate of their counterparts in Zimbabwe, they must accept greater responsibility for the welfare of all those who live on their land.

About 85 percent of commercial farmland is white-owned and only three percent has been handed over to blacks since apartheid's demise.

"The people are ending up in terrible conditions in squatter camps where a lot of unrest occurs and clearly this is feeding into it. The land issue is sensitive and these people have no reason to have confidence in our democracy, as they get nothing out of it."

"Many would support what Mugabe [Zimbabwe's president] has done in relation to the land invasions. So there is a risk factor when people were not given a rightful access to land," said Wegerif.

[ENDS]