"TOUGHER ACTION" ON SOUTH AFRICAN RACE LAWS
The South African Government announced in September that it will tighten up the laws on residential segregation. It has also said that ways were being looked into of tightening up the "influx control" regulations which were used to evict people from the Western Cape earlier in the year.
At the same time the legislation to make the Ciskei bantustan "independent" in December will make the position of many Africans in the urban areas even more precarious (see BANTUSTAN REPRESSION).
GROUP AREAS ACT
New legislation will be introduced early in 1982 to enable the Government to enforce residential segregation more strictly. This was announced by the Minister of Community Development on 16 September.
The Group Areas Act is likely to be amended to abolish the requirement of a court order before the authorities can evict a family living in an area zoned for another racial group (FT 17.9.81).
The new law would strengthen the hand of the regime in completing the implementation of its plan to enforce its original plan for residential segregation on a racial basis. It would also help it in attempting to reverse the movement over recent years of an increasing number of Coloured and Indian families into areas declared "white" under the Act.
Some estimates put the number of black people in "white" zones in Johannesburg as high as 10,000. The movement has been the effect of an acute housing shortage in "black" areas coupled with vacant accommodation in "white" areas for which landlords have been unable to find tenants (FT 17.9.81).
The announcement was made shortly after the Minister had said, in an answer to a Parliamentary question, that 12,000 Coloured and Indian families were still due to be moved under the Group Areas Act. Already as many as 600,000 people have been forcibly removed under the Act since 1957 (RDM 8/17.9.81).
The announcement also coincided with an attack on Actstop, an organization which helps families threatened with eviction. It was followed a week later by the detention of two Actstop workers (see DETENTIONS).
When announcing the plans for amending the Act, the Minister said that the changes would aim to overcome what he called "time-consuming" legal proceedings. He accused Actstop of helping "wilful" people to challenge the law (FT/S 17.9.81).
The chairman of Actstop said that a law bypassing the court would have a 'devastating effect...Thousands of people will become homeless" (S 17.9.81).
PASS LAWS
After using the immigration laws to evict over 1,000 people from Nyanga in the Western Cape, and forcibly send them to the Transkei bantustan without any reference to a court, a senior government official said that consideration was being given to introducing further measures to prevent people without passes going to urban areas (GN 21.8.81; see also FOCUS 36 p.5).
The action in August was thought to be the first time that the immigration laws have been used in this way. Normally people arrested for not having the permits or other documents required for remaining in 'white' urban areas have been handled in the Commissioners Courts or Government 'Aid Centres'.
The use of the immigration laws was explained by some observers as a response to the help that victims of the pass laws were getting from organisations like the Black Sash and the Black Lawyers Association (V 29.7.81).
The director of the Black Sash's Advice Office in Athlone near Cape Town said that the vast numbers of people arrested in recent weeks in Nyanga were being defended by a battery of lawyers:
> Until the intervention of the lawyers the pass court system was quasi-judicial. It gave the appearance of due process, but in fact people were being pushed through at the rate of one a minute.
As soon as the lawyers became involved and began conducting proper defences, the rate dropped to a couple of cases a day and the courts just could not cope (S 14.9.81).
The immigration law used was the Admission of Persons to the Republic Regulation Act. It provides for summary "deportation" without trial of people not entitled to be in the Republic.
All Africans assigned by apartheid to the bantustans declared "independent" are treated as aliens. The 2,017 men, women and children involved in the August operations were sent by bus to the Transkei which, with the cooperation of the bantustan leaders, was declared "independent" in 1976 (GN 21.8.81; S 16.9.81).
The forcible removal of people without passes from the Western Cape has highlighted the extreme poverty which they face on being sent to the Transkei and the Ciskei bantustans. A recent official Ciskei report found that almost half of Ciskei's children suffered from malnutrition (see FOCUS 32 p.10). A newspaper reporter investigating the situation in Cape Town reported: 'The theme "If I went to the Transkei, I and my children would starve" appears over and over again among the squatters' (GN 1.9.81).
Faced with the prospect of extreme poverty and starvation, people have shown great resistance to the attempts to remove them from the urban areas. When sent away they have tried with determination to return. For its part the regime has erected road blocks and turned back buses. At the beginning of September the Government said that it had stopped more than 200 buses, sending back nearly 1,000 people (Star 5.9.81).
In an attempt to deflect criticism the Government said it would "assist" people it did not want in the Cape Peninsula to find jobs elsewhere. It appears that some of the jobs in question were jobs on the mines, for men, and that they would not be allowed to have their families with them. Most of the men appeared to have refused to go (CT 20.8.81; BBC 22.8.81).
In a recent report on the development of the pass laws since 1976, an official of the Black Sash concluded that far from being intent on reform or change to the policy of apartheid, the Government is in fact accelerating the rate of progress towards "apartheid's final consummation" (S 28.9.81).
The use of immigration laws to evict people from urban areas and send them to a bantustan, the erection of physical barriers in the form of roadblocks to prevent them returning, and its plans to impose "independence" on the Ciskei bantustan, show the extent to which the regime is committed to the maintenance and extension of apartheid.
BANTUSTAN REPRESSION
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organisations, rejection of Ciskeian "independence" was adopted as a policy.
Observers believe there is powerful and widespread support for the BCO, which also has the organized support of unions, including SAAWU.
Against this background it is believed that there will be growing opposition expressed to the "independence" due on 4 December (RDM 31.7.81).
