Protest action in March by people threatened with eviction from the Western Cape again focussed attention on the programme of forcible removal and re-settlement. While hundreds of thousands of people continue to be threatened, resistance both in the urban and rural areas is taking on a more co-ordinated form and some removals have been delayed as a result. The government has however made clear its commitment to the policies which involve removals.
PASS LAWS
In the face of over 50 police raids since July 1981 on Africans 'illegally' in the area, people continued to camp in the open at Nyanga. After each raid 'squatters' were arrested and all shelters demolished. Police used teargas and fired shots at the occupants.
56 Nyanga residents fasted for four weeks in Cape Town Cathedral in protest, including 150 'squatters' evicted from a farm have requested to join the protest.
The 'Coloured Labour Preference Policy', aimed at reducing the number of Africans in the Western Cape, is being enforced but over 90 per cent of Africans removed to the bantustans in July and August have returned to live and seek work in the Western Cape.
RURAL REMOVALS
In Natal alone, between 200,000 and 300,000 people are facing imminent resettlement, according to the Association for Rural Advancement (AFRA). Several areas have been declared 'black spots' and the people who live there are to be resettled inside the boundaries of the Kwazulu bantustan. ('Black spots' are areas occupied by Africans which the apartheid government proclaims as set aside for another group.) Following concerted campaigning the threatened removal of 15,000 people living in the St Wendolin's area in Natal has been shelved while the matter is reconsidered. However, AFRA does not believe that the government intends deviating from its policy, and it is expected that the removal policy will continue.
In the Eastern Cape removals which are proceeding or threatened include those of 5,000 people at Mgwali and 4,000 people in Glenmore. The Mgwali removals, which are imminent, are proceeding after a campaign of resistance was met with repressive action: six people who formed a committee to fight the removals were detained in August 1981. The date of the removal of people from the camp at Glenmore, in which they were resettled after a previous forcible removal, is unknown.
Amongst those resisting removal in the Transvaal is a community of 1,500 people farming land bought by their forbears in 1910. The community, at Mathopestad near Rustenburg in the Central Transvaal, is refusing to move to the Bophuthatswana bantustan.
