During the first months of 1982 the government continued its policy, reported in the last issue of FOCUS, of amending existing legislation to restrict the number of black people living in urban areas, following the shelving of the Orderly Movement and Settlement of Black Persons Bill. At the same time harassment of squatter communities by administration boards in the Cape Peninsula, the East and the West Rand has increased, with the large-scale demolition of squatters' dwellings and continued pass raids in the townships and town centres.
Greater restrictions on squatting are proposed in the new Criminal Law Amendment Bill put before Parliament in March, which contains vastly increased penalties for trespassing: a R2000 fine or two years' imprisonment. Trespassing, which is defined as entering any building or property without the permission of the owner or lawful occupier, could be applied to people who build shelters on land owned by an Administration Board. The term 'squatting' is used to define people living on land without government permission.
In February Western Cape Administration Board officials backed by large police contingents which used police dogs, teargas and armoured vehicles, repeatedly attempted to demolish a squatter settlement in the Cape Town area without success. The KTC site near Guguletu mushroomed in just over a week into a minitown of nearly 1,000 shacks housing around 3,000 people, built from branches and plastic by Africans from drastically overcrowded neighbouring townships. Although all the shacks were flattened and hundreds of people arrested on pass law charges, others persisted in rebuilding shelters. Permission was finally granted for 2,500 families with rights under Section 10 of the Black Urban Areas Act to build houses on the site. Africans without these rights, however, who constitute over 40 per cent of Cape Town's African population, remain homeless.
In the East Rand, Administration Board officials demolished 1,000 squatters' shacks in Katlehong township, near Germiston, between November 1982 and March 1983. There were estimated to be around 35,000 shacks in Katlehong, constituting twice the number of houses in the township. In February the Soweto Community Council, backed by West Rand Administration Board police with batons and machine guns, demolished at least 50 shacks in the Orlando East area of Soweto. The demolitions followed large-scale raids at the end of last year which culminated in 1,000 arrests and 300 people fined, after residents defied an order to demolish their shacks. There remain around 4,000 shacks in the area, and it is estimated that 23,000 families are living in backyard shacks in the whole of Soweto.
