Government evicts squatters

South Africa’s government was taken to task by its political opponents on Thursday for forcibly evicting hundreds of poverty-stricken squatters from a barren piece of land, Reuters reported. Pretoria sent in a private security firm backed by heavily armed police to remove squatters who had been enticed by a fringe political party to build illegal makeshift shacks on land near Johannesburg international airport.

The sight of hopeless black families turned out by the authorities in bitter winter weather, leaving them with little but the clothes on their backs, drew uncomfortable parallels with apartheid-era mass expulsions of black families to make way for whites.
It was made worst by the fact that the evictions by the security company was being orchestrated by white Afrikaner bosses shouting out orders to black employees. “The homeless and destitute of South Africa have for far too long been marginalised,” the opposition United Democratic Movement (UDM) said, calling on Pretoria to accelerate its land reform programme and build more desperately needed houses.

The government had won plaudits from investors for its determination to uphold the constitution’s property clauses and prevent the land lawlessness gripping neighbouring Zimbabwe from spreading to Africa’s richest economy. Pretoria secured a court order last Tuesday, arguing that the squatters’ safety could not be guaranteed on the land which was until this month was just home to electricity pylons and an underground oil pipeline.