'2M blacks in S.A. starving’

Press, 10 July 1979, Page 8

'2M blacks in S.A. starving’

NZPA Johannesburg An estimated two million black South Africans resettled in camps in the country’s rural districts under the apartheid system are facing starvation, the black opinion weekly, “Post,” has reported. The newspaper, which sent a team of journalists to investigate camps in Natal province and the Ciskei district of the southeast Cape Province, said most of those dying from malnutrition were infants and youngsters. “Children are dying in the resettlement areas. Nobody is thinking about them, they are concerned about the children in Soweto and other urban areas normally flooded by overseas visitors. Children in these areas are lucky be-

cause they are tourist attractions and somebody does care about them. “But in the rural areas, parents are struck by a sense of helplessness as they see life gradually being snuffed out of their children,” “Post” said. Some people had been refused the right to plough lands and graze livestock, and employment opportunities in their resettlement areas frequently did not exist. “Post” said its correspondents had visited 10 such resettlement areas which had become “dumping grounds” of poverty and deprivation. There were no official statistics of malnutrition, but a reliable estimate was one black child died every 20 minutes from malnutrition, or a related disease.