Blacks dig in to stay in S.A.

Press, 19 August 1981, Page 18

Blacks dig in to stay in S.A.

By .

JOSEPH LELYVELD

of the “New York Times”

Cape Town

= It is still winter at the tip r of the African continent and ' : the wind drove a steady, cold ; rain across the small patch ;- of wasteland outside Nyanga j township, where hundreds of blacks have been living

• without shelter for several : weeks now in defiance of • warnings, jailings, and court i orders designed to make •• them go back to a rural ■' black “homeland.”

> Finally, after their supply I of firewood had run out and ■ there was no more heat from i the rubber tyre they had ; thrown on the fire to keep it ! going, some of the men ‘ dared to string up a few i flimsy, lean-tos out of plastic ‘ sheeting. Each time they had > tried this in recent days, the [. police had ; arrived to' tear ‘ the shelters down, usually . arresting those inside and i confiscating what was left • behind. '.-■ 7 I . The children and some of !?■ the women huddled inside on • a recent Friday night while ■ the rest stood outside, bun-

dled in damp blankets, and : sang through the night to ■ keep their courage up. On j Saturday morning the plastic ; shelters. were still standing, j the blankets were laid out on i the ground or draped over a barbed wire fence to dry in ! fleeting sunshine, and the j inhabitants' of the nameless,

squalid camp were still vowing to hold their ground. Nearly all of them have been to jail in recent weeks, some of them more -than once. In all. about 1000 of them have been arrested, at least 500 of whom, including some mothers with children, are still believed to be. in Pollsmoor prison. Most of them appear to have been in Cape Town for years and to have held jobs at the start of July, when the latest round of raids began aimed at flushing out blacks who are not in the area on legal migrant-labour contracts and, presumably, aimed at setting up a barrier against more streaming in.

Goodweil Zisiwe, aged 22. said that he had come out of prison about a week earlier to find that he had been dismissed from his job in a lumber yard because his employer had said that, he could no longer run the risk of keeping on a black whose papers were not in order. Then some women were released on bail who had shared a cell with Mr Zisiwe's pregnant wife, Nofine. They said that she had given birth to a child in prison and had been taken to a maternity hospital. Mr Zisiwe said that so far he had not been able to find out the name of the hospital or the sex of the baby. Nomthandazo Magenukana, aged 25,. had been

taken to jail with her daughter, aged two. She said that when she had asked for milk for the child the prison authorities had said that the child was “too big”. Her sister-in-law had. got her out on bail but her husband, who had already lost his job with an electrician, had remained behind. Mrs Magenukana said that she had been in Cape Town since she had been 11, that she met her husband there, and that their child had been born there.

But none of them rates as a “qualified” resident of Cape Town, where the South African system of controlling the movement of blacks, known as “influx control,” is rigorously enforced. Technically Mrs Magenukana and most of the others caught up in. the recent raids are deemed to be citizens of Transkei, ah impoverished black “homeland” that was proclaimed independent five years ago but which still has two out of every three of its wage-earning citizens work-

ing in industrial areas of South Africa that are legally deemed to be white.

Mrs Magenukana said that she had not been to Transkei since the year before its independence, that her parents had now both died, and that her brothers lived in Johannesburg. She would never go back to Transkei, no matter how many times she was ordered but by the white authorities.

The response was the same from all the others interviewed at the bare, wind-swept camp-site, most of whom said that they had been in Cape Town for 10 to 20 years. Women from Transkei or the nine other homelands are not allowed to enter white areas on migrant-labour contracts. Men who come to Cape Town legally are not allowed to bring their, wives for more than 72 hours.

Even if a black woman marries a man who is regarded as a “qualified” resident of the white area by reason of birth or long employment there, she will remain “disqualified” unless he has found housing officially deemed to be adequate. But a “qualified” husband with a “disqualified” wife will be told that he is ineligible when he applies for such housing.. Because the system is designed to be impenetrable and because there is little

prospect of earning a living in the rural areas or of keeping a family together there, the incentive to defy the law is high. In Cape Town, the stubbornness of the blacks who have vowed to remain and the stubbornness of the white officials seeking to oust them now seem equally matched.

Every working day at the shabby, one-storey court house at the entrance to Langa township, those arrested in recent raids go before a magistrate to answer charges that often amount to living illegally with a husband. When one woman said recently that she had not gone back to Transkei because she would starve there, the magistrate replied, “We are starving here in Cape Town. You can rather starve at home.”

Blanks tended to regard the comment as typical of the system but some, whites were upset and now, for the first time, volunteer lawyers have come forward to defend blacks against charges of being in white areas illegally.

Usually it takes only a few minutes for a magistrate to try such a case, impose a sentence or fine, and order the guilty black to leave. Now, suddenly, cases are lasting as long as an hour and a half.