Townships ‘meant as labour reserves’

Press, 18 December 1985, Page 51

Townships ‘meant as labour reserves’

By

Mort Rosenblum

Associated Press

Duduza South Africa In Zulu, Duduza means “place of comfort”. Many residents of this black township, who have been awaiting promised sewers, electricity and piped water for 22 years, quibble with the name. “What do you expect?” said Arnold Mamadl, aged 32, an economics teacher who lives down the road in Tsakane, which means “be happy.” r *Townships are meant as labour reserves, not places to live and be comfortable.” Conditions vary from Duduza to Soweto to Sharpeville to Guguletu, from families living six in a shack only three paces long to those in farm-style bungalows with a Ford Sierra out front

But each has an unmistakable stamp, a common motif of litter and highpowered lights that blaze all night. The police and soldiers rumble by in armoured vehicles, followed by dark, sullen stares. Under the Group Areas law, no urban black can settle anywhere else. The largest and most famous black township is Soweto outside Johannesburg, with nearly two million residents, where graffiti describes the mood: “We grow their children. They kill our children.” Or, “Communism is the answer to poverty. the answer to apartheid.” Or, “Botha is sick.” P. W. Botha is South Africa’s President. ®

Duduza is in the East Rand, 60km east of Johannesburg. Its famous sites include the school principal’s house with the township’s only flush toilet.

It is also the place where a white nurse who stopped on the highway on May 20 was stoned to death. Blacks were resettled here in 1963, promised all the amenities of a model township. Little has changed along its dirt roads, residents say. Poverty is not the sole issue. A black executive wrote anonymously in “Frontline” magazine, a white-run publication that opposes apartheid: “No matter what you do during the day, regardless of what you contribute to the taxman, regardless of the position you hold, your ability to own the finest mansion in white suburbia, you must return to the ghetto at night.” More than 700 people have died in a year of antiapartheid violence, shot by security forces, slain by blacks punishing those they consider collaborators with the white-minority Government, or killed by hooligans.

South African authorities maintain that the violence is deliberately orchestrated by black extremists seeking to embarrass white leaders at a time when reforms to ease apartheid are gradually moving into place. In interviews in eight townships, however, residents called the violence an unwelcome but almost inevitable result of the grinding misery and repeated

humiliations of life in the townships. “The trouble is money,” said a 31-year-old father is Sebokeng, near Sharpeville in the Vaal triangle, the industrial heartland south of Johannesburg.

He asked to be called only Esau since he is a liquor bootlegger. “If people cannot make enough money to pay rent and feed their families, what can they do?”

Esau rents a standard Government concrete block house, with four tiny rooms, a tin roof, an outhouse and no electricity. He buys water, 19 litres at a time, when he can hire someone to deliver it. He can take his children to a Government clinic, but the wait can be six hours.

“But it is only surviving,” he said.

“My 12-year-o!d daughter loves music, piano, but I can do nothing. She wants to read, but there are no books. There is nothing.” Esau’s neighbour, Mark, works in Johannesburg, 60km north. When the 6.35 a.m. train fails to show, Mark spends nearly two days* pay on a taxi. Otherwise, he may be sacked. Without a job, he loses his urban permit, under present conditions, and must move to a rural “homeland”, designated 'by the Government

For many, such situations are sheer luxury. Moiponi Papal!, her husband and four children, aged four to 17, share a tin box in Soweto. A double mattress takes up half the floor space.

Rent is 35 rand ($18.07) a month out of an income of 300 rand ($154). Maggie Ntombi has been waiting 10 years for even that much housing. Her family, living six in a rented room, is being evicted.

She was recently advised some houses were available but found 3000 had received the same notice.

Authorities stopped building houses in the 1960 s to stem new arrivals. People continued to stream in, many illegally, and built hovels in backyards. If “influx control” — the system whereby blacks need special passes to go into white areas — is abolished as expected, residents fear townships will be jammed even more.

Life was hard enough be- . fore the new unrest and state-of-emergency regulations, residents say. Now smoke and tear-gas mix regularly with the acrid smog from hard coal fires used for cooking and heat-

Young blacks terrorise some townships to enforce consumer boycotts of white businesses, to seek, out police informers, or to extort money under the cover of political goals. “If you go to work, you must pray to God to help you,” Mrs Ntombi said.

“When you come home, you must pray again. Maybe they catch a bus and fire it If you buy in town, they throw it away. Or you must drink it If it is bleach, or fish oil, you must drink it. But they burn the shops in Soweto. Where to go?”