Evictions may inflame rent boycott

Press, 29 July 1986, Page 8

Evictions may inflame rent boycott

NZPA-AFP Johannesburg Soweto, South Africa’s biggest black township, is facing fresh violence this week over plans to evict thousands of residents involved in a rent boycott. Last week, the rent defaulters were issued with final notices by the Gov-ernment-created black local authority, telling them that they would be evicted from their boxlike homes if they did not pay back rent within seven days.

But residents are faced with a terrifying dilemma: non-payment means eviction by the authorities, while payment may lead to their homes being petrol-bombed by young militants enforcing the boycott. The campaign was called by the anti-apart-heid Soweto Civic Association because of high unemployment, opposition to rent rises and demands that the impoverished aged be exempt from rent.

The radicals are linking their demands with the release of political detainees, the lifting of the 46-day state of emergency and the withdrawal of troops from the townships. Rent boycotts, some of which have been going on for 20 months, have affected over 30 black townships. They have become the most sustained, co-ordi-nated opposition to apartheid and a significant indication of the depth of black anger, according to the Community Research Group (C.R.G.), made up of university academics. The C.R.G. recently reported that 35 black councils, rejected by militant blacks as part of the apartheid system, had collapsed because rent boycotts had eliminated their source of revenue for running the townships. The boycotts first started in the Vaal Triangle industrial area south of Johannesburg in September, 1984, when popular opposition to rent increases played a big role in the outbreak of the present wave of violence which has so far claimed more than 2000 lives.

According to the Soweto council’s white Town

Clerk, Mr Nico Malan, only a third of the estimated 75,000 registered tenants paid their rent last month, a loss for the council of 300,000 rand ($368,302). The C.R.G. maintained, however, that many people were defaulting not for political but for purely economic reasons: if they spent 30 rand a month on rent they would starve.

But Mr Glen Jwara, a senior Soweto councillor, contradicted this, saying that people were “generally keen to pay, but fear victimisation from instigators.”

A few months ago the council warned residents that if they did not pay up, they would lose their houses to the 22,000 people on the council’s housing waiting list. When that threat failed, tenants were asked to send the money by post to a special post office box instead of paying at township administration offices, thereby avoiding intimidation. But that too had little success.

Many residents believe that certain black officials have passed on information about payments to radical groups enforcing the boycott. This prompted the council to open offices manned by white staff in Johannesburg’s city centre, where a council official said payments were “snowballing.”

The claim has been rejected by the Soweto Civic Association, which has many leaders in detention;

One Soweto resident explained his frightening dilemma: “Suppose I post my rent or I pay up at the new rent offices in Johannesburg. How do I explain the situation when my neighbours are thrown out of their homes for failing to pay and my family remains housed, or if their electricity is cut and my house continues to be lit?”

Residents also fear that people taking over the homes of evicted families will be attacked by militant youths determined to enforce the rent boycott and make the townships ungovernable.