Homeland evicts squatters

Press, 1 February 1986, Page 10

Homeland evicts squatters

NZPA-AP Johannesburg

Thousands of homeless blacks, victims of a twist in South Africa’s apartheid policy, sat along a coastal road yesterday pn bundles of belongings, guarding their few goats and chickens. ' ' >

The squatters were kicked out of Ciskel, an impoverished tribal homeland that critics of South Africa’s racial policies say had been Intended as a dumping ground for blacks.

Usually it is the South African Government that evicts black squatters, moving them away from the fringes of white areas. Now Ciskei, a creation of apartheid that has been nominally; independent since December 4,1981, is trucking squatters from a miserable beach encampment on its territory and dumping them across the border into South Africa. . "The squatters are now the responsibility of the South . African Government

“They are no longer our problem,” said Headman Somtunzi, Ciskei’s director of communications; i:

The squatters have been in Ciskel since before its independence. Most worked on large farms owned by white people that the Government bought ,to create the homeland, but their jobs disappeared with the white owners and there were no other jobs.

Ciskei covers an Indian Ocean coastal area between East London and Port , Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape province, about 724 km south of Johannesburg.