Notícia disponível apenas em inglês:
South Africa is accused of clearing Cape Town slums to clean up for the
big event.
Victor Gumbi sits pensively beside a smoldering fire in a newly cleared
lot, literally in the shadow of the recently renovated Ellis Park Stadium,
one of the many venues where South Africa will host the World Cup football
tournament, which kicks off this week. South Africa billed the worlds
most popular sporting event as a boon to development that would help lift
millions out of poverty, but Gumbi, a 35-year-old day laborer, says things
are only getting worse. Not long after South Africa was awarded the tournament,
an entire city block in the neighborhood where he lives was slated for
destruction as part of a larger urban-regeneration scheme around the stadium,
as Johannesburg began preparing for the throngs of tourists expected to
come pouring in over the next few weeks.
Late last year, the run-down building where Gumbi was squatting was torn
down, leaving him in a small, jerry-built shack in the middle of a block
of half-demolished houses that local residents have nicknamed Baghdad.?
Now many residents whod been living in the areas abandoned buildings
for well more than a decade feel theyre being forced out because of the
World Cup. They want to hide us. They dont want the Europeans seeing
the people living here, so they demolished these dirty houses,? says Gumbi,
whos convinced hell be removed once and for all before the games actually
begin.
Johannesburg city officials deny that any removals have taken place specifically
for the tournament. Nevertheless, allegations of forced evictions for the
World Cup have been sprouting up all over the country. Local headlines
accuse South African police of rounding up the homeless and dumping them
miles away (a charge the police deny), while residents from across Cape
Town claim theyve been relocated from their squatter settlements and dilapidated
buildings to a temporary camp on the outskirts of town before the football
fans arrive. In this case as well, the city dismisses such accusations,
but it wouldnt be the first time people have been uprooted in advance
of a global sporting event.
When Seoul hosted the 1988 Olympics, an estimated 15 percent of the population
was displaced as a result of the capitals overhaul. And 20 years later,
its thought that far more than a million residents in Beijing found themselves
in the path of a bulldozer in the run-up to the 2008 summer games. Now
a recent report on such mega-events by the United Nations special rapporteur
on adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, states that in many current cases human
rights are going out the door as host cities, including Cape Town, are
being cleaned up to appeal to spectators.
For South Africa, the first World Cup on African soil was supposed to
be different. Initially heralded as an opportunity to raise standards of
living for the countrys roughly 25 million impoverished citizens, organizers
laid out a development agenda for ensuring that benefits trickled down
to the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. Since then the country
has invested more than $4 billion in stadiums and upgrading its airports
and other infrastructure. But in recent weeks government ministers have
sought to play down expectations over its economic payoff, while commentators
warn of being left with nothing but white elephant? stadiums after the
games end.
For starters, the global recession has caused a dramatic reduction in
the number of projected visitors, down nearly 25 percent to 373,000. And
as the kickoff approaches, FIFAs demands for a commercial exclusion zone
around the venues for its official sponsors such as McDonalds and Coca-Cola
have come as a blow to thousands of South Africas street traders, who
say theyre being pushed out for the monthlong event. President Jacob Zuma
has pleaded with South Africans not to air the countrys problems in front
of World Cup visitors, but with the opening match just days away, angry
protests over evictions and substandard living conditions have flared up
in many cities and squatter settlements.
Perhaps nowhere is that frustration more palpable than in Cape Town. Rolnik
reports she received numerous complaintsmore than anywhere else in South
Africaabout residents being forced out for the World Cup and relocated
more than 16 kilometers outside of town in a temporary relocation area?
known as Blikkiesdorp, or Tin Can Town. With Table Mountain as a backdrop,
the sprawling, remote camp consists of about 1,700 identical metal huts
on a wide plain of gravel surrounded by heavy concrete fencing. Housing-rights
campaigners contend that plans to move people to these relocation areas,
far from schools and job opportunities, are in violation of international
human-rights standards, and newcomers complain of ill treatment by the
police and freezing temperatures. Why couldnt they have put us somewhere
else instead of here asks Francisco Green, whose family had just been
relocated from a hostel theyd been squatting in near Cape Towns newly
refurbished practice stadium. It was much better where we lived. Were
going to go through our first winter, and I think its going to be a disaster.?
Several miles away from Blikkiesdorp is the most prominent example of
forced evictions cited in the U.N. report: a vast conglomeration of shacks
known as the Joe Slovo informal settlement (named after the anti-apartheid
activist and former housing minister). The settlement lines the highway
between Cape Town and the citys international airport, making it one of
the first sites greeting incoming visitors. Because of its high visibility,
it was targeted for a national pilot project shortly after the country
was awarded the World Cup in 2004. The project would have completely razed
the shacks and moved as many as 20,000 people to a temporary camp to make
way for new, more attractive housing. Critics say the project was nothing
more than an attempt to beautify the city for 2010, and angry residents
last year won a Constitutional Court ruling that imposed such costly conditions
on the eviction order that the government dropped the plan to move them,
but only after several thousand people had already been evicted.
Its not clear how many of the recent evictions would have taken place
even if the World Cup had never come to South Africa. When the African
National Congress came to power with Nelson Mandela as president in 1994,
it promised to build a free house for virtually everyone living below the
poverty line as a means of redressing the effects of apartheid, which essentially
restricted nonwhites from owning property and living in cities. In practice,
this new government housing has only pushed many poor blacks from urban
centers to low-income ghettos miles outside of town. Now, with a mounting
backlog and limited funding, the program that began by building actual
homes is often reduced to warehousing people in rural transit camps, some
far worse than Blikkiesdorp. Rhodes University professor Richard Pithouse
says that there are currently 100 court cases challenging evictions in
Durban, and that none of them can be connected to the World Cup, although
the link has been made in the press. This idea that mega-events lead to
evictions has become very popular,? says Pithouse. This is very worrying
because people were being evicted long before we got the World Cup, and
they will be evicted for a long time afterward.?
Critics say that political leaders in many emerging economies see no place
for the poor in their vision of world-class? cities, the kind fit to host
major international events. Illustrating this, Marie Huchzermeyer of the
University of Witwatersrand says South Africa is misinterpreting the U.N.s
Millennium Development Goal for improving the lives of slum dwellers. The
U.N. meant to encourage nations to bring services like water and electricity
to informal settlements, but South Africa took this as a mandate for eradicating
slumsa phrase recently used by Zumas new minister of human settlements,
Tokyo Sexwale. The country has set a target for slum-free cities by 2014,
and Huchzermeyer says its approach is being mimicked from Morocco to Angola
and Zimbabwe. Thats a troubling prospect for a continent in which the
majority of the urban population lives in slums.
Rolnik warns that as more developing countries vie to host global sporting
events, the greater the risk that slum-clearance campaigns will become
more aggressive. The 2010 Commonwealth Games will be hosted in Delhi, where
Rolniks predecessor, Miloon Kothari, reported that 300,000 people have
been removed to make the city slum-free? by the opening ceremony later
this fall. The 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics will take place in
Brazil, where Rolnik reports that 35 informal communities? already face
eviction for the event, and this in a vibrant democracy with a long history
of recognizing the rights of informal settlers.? Rolnik says the International
Olympic Committee did cooperate with the U.N. report, and agreed to begin
including protections against evictions in its bidding process. FIFA, says
Rolnik, never responded to repeated U.N. requests over several years for
information. FIFA told NEWSWEEK that it never requested any move or cleaning-up
of areas in any host city? for this years World Cup. However, its also
unclear whether it has done anything to prevent it.
For people like Victor Gumbi in Johannesburg and those still living in
the Joe Slovo informal settlement in Cape Town, such as 64-year-old Nonqaba
Lujalajala, the threat of the World Cup has felt very real. Lujalajala
built her diminutive shack in Joe Slovo shortly after the fall of apartheid,
a time filled with pride and optimism for the future. Today, 16 years later,
she says shes glad football fans from all over the world will be confronted
with the reality of her situation on their way to the games. Im still
starving here,? she says, and now visitors will see South Africa as it
really is, not how some of its leaders had hoped it would appear.
This story was supported by the Henry Demarest Lloyd Investigative Fund
at the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Saurce:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/04/kicked-out-for-the-cup.html
South Africa is accused of clearing Cape Town slums to clean up for the
big event.
Victor Gumbi sits pensively beside a smoldering fire in a newly cleared
lot, literally in the shadow of the recently renovated Ellis Park Stadium,
one of the many venues where South Africa will host the World Cup football
tournament, which kicks off this week. South Africa billed the worlds
most popular sporting event as a boon to development that would help lift
millions out of poverty, but Gumbi, a 35-year-old day laborer, says things
are only getting worse. Not long after South Africa was awarded the tournament,
an entire city block in the neighborhood where he lives was slated for
destruction as part of a larger urban-regeneration scheme around the stadium,
as Johannesburg began preparing for the throngs of tourists expected to
come pouring in over the next few weeks.
Late last year, the run-down building where Gumbi was squatting was torn
down, leaving him in a small, jerry-built shack in the middle of a block
of half-demolished houses that local residents have nicknamed Baghdad.?
Now many residents whod been living in the areas abandoned buildings
for well more than a decade feel theyre being forced out because of the
World Cup. They want to hide us. They dont want the Europeans seeing
the people living here, so they demolished these dirty houses,? says Gumbi,
whos convinced hell be removed once and for all before the games actually
begin.
Johannesburg city officials deny that any removals have taken place specifically
for the tournament. Nevertheless, allegations of forced evictions for the
World Cup have been sprouting up all over the country. Local headlines
accuse South African police of rounding up the homeless and dumping them
miles away (a charge the police deny), while residents from across Cape
Town claim theyve been relocated from their squatter settlements and dilapidated
buildings to a temporary camp on the outskirts of town before the football
fans arrive. In this case as well, the city dismisses such accusations,
but it wouldnt be the first time people have been uprooted in advance
of a global sporting event.
When Seoul hosted the 1988 Olympics, an estimated 15 percent of the population
was displaced as a result of the capitals overhaul. And 20 years later,
its thought that far more than a million residents in Beijing found themselves
in the path of a bulldozer in the run-up to the 2008 summer games. Now
a recent report on such mega-events by the United Nations special rapporteur
on adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, states that in many current cases human
rights are going out the door as host cities, including Cape Town, are
being cleaned up to appeal to spectators.
For South Africa, the first World Cup on African soil was supposed to
be different. Initially heralded as an opportunity to raise standards of
living for the countrys roughly 25 million impoverished citizens, organizers
laid out a development agenda for ensuring that benefits trickled down
to the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. Since then the country
has invested more than $4 billion in stadiums and upgrading its airports
and other infrastructure. But in recent weeks government ministers have
sought to play down expectations over its economic payoff, while commentators
warn of being left with nothing but white elephant? stadiums after the
games end.
For starters, the global recession has caused a dramatic reduction in
the number of projected visitors, down nearly 25 percent to 373,000. And
as the kickoff approaches, FIFAs demands for a commercial exclusion zone
around the venues for its official sponsors such as McDonalds and Coca-Cola
have come as a blow to thousands of South Africas street traders, who
say theyre being pushed out for the monthlong event. President Jacob Zuma
has pleaded with South Africans not to air the countrys problems in front
of World Cup visitors, but with the opening match just days away, angry
protests over evictions and substandard living conditions have flared up
in many cities and squatter settlements.
Perhaps nowhere is that frustration more palpable than in Cape Town. Rolnik
reports she received numerous complaintsmore than anywhere else in South
Africaabout residents being forced out for the World Cup and relocated
more than 16 kilometers outside of town in a temporary relocation area?
known as Blikkiesdorp, or Tin Can Town. With Table Mountain as a backdrop,
the sprawling, remote camp consists of about 1,700 identical metal huts
on a wide plain of gravel surrounded by heavy concrete fencing. Housing-rights
campaigners contend that plans to move people to these relocation areas,
far from schools and job opportunities, are in violation of international
human-rights standards, and newcomers complain of ill treatment by the
police and freezing temperatures. Why couldnt they have put us somewhere
else instead of here asks Francisco Green, whose family had just been
relocated from a hostel theyd been squatting in near Cape Towns newly
refurbished practice stadium. It was much better where we lived. Were
going to go through our first winter, and I think its going to be a disaster.?
Several miles away from Blikkiesdorp is the most prominent example of
forced evictions cited in the U.N. report: a vast conglomeration of shacks
known as the Joe Slovo informal settlement (named after the anti-apartheid
activist and former housing minister). The settlement lines the highway
between Cape Town and the citys international airport, making it one of
the first sites greeting incoming visitors. Because of its high visibility,
it was targeted for a national pilot project shortly after the country
was awarded the World Cup in 2004. The project would have completely razed
the shacks and moved as many as 20,000 people to a temporary camp to make
way for new, more attractive housing. Critics say the project was nothing
more than an attempt to beautify the city for 2010, and angry residents
last year won a Constitutional Court ruling that imposed such costly conditions
on the eviction order that the government dropped the plan to move them,
but only after several thousand people had already been evicted.
Its not clear how many of the recent evictions would have taken place
even if the World Cup had never come to South Africa. When the African
National Congress came to power with Nelson Mandela as president in 1994,
it promised to build a free house for virtually everyone living below the
poverty line as a means of redressing the effects of apartheid, which essentially
restricted nonwhites from owning property and living in cities. In practice,
this new government housing has only pushed many poor blacks from urban
centers to low-income ghettos miles outside of town. Now, with a mounting
backlog and limited funding, the program that began by building actual
homes is often reduced to warehousing people in rural transit camps, some
far worse than Blikkiesdorp. Rhodes University professor Richard Pithouse
says that there are currently 100 court cases challenging evictions in
Durban, and that none of them can be connected to the World Cup, although
the link has been made in the press. This idea that mega-events lead to
evictions has become very popular,? says Pithouse. This is very worrying
because people were being evicted long before we got the World Cup, and
they will be evicted for a long time afterward.?
Critics say that political leaders in many emerging economies see no place
for the poor in their vision of world-class? cities, the kind fit to host
major international events. Illustrating this, Marie Huchzermeyer of the
University of Witwatersrand says South Africa is misinterpreting the U.N.s
Millennium Development Goal for improving the lives of slum dwellers. The
U.N. meant to encourage nations to bring services like water and electricity
to informal settlements, but South Africa took this as a mandate for eradicating
slumsa phrase recently used by Zumas new minister of human settlements,
Tokyo Sexwale. The country has set a target for slum-free cities by 2014,
and Huchzermeyer says its approach is being mimicked from Morocco to Angola
and Zimbabwe. Thats a troubling prospect for a continent in which the
majority of the urban population lives in slums.
Rolnik warns that as more developing countries vie to host global sporting
events, the greater the risk that slum-clearance campaigns will become
more aggressive. The 2010 Commonwealth Games will be hosted in Delhi, where
Rolniks predecessor, Miloon Kothari, reported that 300,000 people have
been removed to make the city slum-free? by the opening ceremony later
this fall. The 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics will take place in
Brazil, where Rolnik reports that 35 informal communities? already face
eviction for the event, and this in a vibrant democracy with a long history
of recognizing the rights of informal settlers.? Rolnik says the International
Olympic Committee did cooperate with the U.N. report, and agreed to begin
including protections against evictions in its bidding process. FIFA, says
Rolnik, never responded to repeated U.N. requests over several years for
information. FIFA told NEWSWEEK that it never requested any move or cleaning-up
of areas in any host city? for this years World Cup. However, its also
unclear whether it has done anything to prevent it.
For people like Victor Gumbi in Johannesburg and those still living in
the Joe Slovo informal settlement in Cape Town, such as 64-year-old Nonqaba
Lujalajala, the threat of the World Cup has felt very real. Lujalajala
built her diminutive shack in Joe Slovo shortly after the fall of apartheid,
a time filled with pride and optimism for the future. Today, 16 years later,
she says shes glad football fans from all over the world will be confronted
with the reality of her situation on their way to the games. Im still
starving here,? she says, and now visitors will see South Africa as it
really is, not how some of its leaders had hoped it would appear.
This story was supported by the Henry Demarest Lloyd Investigative Fund
at the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Saurce:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/04/kicked-out-for-the-cup.html
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