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on a gentle hillside surrounded establish themselves as a com­ I have met the people of Mo­ by green fields of flourishing munity und somehow find a thopiestad. I have spoken with crops, with the farmers in the means of earning their liveli­ them. I am deeply impressed • fields, the women about their hood, having been deprived of with their dignity and their in­ homes and the children, all in their cuttle and their fanns. tegrity. They do not wish to neat uniforms, in their schools. I am sure you icould agree more. They are doing every­ I am quite sure that the Chief that no ideology can provide an thing within their pouter to pre­ would welcome a visit from you adequate excuse for such in­ vent themselves from being and we would be hapjry to ar­ humanity perpetrated by man moved. I hope that you will do range it. against man. There is no fric­ everything within your power to ensure that they are not It is horrifying to think that tion in the area of Mothopiestad. moved, and that they are no these solid houses must be de­ The surrounding white farmers longer harassed by the authori­ molished, the life that has been use the available labour provided ties who are trying to make established there destroyed, and by the village as and when they " voluntary” a removal which the the people uprooted, with what need it. It is a peaceful, settled people resist with every fibre of is left of their property after little black community, quietly their being’. the demolitions, and dumped on going about the business of pro­ Jill Wentze! bare ground in a forest of shiny viding for itself and husbanding tin toilets, there to try to re- the land and its resources. National Vice-President Q • ------An empty table labelled independence by Dr Margaret Nash

HOULD CISKEI join Transkei to form one inde- But Group Areas removals affecting over half a S pendent Xhosa nation as Pretoria was pro- million 'coloured’ people and ‘coloured labour posing? In 1976 Chief Lennox Sebe dismissed the preference area policy’ penalising a quarter of a question out of hand, declaring . . Our people million Africans in the Western Cape are also part cannot eat flags or constitutions . . . Is any benefit of the Grand Plan. to be found in one destitute family joining another So, the things that distress us locally — pass to sit down at the empty table?' arrests, dawn raids, destruction of plastic squatter G During that same year the Herschel and Glen shelters, dogs, teargas and shooting — do not Gray districts, comprising 45 percent of Ciskei happen by mischance. Without them the home- land area, were ceded to Transkei, and some lands resettlement policy cannot work. 50 000 inhabitants trekked south to Thornhill and Similarly, homeland casinos with the gambling, Zweledinga (‘the promised land ). For Ciskei the blue films and sex.across the colour line, forbidden net result was less land and more hungry people. in the Republic, are not simply the result of entre- Yet, in December last year, against the express preneurial vigour. They are the outward and visible recommendation of his own Quail Commission, signs of the largest single item of world trade — Chief Lennox Sebe led his people to an empty tourists; particularly the kind of tourism that ex- table labelled independence. And Pretoria notched ploits Third World countries as playgrounds for up another victory in the campaign to rid the Re- the spoilt children of First World affluence. public of political and other obligations to three- Government spokesmen defend the homelands quarters of the South African population. and resettlement policy in terms of ethnicity and That campaign, expressed in homelands con- the right of each group to preserve its identity and solidation and massive population removals, is at develop along its own lines. They say little about once simple, sophisticated and incredibly ambi- the devastating economic and social effects of the tious. Simple in that it aims to excise from Repub- policy. lic territory a series of black homelands not ex- Economically the facts are stark. The 1913 Land ceeding 14 percent of the whole and establishing in them eight or nine (or ten . . .) independent Act enabled the white minority to effect a primitive black nations. accumulation of capital (land, minerals and other If you live in the Fairest Cape it is easy to know assets) at the expense of the blacks. Africans, little and care less about happenings north of the driven into reserves and locations comprising six Hex River Mountains. Easy that is, if you are white. percent of the land area, could no longer sustain ttu m . themselves by farming, and ever greater numbers there is less and less civilian and therefore has to were forced into the migrant lafcour systems. be more and more military — and dependent on These workers lacked bargaining power, so the the growing non-white element. As in Rhodesia in surplus value resulting from their work accrued to the 1970s, it is possible to manipulate black into the ruling class In 1970 the top 10 percent of the fighting black on behalf of white supremacy — population received 58 percent of national income but for how long? Especially when most of the while the bottom 20 percent received only two blacks, whether permanently resident in the Re- percent. White South African living standards are public. or not, are constitutionally foreigners among the highest in the world, while the diseases This is the context for the well-publicised cf poverty — TB, kwashiorkor, gastro-enteritis and changes and concessions: trade unions, better iis adult cousin cholera — ravage the black popu- wages and job training, promises of housing, TV2 lation. particularly in the rural areas. and TV3. Also for the detentions and virtual rule Socially the havoc is equally evident. Family life of terror in Venda and Ciskei, and the ex-Selous is almost non-existent for 1,5 million migrant Scout military presence in Transkei — not to men- workers and their dependants. Homelands popula- tion the rising tide of border warfare, urban indus- tions comprise the aged and disabled, women and trial sabotage, worker and civil unrest in the Re- children, and the unemployed. Denser settlements public. are agglomerates of uprooted, atomised part- Contrast this with the jubilee of biblical tradi- families. Many old people are so traumatised by tion, the year of rejoicing in which land — held as removal as to display symptoms of organic brain a trust — is redistributed to the people. Good jia m a g e . Memories no longer vitalise and enricn news indeed to the poor, liberation to those bur- V --eir declining years, instead, there is depression dened with debt and endless wage labours (Levi- ^ n d vacancy. ticus 25). Such was the imagery with which Christ Once viable villages and rural communities, chose to begin his public ministry, the mandate he swamped by thousands of new arrivals, no longer sought to fulfil (Luke 4, 18). nourish their inhabitants. Instead, it is each for If as a country we stand in this tradition, as the himself and devil take the hindmost. constitution maintains, how can we endlessly Recall some of the recent reports about Laings- blame the unrest and disorder on external forces burg one year after the flood — the complaints and the communist onslaught? Can we not see about the cramped uninsulated pr.efabs, the dust, that in fact the most dangerous threat to the future the sense of disorientation, of resentment and of any nation is a state terrorism that exiles, op- frustration. The black uprooted have not suffered presses and drives to desperation the majority of the sudden loss of life on a large scale as did the its inhabitants? Laingsburg community. But in most other ways Only justice, rule of law and full human rights they have been no less the victims of disaster, ye! for all inhabitants of a reunited South Africa can lacking the assistance of crisis squads, ‘disaster ensure the peace, security and prosperity we medicine' specialists and an abundantly generous desire for our children. public. 'You cannot have a nation without people', said Chief Sebe. Nor can you consolidate a homeland £')ithout pushing and pulling its putative citizens ^jpm the white areas into the Trust farms that are be handed over in the fullness of time. Statement But such resettlement is a political timebomb. The Black Sash is totally opposed to capital People relocate in response to harassment, cash punishment believing that ft has a destructive subsidies, the promise of land or at least security effect on society that far outweighs any deter­ of tenure, and the hope of a better future for their children. But homeland leaders cannot deliver the rent advantage some people believe it might goods and disillusion soon blankets briefly vital have. settlements. While the adults may sink into apathy, in youth the sap of life is still rising. We contemplate with concern the prospect of Frustration erupts into school boycotts, stoning our society attempting to solve rising tension of buses, violent clashes .with army and police, in the future by increased use of judicial killing. detentions and seething anger. Drop-outs are We are appalled that the gallows in Pretoria quickly absorbed into the gangs that terrorise the settlements Pupils who return to school experi- allows for the simultaneous hanging of seven ence little sense of reward or satisfaction. Like the people and we condemn the practice of multiple alienated youth of Northern-Ireland, both scholars hangings, the barbarity of which was made and drop-outs in the homelands resettlements offe- manifest in a report in The Star of 15/7/81 of fertile ground to recruiters of guerilla armies. the use of teargas to quieten the resistir.g vic­ The SADF is rightly concerned about the security tims of one such multiple hanging. situation in the rural areas. The white presence

25 Collection Number: AK2117

DELMAS TREASON TRIAL 1985 - 1989

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