Sunday Times (UK): Homeless carted out of Cape Town and Johannesburg for World Cup

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6898087.ece

South African cities are planning to create “concentration camps” to house thousands of poor people well away from the football stadiums where next year’s World Cup will be staged, charities say.

Human rights groups in Cape Town and Johannesburg have expressed outrage at leaked plans to clear the streets of the homeless during the tournament. Councils in Johannesburg and Durban have told charities that street children and the destitute will be “compassionately” relocated out of city centres from next month.

Bill Rogers, from the Addiction Action Campaign, which helps thousands of drug abusers in Johannesburg, said the city had asked charities for assistance with the scheme.

He said: “We’ve been made aware of the city’s plans to move thousands of homeless people to shelters away from the city.”

Fifa, world football’s governing body, insists stadiums have smart surroundings. One rule states that no cranes or building sites should be visible around stadium skylines during the World Cup.

The clean-up is also expected to target street hawkers, unofficial security guards and thousands of immigrant traders from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Somalia.

In Cape Town the move to rehouse the poor has been met with fury by members of a newly established group called Stop Concentration Camps for Homeless People, whose supporters compare the move to the apartheid era, when black people were cleared from “whites only” districts.

Linzi Thomas, from MyLife, a Cape Town charity for street children, said the policy would damage children’s prospects. “Proposals to move them out of sight and out of mind are not only absurd and counter-productive but a gross violation of basic human rights,” she said. “What happens to these people beyond 2010?”

Violet Modise from Johannesburg’s displaced persons unit defended the plans. She claimed they were aimed at restoring “the dignity of the homeless”.