2005-10-29,+Making+way+for+Joburgs+rebirth,+Business+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, Property, 26 October 2005 = Making way for Jo’burg’s rebirth = Rebecca Harrison

Reuters

THE stench of human waste wafting through the gloomy lobby of a Johannesburg squat is unbearable, but resident Johannes Poto doesn’t seem to notice.

Once he makes it past the litter in the lift shaft and up the battered staircase to his apartment, Poto enters a different world — one with family snapshots, florid prayer plaques and personal touches that might fit in anyone’s home.

Poto is among the poorest of Johannesburg’s poor who live for free in flats abandoned long ago by their owners and by utility companies who stopped supplying power and water.

Poto lives with his three children in the apartment, which has broken windows and no sewerage system.

Now, he fears things may be about to get much worse.

Like thousands of others who eke out a living in Johannesburg’s inner city slums, he faces eviction and life on the streets under plans to revamp the crime-racked downtown area for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

Human rights groups estimate that 25000 people could lose their homes due to planned evictions which they say violate human rights, flout international law and reinforce apartheid-era segregation by pushing poor blacks out of the city.

“There is a kind of economic apartheid going on,” said Jean du Plessis, deputy director of the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions.

“The city needs to stop treating the poor like criminals and take stock of their desperation.”

The Johannesburg city council is slowly cleaning up the downtown area in an attempt to lure back businesses, residents and visitors, and is waging war on what it calls “bad buildings”.

City officials hope that by the time the world’s gaze rests on Johannesburg for the 2010 World Cup, squats will have been replaced by upmarket loft apartments, smart delis and trendy boutiques.

Many young white South Africans and affluent blacks are already enjoying the city centre’s new bars and restaurants.

“It’s about upmarket city living, it’s about lifestyle and design,” said Alfonso Botha, codirector of city centre developer Urban Ocean.

“If you are upmarket in New York you live in Manhattan, if not then you live elsewhere.”

The council says squats stop people like Botha investing and that cracking down on rundown buildings protects the poor since some have fallen victim to landlords demanding inflated rents.

Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo says the city ensures that the evictions are as humane as possible and has opened the first block of stop-gap housing that can accommodate up to 100 people.

But he makes no bones about his strategy for the inner city: “We are focusing on the need for urban renewal and regeneration.”

And what happens to people who are evicted? “Well — they are evicted.”

Human rights groups welcome efforts to smarten up Johannesburg but question the council’s methods, accusing it of using apartheid-era laws to force thousands of squatters and paying tenants from their homes.

“The council only cares about the gentrification of the city and attracting people who know how to use a knife and fork,” says Stuart Wilson, a research officer at Johannesburg-based Centre for Applied Legal Studies.

Both his organisation and the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions are trying to block the evictions on the grounds that they constitute “blatant human rights violations”.

They have taken the council to court — the case is pending.

Rights groups say it is not uncommon for governments to drive the poor onto the streets as they spruce up urban centres in preparation for international events, noting China has adopted a similar approach ahead of the 2008 Olympics.

But they expected more from Africa’s richest country, given its history of forced evictions under apartheid and subsequent efforts to improve housing in the vast black townships.

They say focusing on upmarket development will drive up property prices and risk recreating apartheid-era splits between mostly rich whites and poor blacks.

Under apartheid, blacks were banned from living in city centres and forced into overcrowded townships on the edge of town.

Some human rights groups draw a parallel with neighbouring Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe this year demolished swathes of slums in a “clean-up” plan meant to stamp out urban crime.

The United Nations said the blitz was a rights disaster.

“This is not Zimbabwe, the motives are entirely different ... but Zimbabwe is a wake-up call about the disastrous results of trying to ‘clean up’ a city,” says Du Plessis.

From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/property.aspx?ID=BD4A106032