evict soldiers
Peter Dickson
Armed with brooms and a letter of demand, 30 residents of Mandela Park informal squatter camp in Umtata last week marched through the gates of the OR Tambo complex, which houses police and defence force units, and told officers they were trespassers who had until January 31 to clear out.
The land and the complex – a network of mansions that once housed ministers of the Transkei bantustan – was theirs, they claimed, and they had come to take stock and clean up the “community centre”.
The police advised them to negotiate with the Department of Public Works. The group left but returned later in force, after “persuading” more than 200 “supporters” to leave passing taxis and join the demonstration.
But the complex houses some of the toughest units, including the crack Tsolo and Qumbu special task forces, and after a warning, the rent-a-crowd group were sent packing with two thunderflashes and a can of tear gas.
“Our action was very restrained,” said Wayne Hackart, Umtata public order police commander. “I told them we had to uphold the law and that it was totally unrealistic to think they could overrun the police and the South African National Defence Force, as this was a challenge to the law of the whole country.”
Jonas Ndzambule, chair of the Umtata Peri-Urban and Rural Development Agency, has a different version of events. His body was formed the day after the march “to co-ordinate rural development projects for community benefit and create jobs and combat poverty”.
The group wants the “Vlakplaas-type residential enclave” for community development, he said.
Ndzambule said the group had “official permission” to set up community projects in the complex. When it tried to do this “in keeping with the call made by the government that communities should organise themselves to fight poverty … white personnel … fired tear gas cannisters and assaulted men, women and children who were cleaning the premises …”