Legal Maneuvers Replace Force : Tangle of S. African Rules Drives Blacks From Town

OUKASIE, South Africa — This ramshackle town on acacia-covered hills became a homeless camp with the stroke of a pen not long ago, and it came as something of a shock to Mary Sumbane and most of the 6,000 other blacks who have been living here for years.

“We’re born and bred here,” said Sumbane, the 26-year-old principal of Oukasie’s nursery school. “Our grandfathers and grandmothers are buried in that cemetery up there. Our children play in the same places we played as children.”

Yet, one recent morning the government downgraded this 55-year-old settlement, in the jargon of apartheid, from a township to an emergency camp, forbidding new residents and, on paper at least, listing the people already here as homeless. At the same time, the government increased the monthly rent by 50%.

Then, truckloads of painters, escorted by policemen, with reinforcements peering through binoculars from a nearby hill, arrived to scrawl large white numbers on each house.

Along with the proclamation came new rules, among them one that requires residents to get permission from a government-appointed camp superintendent to have an overnight guest, keep a house cat or raise chickens.

The white minority-led government of South Africa, as part of its effort to preserve separate living places for the races, has forcibly removed hundreds of thousands of blacks from their homes in recent years, often resettling them in black “homelands” far from their jobs.

Maneuvers Effective

But the bulldozers and removals at gunpoint have grown rarer, replaced now in places like Oukasie by administrative maneuvers that are turning out to be as effective as brute force.

Making Oukasie an emergency camp is an attempt to “demoralize and intimidate the residents so that ultimately they move ‘voluntarily,’ ” according to the Transvaal Rural Action Committee, which has fought government efforts to move people against their will.

Oukasie, which means “old location” in the Afrikaans language of white South Africa, grew up next door to Brits, a white, middle-class community of 10,000 about 30 miles west of Pretoria. Most Oukasie residents work in one of Brits’ 40 factories or in the homes of whites, minding children and tending gardens.

No Paved Roads

Oukasie (pronounced oh-KAW-see) has no paved roads, no flush toilets and no electricity, other than that provided by private oil-fired generators. A truck comes twice a week to collect sewage buckets. Fifty taps provide water for the entire town.

But compared to the sprawling urban black townships in South Africa, this is a relaxed and friendly rural town. Shade trees are plentiful, and in the small dirt yards next to the shacks of brick or steel are gardens neatly outlined with cinder blocks.

For years the government has encouraged people to leave Oukasie and resettle in Lethlabile, a “model township” carved out of the dry veld about 15 miles away.

“We’re very keen to improve the situation of blacks,” said Andries Brink, the Brits town clerk. “But the only way to upgrade Oukasie is for people to move. At Lethlabile, there are modern schools and doctors, and they even have tennis courts.”

Rubble Marks Departures

Several thousand people have taken up the government’s offer of a free move, and each time someone leaves he must tear down the building on his plot to prevent anyone else from settling here. Piles of rubble throughout town mark those departures.

The residents who remain contend that the government has allowed Oukasie to deteriorate; it has not built a house or added to the infrastructure here since the 1930s. Moreover, residents say, it would cost only slightly more to upgrade Oukasie than to move its people.

Most people here think the government wants Oukasie moved because the whites in Brits want Oukasie moved. The white suburbs of Brits have expanded over the years to within 200 yards of the black settlement.

“They want us to go because the whites want to move in here,” said Elias Sithole, an Oukasie resident. “This place, as you can see, if it is cleaned up and upgraded, could be the most beautiful place in South Africa. The government can move mountains, or whole towns, for whites, but for us they cannot even dig holes for our toilets.”

Activists Arrested

Oukasie residents have stood firm so far, in part because of a well-organized community action committee, of which Sithole is a member. But the government has headed off confrontations with the residents here by using its powers under the 23-month-old state of emergency to arrest and hold town activists. In the past two months, 17 townspeople have been detained by the police.

By downgrading Oukasie to an emergency camp the government is able to exert more control here. The government put up one new prefabricated building at the town’s entrance a few days ago. It will be the office of a superintendent, who will have broad powers.

When new regulations go into effect later this month, residents themselves will become “permit holders” and visitors will not be able to enter Oukasie at any time without the superintendent’s permission. Additions to homes will not be allowed unless the superintendent determines that they are necessary to keep the building from falling down.

Service Charges Rise

Meanwhile, under another government order, the charges that residents must pay for use of the land and services such as water and the sewage truck have been increased from $12 a month to $18. With unemployment here about 50%, few can afford the higher rates.

“They increase our service charges--for what?” said Caroline Sopeng, a 24-year-old resident. “There are no services here.”

Oukasie’s proximity to Brits is what keeps many here. Sopeng’s husband pays 1.40 rand, about 70 cents, to get to his job at a tire and rubber plant in Brits. From Lethlabile it costs 5 rand, about $2.50.

The government says that townships such as Lethlabile, while farther from jobs in the white cities, are cleaner, more pleasant places to live. In Lethlabile, each family has at least a two-room house with metal walls, a flush toilet and, if the occupants can afford it, electricity.

Fields Dotted With Huts

Large fields on the edge of the new township are already dotted with the glimmering huts, awaiting residents. People with more money may inquire at a model home, where builders sell ranch-style brick homes with chain-link fences.

Poppy Matila and her husband bought a $12,000 red-brick, three-bedroom home in Lethlabile last year and filled it with their six children, new furniture and two color television sets. They had left behind a five-room shack in Oukasie.

“Life is much better here than it ever was in Oukasie,” said Matila, whose husband makes a better living than most by operating a rural taxi service. “The air is fresher, and it’s much healthier. I no longer have to take the kids in, time and again, to see doctors.

‘Our Promised Land’

“I was born in Oukasie, but this is our promised land. The government told us they would make a better place for us and our kids, and it was true. In Oukasie, we couldn’t own anything. But here we have the title deed to our land.”

But finding work is difficult as far away from a major town as Lethlabile, which is at the edge of Bophuthatswana, a nominally independent black “homeland.” Some people fear that the government, as it has elsewhere, will give Lethlabile to the homeland, which is a foreign country under South African law.

The government denies that it intends to make Lethlabile part of Bophuthatswana, or even that it plans to force Oukasie residents to move. But it is plain that provincial officials want the community to disappear and, regardless of whether they force people out ahead of the bulldozers, the town’s future is dim.

South Africa’s black majority, numbering 26 million, faces a severe housing shortage, and the National Council Against Removals says that more than 3 million black farm workers, squatters and township residents are threatened with removal at any time because they have no legal claim to the land.

Policy Reaffirmed

J. Chris Heunis, minister of constitutional development and planning in President Pieter W. Botha’s Cabinet, recently reaffirmed the government’s intention to forcibly remove people living illegally on the land. He promised, though, that no one would be removed “for political reasons.”

However, Botha’s conservative white opposition in Parliament has been putting considerable pressure on the government to protect white-designated towns and communities from encroachment by black settlements. Groups working in Oukasie contend that closing down black towns like Oukasie placates conservatives.