THE people of Crossroads, on the outskirts of Cape Town, are the latest to suffer the vagaries of the South African their camp because economic imperatives of apartheid and are now threatened with eviction at the whim of the SAILC mOUSECE.
The authorities issued eviction notices to all residents last May. Since then there been many police attacks in which arrested and at least one man Government representatives have said that "every method available to the will be used to make them move Crossroad: dents face a long struggle to keep their homes.
COMMUNAL The first of the 20,000 squatters arrived in 1975. They were men who were attracted to the city to work but did not want to be separated from their families.
Instead they erected their own homes on waste ground, to live the social life The ward committees of Crossroads exercise a considerable amount of communal But the decision to live as Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 10 families in Cape heart of white South Africa, is too great a challenge to the regime's racial that are citizens of "homelands' in the rural areas and simply migrate to find work.
The homelands policy ab• solves white bodies responsibility for blacks, well as undermining the politihave cal identity of black people.
A Crossroads social worker been described the eviction thus: It is the logical application of the resithey ruling political and economic system. It is an example of happens Africans deprived of political, legal fiction economical ano legal rigats -deprived of rights as human SUPPORT government * Send telegrams of support to ine Crossroads Committee, Cowley 126 Chapel Street, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa. the Crossroads Action Campaign Terrace, London NW1.
Bulldozers move in to clear out Crossroads squatters.