Buccus: Poor people are not a threat to social order

The mass arrests of the street traders and the Slums Bill are both clear indications that the city and the province are planning to deal with the poor by expelling them from the cities.

The most sober-minded critics are arguing that here in eThekwini and in KwaZulu-Natal we are beginning to see a slower and legislated version of Operation Murambatsvina, the notorious Operation Drive Out Trash, which drove street traders and shack dwellers out of Harare.

Within days of the Slums Bill being passed churches, NGOs, academics and the huge shack dwellers' movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, were making plans to mount a major campaign against the Bill, which they argue is both immoral and unconstitutional.

Abahlali is already working with senior legal people to mount a constitutional challenge and some NGOs have already written to the United Nations seeking their intervention.

Transit

The Slums Bill makes it a criminal office for landowners to fail to evict squatters, makes it a criminal offence for squatters to oppose evictions and, perhaps most chillingly of all, provides for squatters to be moved to "transit camps". South Africa has a very, very poor history with "camps".