South Africa Pulls Back on Resettlement : Won’t Dismantle 3 Black Townships, Will Talk to Squatters

Black Affairs Minister Gerrit Viljoen announced today that he is abandoning plans to dismantle three black townships outside Cape Town and promised to meet with leaders of another black community where riots have left 18 people dead.

The major policy reversal by the white-minority government came as seven black leaders were formally charged with treason, which carries the death penalty. Their trials are scheduled to begin March 29.

Viljoen said in a statement in Cape Town that residents of the Langa, Nyanga and Guguletu townships could stay where they are and could lease their homes for up to 99 years. He said he hopes that his decision will “lead to a sense of permanence and security” among the 150,000 residents of the area.

To Meet With Squatters

Viljoen also said he had arranged, for the first time, to meet leaders of the 60,000-strong Crossroads squatter community where bloody riots Monday and Tuesday left at least 18 people dead and more than 230 injured.

The death toll rose to 19 today, with scattered rioting reported in three black townships.

The riots near Cape Town were triggered by fears of imminent eviction from the dense concentration of wood, tin and plastic shanties about 12 miles from the city.

In 1983, the government announced that all Cape Peninsula blacks would have to go to a new township called Khayelitsha or return to the “independent” homelands of Ciskei and Transkei set up by Pretoria in the eastern Cape.

To Renew Development

Development of existing townships such as Nyanga, which had been frozen after the announcement of the Khayelitsha plan, will be restarted, Viljoen said today.

In a Durban regional courtroom, the seven black leaders were formally charged with treason, and magistrate Trevor Blunden, without asking them to plead to the charges, agreed to a request by State Prosecutor Andre Oberholzer to set the trial for March 29. Blunden ordered the seven held without bail.

Durban police said it will be the biggest treason trial in South Africa in 21 years.

The seven will appear with eight black dissidents arrested in December before the Supreme Court in Pietermaritzburg, 50 miles northwest of Durban, to face treason charges.