Echoes of apartheid for evicted farm workers in S. Africa FEATURE 02/09/2011

Echoes of apartheid for evicted farm workers in S. Africa

FEATURE

02/09/2011
PLANGENE — A group of farm workers traces a slow arc around the base of a towering water tank, following the only shade on the shantytown’s main street as the sun makes its way across the sky.

The green drum, which holds 10,000 liters (quarts) and gets refilled three times a week, is the only municipal service in Plangene, an informal settlement for “colored” or mixed-race families who have been evicted from their houses on white-owned vineyards in South Africa’s arid Northern Cape province.

Plangene, which sits about 800 kilometers (500 miles) west of Johannesburg, is a scattering of some 50 tin-roof shacks with no electricity, sanitation, running water or school.

“When the farm owners evict us, the only place to go is here,” says Katriena Brown, a petite 62-year-old widow who moved here in 2005, a month after her husband died..... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110209com5.html