Toronto Star >>

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA—With uniformed police officers standing over them, bleary-eyed boys and girls slowly get up from the sidewalk, throw their blankets over their shoulders and walk to the police truck, clearly knowing the drill.

The officers herd them into the back of the wagon, where they will sit, looking out grilled windows as they’re taken to the police station.

This is Durban, on the east coast of South Africa, where packs of children and youths sleep outside stores and warehouses until wakened in the middle of the night by a police raid.

It’s also where sandy beaches and luxury hotels have been spruced up for soccer fans coming for the World Cup tournament, which begins June 11.

The vendors and beggars who line up at traffic lights to sell and panhandle to passing motorists hope to benefit from the more than 350,000 tourists expected over the next four weeks.

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Meanwhile, police have stepped up their patrols. Durban police Supt. Joyce Khuzwayo says vagrants and street kids are arrested only “when they break the law, like breaking into cars or sleeping where they’re not supposed to.”

Sleeping on the street is a violation of city bylaws, and police are supposed to bring the children they find to shelters and places of safety.

But Umthombo, a Durban charity that provides educational and sports programs for street children, is monitoring police round-ups and has found that children are not taken to shelters, but dumped out of town.

“The police tell the children they’re not allowed to be here for 2010,” says Umthombo’s Tom Hewitt. “They won’t necessarily use violence at first, but if there’s resistance, they will.

“We’ve had kids come with injuries from being sjamboked — whipped. The children are forced into a truck, driven around, and (police) pick up more children and homeless people. When they have a suitably large number, they’ll drive them out of the city.”

Durban police deny using force, but numerous children complain of being harassed and beaten.
Zoleka, whose last name was withheld to protect her identity, is a petite 16-year-old with long eyelashes and deep brown eyes. She says she’s often chased by the Metropolitan Police, or Metro as the kids know them.

As she walks along the sidewalk, peering into bins for cans and bottles she can sell to earn a meagre living, she describes how police often wake her in the early hours.

“They take your clothes,” Zoleka says. “And they take your blankets. They put you in the van and throw you far away. They also beat you up over there and tell you to run.”

Zoleka says she left home with her sister 10 years ago, after her mother’s boyfriend attacked her. Zoleka’s mother did not believe her or her sister and refused to press charges.

Life on the street has been brutal. She says she has been raped four more times and now has HIV. Sexual and physical abuse are facts of life for street kids.

Eleven-year old runaway Thulani (not his real name) had been living on the streets for a couple of months when police rounded him up for a second time and dumped him 20 kilometres out of Durban.

As he walked along an open road, a car pulled up and a young man offered him a ride. “He grabbed me and threw me on the ground,” says Thulani. “He pointed a knife at me. I asked him not to kill me, so he put down the knife and told me to take off my pants. Then he raped me.”

A 19-year old man was charged with rape but was released on bail and failed to appear in court. A warrant is out for his arrest.

A new report by Amnesty International says police are harassing homeless South Africans and refugees in several World Cup host cities, citing police raids, arbitrary arrests and destruction of informal housing.

The report says police are using bylaws, and regulations created to comply with FIFA World Cup requirements in host cities, to expel homeless people and street traders from controlled access sites and exclusion zones around World Cup venues.

Hundreds of homeless in Cape Town are reported to have been moved to a settlement outside the city. In Johannesburg, too, police have reportedly been cracking down on beggars and street vendors.

“In some cases they’re arrested and put in prison and charged with vagrancy,” says Warren Whitfield of Addiction Action Campaign. “What’s amazing is that they weren’t charged with crimes before the World Cup.”