Johannesburg - By dusk yesterday the squatter camp which had mushroomed on vacant land near Johannesburg International Airport had all but disappeared, writes Patrick Laurence. The will to defy a court order to vacate the land dissipated in face of a privately owned demolition squad backed by armed police.
Instead of the physical confrontation which observers feared, some squatters left voluntarily even before the arrival of the 60-strong removal crew, many of whom were armed with crow bars.
The resistance that greeted the men mandated to evict the squatters was psychological: women stripped to the waist to disconcert the "mercenaries" doing the government's "dirty work" and squatters of both sexes chanted abuse. The removers fulfilled their task behind a protective police shield. The Pan Africanist Congress - which had encouraged the occupation of the vacant land - launched its own form of psychological warfare. It castigated the Safety and Security Minister, Mr Steve Tshwete, as a "drunkard" without compassion for the poor.