For The People. Anelia Schutte

one case, however, twenty-two black families settled in a wooded area called Hunters Home that, unbeknownst to them, was private property belonging to white people. And suddenly Knysna took notice.

      During a particularly bitter winter in 1972, those twenty-two families were told to vacate their homes. The municipality allocated an empty piece of land at Concordia for them to move to, and made trucks available to transport their furniture and building materials to the new site, some ten kilometres away. Should the families fail to move, their homes would be bulldozed – a measure entirely within the law.

      When word of the situation reached Child Welfare, Owéna was appalled – even more so when she saw where the families, including several small children, would be moved to: an undeveloped area with no water, electricity or sanitation, where they would be entirely without shelter until they rebuilt their homes.

      But there was nothing she or her colleagues could do to stop it. The people were squatting illegally. And the black community were outside Child Welfare’s remit.

      They could do little more than provide food for the families, giving them bread, peanut butter, fruit and milk powder with the help of the Red Cross and Kupugani, a not-for-profit organisation that supplied food enriched with extra vitamins and minerals. The local Rotary Club contributed too, giving firewood to help the families through the winter.

      When that still wasn’t enough, Child Welfare put out an appeal to the public. Help us help these people, they said. Please give what you can.

      The people of Knysna didn’t take much persuading. Most of them were shocked when they realised the conditions in which their black neighbours were expected to live, and more than one of them felt guilty for not having realised it before.

      One by one, the boxes and bags turned up outside the Child Welfare offices. Jackets and jumpers that children had outgrown. School shoes whose feet had gone to university. Tins of meatballs, corned beef and sweetcorn, some from the back of a pantry, some bought especially. From people’s own gardens came fresh carrots and potatoes. From their businesses and their backyards came planks, nails, windows and roofing. If anyone couldn’t drop off a donation in person, Owéna went to their house to collect it. Back at home, she persuaded Theron to give up some of his shirts and cardigans.

      The food, clothes and building materials donated by the people of Knysna found good homes in the squatter camps. But a bigger problem was the lack of running water and electricity – and there was nothing the local authorities or charities could do about it.

      By law, if the Knysna Municipality wanted to deliver any services to the black community, it had to establish an official black township. But the municipality couldn’t just build such a township. That was the remit of the East Cape Administration Board, the provincial government under whose jurisdiction the black community fell.

      Knysna’s town council had raised the need for a black township as early as the 1950s, even going so far as identifying a piece of land for the purpose. But without the necessary approval from the government, it could go no further. And with such a tiny black community compared to the Eastern Cape, Knysna wasn’t very high on the government’s list of priorities.

      As Knysna’s squatter camps grew and the living conditions deteriorated, Owéna’s boss at Child Welfare, a heavy-browed spinster called Dorothy Broster – Miss Broster to everyone she worked with – desperately wanted to get involved to help the people. But, like the municipality officials, she found her hands tied with red tape.

      At the time, the South African government had three different departments dealing with the welfare of the three main race groups: for whites there was the Department of Social Welfare; for coloured people, Coloured Affairs; and for black people, the Bantu Administration.