[Fwd: In preparation for World Cup, the poor in Cape Town are being relocated]

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Friday, June 11, 2010

DELFT, SOUTH AFRICA -- Shirley Fisher says she was evicted from a hostel
near a stadium where soccer's biggest stars train. Natasha Flores says
she was driven out of squatters' quarters near a new $450 million
stadium in one of Cape Town's busiest tourist areas.

Both ended up in Blikkiesdorp, a settlement of corrugated-iron shacks
ringed by a concrete fence, home to hundreds of evicted families. Many
residents say there is only one reason they wound up in this bleak
place, which in Afrikaans means "tin-can town."

"The World Cup," said Fisher, 41, without hesitation.

Human rights campaigners say South African authorities have forcibly
moved thousands of the impoverished to Blikkiesdorp and other
settlements to present a good image of the nation during the World Cup,
which begins Friday. Cape Town city council officials deny the
allegations. What is clear is that the complaints have exposed the wide
gap between South Africa's rich and poor residents 16 years after the
end of apartheid.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/10/AR2010061002060.html?referrer=emailarticle