Authorities in South Africa's commercial hub plan to remove 25 000 people from dilapidated buildings in poverty-stricken inner city slums as it seeks to turn Johannesburg into a world-class city ahead of the soccer tournament.

However, the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) said in a report released today plans to remove squatters and tenants without providing alternative housing were illegal and constituted "blatant human rights violations". "The City sees informal settlements and inner city slums as blights to be eliminated, in its quest to package Johannesburg as an 'African World Class City'," said the report.

"This results in human rights violations and further suffering for large numbers of people who are already locked in a desperate struggle for survival." No-one at the Johannesburg City Council was immediately available for comment.

Downtown Johannesburg became a no-go area for many as violent crime soared after apartheid fell in 1994, but the council is slowly cleaning up the city in an attempt to lure visitors and residents back to the centre. COHRE says the plans amount to gentrification and effectively mean kicking squatters and paying tenants onto the streets without consultation - a breach of international law.

"I would have thought that in a place like South Africa, with a history of evicting people from their homes and homelands under apartheid, that they might find a better way of achieving their objectives," Scott Leckie, the COHRE director, said. Leckie said the latest eviction plan still needed formal approval but that it was only a matter of time before evictions began. According to COHRE, city councils often try to purge centres of slums and squatters ahead of a major international sporting event, noting that China has evicted 300 000 ahead as it prepares for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

from Reuters