2010 World Cup revamp: squatters evicted from Jo'burg

More than 300 destitute people of South Africa's Johannesburg city are currently facing eviction from their squats. The move is part of Johannesburg's inner-city regeneration programme ahead of the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Two stadiums are being readied for the tournament. The process, which has been stalled over the past year, resumed after the Supreme Court of Appeal recently ruled that the city can evict 300 squatters from its six inner-city buildings under the National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act.

JOHANNESBURG

Barely a week after passing a constitutional amendment that empowered Zimbabwe to seize land owned by the whites without paying compensation, the government has done a volte face after renewed pledges by Western donors to provide finance for land redistribution. Over the past two months black squatters have been invading and occupying hundreds of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe. Now the government is asking them to abandon the captured land.

Rising above the muck

JUST 6 months ago, Vijay Vihar was a dirty blob on the capital's ever-expanding map. The 5.67 ha of land on the outskirts of north Delhi houses a dusty, unauthorised colony of 40,000 people. But today the residents have at one shot challenged the government and the vested interests in giving themselves a proper sewage system. Bhupinder Singh Rawat, resident and social worker, says

Helping slum-dwellers to help themselves

AT LEAST 600 million of the 1.5 billion urban inhabitats in AsiaAfrica and Latin America live in squattersettlements on illegally occupied land or in housingdevelmopment schemes that never received municipalapproval.

Transforming a Karachi slum into a tidy suburb

Katchi abadis (illegal squatter colonies) are a common feature in Pakistan's rapidly expanding cities. Karachi alone has 362 such colonies, housing more than 3 million people -- about 40 per cent of the city's population. These settlements have sprung up since the 1970s as a result of immigration from rural Pakistan and from Bangladesh and India.