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Poor South Africans in World Cup evictions

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, June 10 (UPI) -- South Africa has evicted thousands from areas around soccer stadiums to project a good visual image of the country during the World Cup, rights groups claim.

Human rights advocates say poor South Africans living near stadiums built by the government at a cost of billions of dollars are being forcibly moved out and into settlements, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

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President Jacob Zuma's government says the billions spent on stadiums and improving infrastructure will create jobs and improve the standard of living, the newspaper reported.

Many poor citizens being moved into settlements of corrugated iron shacks behind concrete walls say the impact has been the opposite.

"Why can't they take the money they spent on the stadiums and use it to build houses, not the doll houses we now live in, but proper houses?" Margaret Bennet, 45, who shares a one-room settlement shack with eight people, said. "The World Cup may be important for the high-powered people, but it means nothing for us on the streets."

"We are living in a concentration camp," said Padru Morris, 47, another settlement resident.

Evictions have a historical resonance in South Africa, where hundreds of thousands of people of mixed race were forcibly displaced from their homes under white rule to racially separate the society, the Post reported.

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Natasha Flores says she was driven from her squatter's quarters near a $450 million stadium in Cape Town.

"They want to get everybody out of sight of the Western tourists," Flores said. "They don't want the world to know that South Africans are living like this."

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