a6 February 4, 1987 Warehouse ISAI --egiik” 100k, bur Weston Cookies 400 g bag. Regular 2.89. NOW 239 izes to fit ‘Si Reo. -Bounce Fabric Softener 40 per pack 496 Ladies’ Sport Socks 6 per pack, 9-11. Regular 7.98. NOW B98 Girls’ & Boys’ Jogging Sets 100% acrylic. 4-6x. Ticketed Price 10.86. The E Street Band 5 LPs or 3 cassettes, live. Reg. 57.98. NOW es srpnmnreraenee ae * Girls’ Jogging Set Ragian sleeves; pull-on pants 100% acrylic. 7-14. Ticketed Price 15.86. 400 Tube Socks 6 per pack, 10-11. Regular 8.88. NOW {20 Care Bear Cousins Stuffed animals Regular 25.97. NOW D937 Toddlers Corduroy Pants Pull-on boxer waist. Machine washidry. 100% cotton Girls’ & Boys’ 2-3« Reg. 5.93. Now: V2 bs 54’’ Mattress & Foundation Cottager. Reg. 379.00. NOW Cascade Dishwasher Detergent 1.4 litre. Regular 5.66... NOW oo WORKED HARD . . . Instructor. Ron Woodward called the projects ‘three weeks of hell’. CasNewsPhoto by John Charters PROJECTS HELP STUDENTS GET PHOTO PROJECT «+. One of the projects developed by the Selkirk College Graphic C INSIDE AF ICA: Resettling blacks Editor's note: Of all the issues that create lasting images about life in South Africa, perhaps none is more soul-searing than the picture of hag being driven from their homes by the gi This is another report in the Tnside Africa series. By PETER BUCKLEY DURBAN — Standing in the high grass beside the highway, brushing away big pesky flies, wpretea Madlala offered some tolerably good news: Some of the black families of St. Wendolins parish can stay where they are, It's a heady feeling for Madlala and others who care about St. Wendolins — after 20 years of rallies, workshops, monitoring by outsiders, prayer meetings and protests, the South African government has called a halt to evictions of blacks. in at least part of St. Wendolins. In the long history of removals in this country, it stands out as a rare achievement. From where Protas Madlala stood on the crest of an embankment, there was a wide vista of small rolling hills. Most of it was historic old St. Wendolins, land largely owned by a Roman Catholic mission and named after a German saint. ‘The government's change of heart means that part of St. Wendolins parish — that lightly-populated ridge Madlala pointed to in the middle distance — will remain home for a few thousand black families. For 20 years, said Madlala, the black people of St. Wendolins have lived under: the threat of upheaval, forbidden to change or improve their homes, declared by law EXPERIENCE By JOHN CHARTERS “| know it was three weeks of hell for you people and you had to work harder than I ever did in training, but you have done fine and we have all learned a great deal by the experience.” Ron Woodward, head of the Selkirk College Graphic Communications Department, congratulated his students at a Jan. 24 wine and cheese party and work display in the college faculty lounge. However, he said he had two advantages over the class of the previous year. The eight groups had done their projects at the end instead of the beginning of the semester and had more experfénee-with their equipment and materials. Secondly, their instructors had learned a great deal in two years, and he said he hoped for even higher levels of expertise in the year to come. Each group had been assigned a different but practical project related to the needs of the college or the community. Each worked as a team consisting of a production manager, an editor, a designer, typographer, paste-up, darkroom technician, writers and photograph: ers. Team members and projects included: The production of a “how to ” manual for printing. This was one of the first books published by Selkirk College Press. Team: Linda Wilson, Teresa Weber, Terry Boldock, Peter Pryke, Bonnie Baker, Cathy Cruickshank, Danny Wong and Jackie Stepen. To set the format and design of a photobank for Castlegar, Nelson and Trail and to create the first files that will represent the winter season. Team: Valerie CosNewsPhoto by John Chorters Morris, Joanne Partridge, E. Bidinoff, Sapriken, Sandra Mertin, D. Dan, Marg Tracy, Rose Marino, Ted Crosley and Jim Watson. To create a brochure, poster and display ad for Red Mountain ski hill that works together as a package. Team: Shelly Ackerman, Troy Welch, Paul ‘hnoff, to be sq on lands where many of their forefathers settled 100 years ago and were converted to Catholicism. HOMES DESTROYED In the intervening years, many of their neighbors have been evicted and their homes bulldozed. Those evicted were moved to sites in the nearby “homeland” of KwaZulu or elsewhere in the Durban area. Madiale: a slender and intense young black who Bonnie Fidler, Al Mason, Colin Miller, Peter MacCallum Datie Eiche. A four-color Graphic Communications promotion package for distribution to high schools, Canada Manpower offices, art councils, libraries and other areas. Team: Leah Main, Maureen Houston, Brian Sullivan, Janis McKeller, Troy Bauser and Lynda Guymer. A series of small asthe a brochures and posters for different clients: ‘Team: -N Dena Strelaeff, Rick Graham, Marilyn Johnstone, peneneal Guido, George McCuaig, Mike Roloff and Denise Hitt. To create a program for the Canadian Women's Alpine Ski Championship races held at Red Mountain ski hill this wiinter. Team: Eleanor Spangler, Paul Weber, Melinda Harris, Diana Pike, Nicki Kalfics, Brenda Hadikan and John Snelgrove. ‘An eight-page tabloid to notify the rest of the college community of what is happening in the Graphic Communications department and the changes it is undergoing. Team: Elizabeth Dun, Donna MacDonald, Dennis Poulos, Johnathon Hanson, Joan Grodzki, Simon Hooper, Murrey Minchin and Judy Schwartz. To produce one of two desk-top manuals. The first of a series of publishing ventures by the Selkirk College Press. .Team: Fran Wallis; Marie Roulleau, Geoff Lee, George Koochen, Steve Schmidt, Karen MacKay and Sue Neave. in the United States and married into a Quahetets family, spoke with some confidemee about part. of St. Wendolins. For the rest, there are still Pressures to give ~ land: e Pressure from an Indian d into a In the nature of things, few of those moved have been white. The figure — 3.5 million — is worth dwelling on. While bald would be ding, it's as ifa Canadian government decided to forcibly move every resident of German, Italian, Ukrainian and Jewish origin to instant shanty-towns, desolate townships, or rural waste- lands — somewhere away from other Canadians. Many of those forced to move have landed on their feet. On average, blacks in South-Africa have a higher standard of living than’ blacks anywhere else in Africa, as white South Afircans — themselves better off than anyone — never tire of reminding ‘visitors. And over the years some of the blacks, mixed-race coloreds and Indians have created bearable or even comfortable communities for themselves, if they can overlook the insult of being segregated. REASONS VARY Some of the forced removals weren't identifiably racial: expropriations for highways, conservation areas and other public services; overcrowded squatter camps, some private property; tenant farmers whose land is being converted to other use. But, for the vast majority of forced removals, race separation is the motive, say watchdog groups. In hundreds ‘More than 3.5 million people ...have been forcibly removed from their homes’ of thousands of cases the procedure included at least some of the following: e Seizing property and paying a fraction of what it was worth. Moving urban blacks, Indians, and coloreds to more distant township areas so those least able to afford it have to spend more time and more money commuting to work. Removal of urban and rural blecks’ to so-called settlement on the other side of the highway. e Pressure from a similarly constricted town of mixed-race coloreds whose homes could be seen in the distance to the left. © Pressure from a white community on the farthest hillside straight ahead, row upon row of middle-class homes marching down the slopes towards St. Wendolins. e And, not least, pressure from industrial planners who want part of the parish on the northern outskirts of Durban for factories. However, there was enough of a respite and enough confidence in the government's good faith to allow Madlala and some 20 other members of the University of Natal's architecture faculty to begin rebulding the parish's rundown communities. All decisions are taken by consegsus with parish residents, Madlala says, and it may be 10°r 15 years before a black community of 30,000 will have decent housing, shops and services. It is commonly estimated that more than 3.5 million people, one South African in 10, Have been forcibly removed from their homes in the name of the unshakable Afrikaner conviction that people of different colors and cultures cannot comfortably live together. “hy d parcels of land for different — tribal groups. Many blacks have never had a the homelands which, despite huge subsidies from rhs Africa, are desolate tracts without industry or decent Aeris. “Higher prices for land or higher rents for public ovafag ba vel the demand for both land and housing outstrips the supply. The government announced nearly two years ago that forced removals were over, but removals go on anyway. What once was done in the name of the Group Areas Act and segregated housing is now done in the name of “orderly ur ing or health JAIL LEADERS In fact, says Laurine Platzky of the Surplus People's Project, the state of emergency is being used by the government to purge some particularly troublesome “black spots” — clusters of blacks surrounded by white areas. Community leaders who might have led the fight against removal have been jailed or driven underground. “The approach has generally been to crack down on areas with the most organized street committees first, punch the breath out of them, and then do a quick removal while the resource organizations (like Platzky's) are in disarray trying to cope with detentions.” Wooto WANETA PLAZA Hwy. 3, Trail, B.C. STORE HOURS: Monday to Saturday 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday 9:30 a.m.-9:00 p.m. THE MORE YOU LOOK.. THE MORE YOU SAVE Are we masters in our own house? By JOHN CONDIT writer, translator, and retired newspaperman who lives in Surrey. Stonewalling until New Year's Eve, the federal government announced it was allowing the sale by Cominco Ltd, of its West Kootenay Power and Light Co. to Utilicorp United, a gas and electric company in Kansas City, Mo. ‘That apr | compromised Canadian and betrayed a hard-won national distinction. More than 90 per cent of Canadians are served by publicly owned electric utilities, and public ownership is the most likely alternative for WKPL. In constrast, more than 75 per cent of Americans buy their energy from privately owned utilities. They pay higher electric bills, including forced tribute to the political right and its a red-under-every-bed extreme. By nature, Utilicorp is a political creature. Subject to U.S. federal and state regulation, it packs clout in Washington through the Edison Electric Institute and itw own Missouri utility lobby, and through a political action committees favored by the industry The investor-owned utilities, or IOUs (the term, as advertising coup, has entered the language), depend for public acceptance on being classed a private enterprise and profit from the notion that the private enterprise system is in danger. Utilicorp, then known as Missouri Public Service Co., was named by the late U.S. Senator Lee Metcalf and his executive assistant Vic Reinemer in their 1967 book Overcharge as being among 49 utilities supporting Harding College, which purported to foster “godliness and patriotism.” The college was famous for its. Freedom Forums” and was closely linked to the hysterical John Birch Society “They don't need the Birchers any more. They've got their crowd in the White House,’s says Reinemer, today editor of Public Power, the American Public Power Association's magazine. The industry helped to elect Ronald Reagan, who persists, against congressional opposition, in trying to abolish federal power agencies like the Bonneville Administration. The B.C. Utilities Commission can still veto the sale of West Kootenay Power and Light, but the commission's chairman, Marie Taylor, has cautioned that the commission “is not a policy setter.” Mrs. Taylor said the BCUC will be guided by a statutory mandate to disallow the sale if it is found detrimental to the interests of WKPL's customers. i The chief provincial policy-setter, Premier William Vander Zalm, has already offhandedly endorsed the sale, although he said he would have preferred a Canadian buyer. But he has appeared to lean against public ownership with a policy of privatizing unexploited B.C. dam sites. Aroused citizens may still have their say. The BCUC tapped an avalanche of concern at hearings in Trail and Penticton. W.A. Gilmour, a Summerland lawyer since 1952, reported “a phenomenal public protest, the like of which we have never seen before.” Mayor Lela Irvine of Creston summed up: “At stake ultimately is control of a vital part of the Kootenay community and its effect on the people. The impact of such a precedent cannot bef measured. A stake is Canadian control of the are i , its potential.” Gerald “Abele of Nelson, president of the Kootenay Lake Chamber of Commerce, has sparked formation of the 6,000-member Kootenay-Okanagan Electric Consu mers Association to attempt conversion of WKPL into a cooperative. Officials of four regional districts moved toward buying WKPL, but were discouraged by the provincial department of municipal affairs. (WKPL wholesales power to five municipal utilities.) Utilicorp's offer for WKPL, $80 million, is 1.7 times book value. Mining and smelting Cominco needs the money “to improve our balance sheet.” The BCUC caught out Cominco trying to bill WKPL for potential power from two dams it still owns and was ungenerated because of its own production cuts. Already the B.C. government has invested $55 million and the federal government $75 million in Cominco preferred shares to help with modernization of the company’s lead plant at Trail. Meanwhile, Cominco itself has passed from Canadian Pacific Ltd., its historic owners, to Teck Corp. and partners Metallgesellschaft AG of West Germany and MIM Holdings Ltd. of Australia. The IOU’s standard defence for their monopoly role is that htey are regulated. Accordingly, Utilicorp’s case turns on the argument that it will make no difference ‘The foundations for Canadian public power were laid in Ontario’ whether WKPL is Canadian- or American-owned because the BCUC will be there to look to the public interest. me i thus sits in j on its own well as on the sale. But the rates set for consumers by regulators are based on estimates wrapped in prophecies. But prophecies of revenues and costs can never be precise because of fluctuations in the economy and the weather. A commission must avoid rates that would discourage investors or damage corporate welfare. So the utility is likely to end up with greater than estimated profits and, after paying dividends, have cash left to invest in facilities. A 1984 financial report on Utilicorp says: “All funds used for construction in 1984 were generated internally.” Customers help build the rate base, but rather than being rewarded as investors, they are penalized for the use of their money. The spare change does not clink into the public's pocket. But if regulators order the utilities to pay back excessive profits, an incentive for efficiency is removed. In this no-win situation the more hands-on the regulation, the greater its cost to the public. Ironically, the New Democratic Party energy critic in Parliament, Ian Waddell (MP for Vancouver Kingsway), and the former NDP energy critic in the B.C. legislature, Chris D'Arcy (who represented Rossland- Trail), both failed at the BCUC hearings to back the principle of public ownership. However, Waddell said the proposed sale outside Canada was “absolutely crazy.” The foundations for Canadian public power were laid in Ontario — not by flaming socialists but by private- enterprisers out to exploit the force of Niagara Falls and free their industries from expensive U.S. coal. They began at the city level, inducing a new-broom Tory government to create the HydroElectric Power ission in 1906 as and eventually prime senile of electricity to the cities. Private companies were expropriated by stages; a bitter struggle with Toronto Electric Light continued until 1921. Public ownership not only became rooted in Ontario — in 1984 Ontario Hydro served 374 municipal utilities and 768,500 direct rurat customers — but also served as a model for Canada’ The Ontario experience was in the minds of both Premier W.A.C. Bennett and Quebec Resources Minister Rene Levesque in the early 1960s when they brought in the last great additions to public power in Canada. Defending his takeover before the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Bennett declared: “Public power played a major role — perhaps the greatest single role — in making Ontario a great industrial province. Public power will do the same for competitive free enterprise in British Columbia.” He intended to add WKPL to B.C. Hydro but was dissuaded from intruding on “an old love affair.” (WKPL’s average residential rate today is 3.2 cents per kwh, compared to Hydro's 5.4, but the BCUC expects the rates to level out in a few years.) In Quebec, Premier Jean Lesage, prodded by Rene Levesque, called an election in 1962 to complete the Hydro-Quebec system and, under the rallying ery of maitres chez nous, won a clear mandate for IOU takeovers. Maitres chez nous — masters in our own house — is what the Kootenay and Okanagan residents have been talking about.