CARDINAL Owen McCann Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, led a party of churchmen this week in an appeal to Dr Piet Koornhof, the Minister of Cooperation and Development, to assist squatters on hunger strike in St George's Cathedral in Cape Town.
The squatters are mainly women with young children who want to be granted permission to be with their husbands, who they say they are able to see only one or two weeks a year.
According to the influx and control regulations and pass laws, the squatters are not allowed to be in the Western Cape, and many of them face deportation to their homeland in the Transkei or imprisonment.
Dr Koornhof told Cardinal McCann that the government could not do anything until the squatters have left the Cathedral and ended their fast.