According to claims of rights groups, South Africa has evicted thousands from areas around soccer stadiums to project a good visual image of the country during the World Cup.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that 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 newspaper also reported that President Jacob Zuma's government says the billions spent on stadiums and improving infrastructure will create jobs and improve the standard of living.

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

Margaret Bennet, 45, who shares a one-room settlement shack with eight people, said, "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? The World Cup may be important for the high-powered people, but it means nothing for us on the streets."

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

The Post further reported that 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.

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

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