JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Residents in Johannesburg's Hillbrow district will see in the New Year by throwing broken furniture on to the streets below.

South Africa's police will send in helicopters, armored vehicles and special units on Saturday night to patrol the unruly area, which has earned a reputation as a troublesome spot at the turn of the year.

Every year, people who dare to venture outside on New Year's Eve are hit by objects thrown out of high-rise apartment blocks - everything from televisions to kitchen appliances.

"We throw out the old stuff because we got new stuff," said computer repairman Dickens Patwell, a 24-year-old Zimbabwean, who had himself once tipped a bed over his balcony.

People toss "many things, like electrical stuff", said his friend James Thomas.

"Microwaves, broken stoves, televisions," the 26-year-old welder told AFP in a bustling Hillbrow street.

"We don't throw things during the year. We can't afford to buy new things then," he said.

However, two years ago, an 11-month-old girl was seriously injured after being struck on the head by a brick - one of nine people hospitalized during New Year celebrations in the district that year.

The following year, locals opted to hurl stones at police patrol vehicles rather than furniture from windows. But emergency services still treated 14 people, including one man who had been hit over the head with a bottle.

In its heyday in the 1980s, Hillbrow was the gateway to Johannesburg for cosmopolitan whites.

People of other ethnicities gradually moved in and Hillbrow became known as the "Latin quarter", where black and white South Africans could live together despite the apartheid regime's laws against racial mixing.

The cafes and music shops were popular haunts of celebrities and musicians.

But at the start of the 1990s, rental prices fell, crime increased and the bookshops and music outlets closed. Restaurants moved to other districts and gradually, whites moved away.

Today, thousands of immigrants from other African countries populate Hillbrow and the surrounding districts.

Beauty Dube, who has lived in Hillbrow for 16 years, said she would be staying indoors with her family to keep safe.

But Thomas said the throwing of objects are not meant to hurt people: It was just an easy way to get rid of possessions that did not work any more.

"We know nobody's gonna be out. We're creating jobs for other people," he said, echoing a popular belief that debris creates employment for street sweepers.

"Those who get hurt are drinkers" who stay outside too long, Dube added.

Officials are hesitant to blame the violence on foreigners for fear of inciting South Africans against immigrants.

Agence France-Presse