Category

Homeless

Nov 19
0

Illegal evictions appeal: judgment reserved

By | Eviction news, Evictions, Homeless

Reprinted from iol.com, by Nicole Daniels – 2021-11-17

CAPE TOWN – Judgment has been reserved in the City’s appeal of an interim interdict granted by the Western Cape High Court last year, which prevents it from conducting evictions and demolitions of occupied and unoccupied structures during the National State of Disaster.

The matter before the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) stems from the public eviction of a naked Bulelani Qolani from his Khayelitsha home in July 2020.

The Legal Resource Centre (LRC), representing the respondents in the matter who include the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), the Housing Assembly and Qolani together with Mfuleni residents and the EFF, said: “Our clients opposed the application. Their position has mainly been that the interdict was appropriately granted by the Western Cape High Court as the facts and circumstances warranted the application.”

The City meanwhile said they could not yet comment.

“The City has no comment on the matter as judgment has been reserved and will comment once the court delivers its judgment.”

While judgment from the SCA is reserved, the parties also await a judgment from the Western Cape High Court which seeks “to declare the common law principle of counter-spoliation unconstitutional.”

Counter-spoliation relates to the legality of landowners’ right to forcibly take possession of their land from invaders without a court order.

The LRC said this case was important for many reasons, among them being that it “hones in the importance of judicial oversight and access to courts to the most vulnerable people in our society.”

“The eviction of Bulelani Qolani from his home in July 2020 displayed in full the horror of homelessness in Cape Town and its associated precarity. It is clear to anyone who watched the video that the eviction of Mr Qolani – in the midst of a pandemic that required people to stay home – that the actions of the City clearly conflicted the legislation around evictions, the moratorium on evictions, the regularly gazetted Disaster Management Regulations and do not conform with their Constitutional duties. These actions emphasised the crucial need for judicial oversight in any eviction,” the organisation said.

For further information

Simon Dippenaar & Associates, Inc. is a Cape Town law firm of specialist eviction lawyers, now operating in Johannesburg and Durban, helping both landlords and tenants with the eviction process. Contact one of our eviction attorneys on 086 099 5146 or simon@sdlaw.co.za if you need advice on the eviction process or if you are facing unlawful eviction.

Further reading:

Nov 03
0

City of Cape Town to approach ConCourt as unlawful occupations increase

By | constitutional law, Eviction news, Homeless

Reprinted from News24, by Cebelihle Mthethwa – 2021-10-27

  • The City of Cape Town will be approaching the Constitutional Court for assistance regarding unlawful occupations.
  • According to the City, there had been an increase in unlawful occupations.
  • This had resulted in large pockets of City-owned land earmarked for the development of public services.

The City of Cape Town says it will approach the Constitutional Court to challenge a part of the Disaster Management Act (DMA) regulations following an increase in unlawful occupations.

According to the City, following the declaration of the state of national disaster due to Covid-19, it had observed an increase in unlawful occupation as well as an increase in a variety of makeshift structures and tented camps being erected throughout the metro.

This included parks, environmentally sensitive pockets of land, road reserves, pavements, under bridges and between highway barriers.

“This has resulted in the unlawful occupation of large pockets of City-owned land earmarked for the development of public services,” the City said in a statement on Wednesday.

It added that the Western Cape High Court judgment in the matter of South African Human Rights Commission versus City of Cape Town and Others had severely curtailed the private property owners and the City’s ability to protect its land, leaving the City with few options to prevent and respond to unlawful occupations.

“To this end, the City will be applying for eviction applications on 595 tented camp and land invasion hotspots.”

According to the Cape metro, the continued land invasions negatively impacted on the City’s ability to comply with its constitutional mandate. In 2017, there were 14 289 land invasions in the City.

Numbers

“In 2018, that number had increased to 87 500 land invasions and by 2018, 232 8559 ha [hectares] of City owned land had been lost to unlawful occupiers,” the City added.

Most of the unlawfully occupied land was said to not be suitable for human settlements or the installation of bulk services and had great constraints.

“The City’s ability to protect its property is severely curtailed, the unlawful occupations are an extreme health and safety hazard for unlawful occupiers, some of whom have occupied dams, wetlands, nature reserves and waterlogged land, and the City is called on to provide emergency housing to unlawful occupiers before it can access its land to deliver services, including housing and sanitation to the thousands of residents who have not taken the law into their own hands.”

The metro said that through rates funding, it contributed to operating and maintenance costs for informal settlements, but added that resources were not unlimited.

“The president and the minister of co-operative governance have not responded to the City’s requests to engage in respect of the up-liftment of the DMA regulations. The City therefore has no alternative, but to apply to the court to have the regulations set aside,” the City added.

For further information

Simon Dippenaar & Associates, Inc. is a Cape Town law firm of specialist eviction lawyers, now operating in Johannesburg and Durban, helping both landlords and tenants with the eviction process. Contact one of our eviction attorneys on 086 099 5146 or simon@sdlaw.co.za if you need advice on the eviction process or if you are facing unlawful eviction.

Further reading:

Oct 03
0
Image of homeless man pushing a trolley of possessions

Judgment reserved in District Six homeless eviction case

By | Eviction news, Homeless

The District Six eviction saga continues. Reprinted from News24, by Marvin Charles – 2021-10-01

The Western Cape High court has reserved judgment in the eviction case of 46 homeless people in District Six, whose structures were forcibly destroyed by law enforcement officials, two weeks ago.

The legal team for the City of Cape Town, argued that it had offered alternative accommodation in Philippi and said they would return the shelters that was taken from those affected.

Legal counsel, Roseline Nyman, told the court when law enforcement arrived at the scene, there were 60 people at the site.

“Whatever has been in the City’s possession, the City will return those items. When law enforcement officials arrived at that site, the majority of the people complied with the request to remove their goods and structures,” Nyman said.

She added that a handful of people became agitated with officials because they had no court order to remove the structures.

“The majority of people already had their items removed. Whatever [items] is at the site in Ndabeni, the City will return to them because what would the City do with it. The items were impounded and the homeless are entitled to receive them,” she said.

Nyman said 17 confiscation notices were issued to the homeless people, where their tents were removed.

Judge Rosheni Allie questioned whether the City had any inventory in place to indicate which items and property belonged to whom, to which Nyman responded that they had no inventory, and that the discretion was with the homeless.

Allie said:

There may as well be a squabble as to whose belongings are whose. If you have no inventory and items were taken, in addition to abandoned tents taken from people, who were not home, who’s to know what belongs to who.

Nyman stressed that a substantial number people living in District Six could be “undocumented foreigners”.

But Ndifuna Ukwazi’s lawyer, Ranjan Jaga, told the court while the country was in a national state of disaster, the City was removing people from their homes.

“The City must be considerate of the supreme law of this country and the Constitution of the country as well as the Disaster Management Act. I have not heard an argument about the state of disaster; we are in a national lockdown and it’s a pandemic. You cannot remove people from their home under this state of disaster,” Jaga said.

Jaga added the possessions of the homeless were not returned by the City.

“There are layers of legislation involved in this, like the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act (PIE ACT) which prohibits carrying out unlawful occupation,” he said.

Meanwhile, the City, on Wednesday, brought an urgent court application requesting that Allie recuse herself on grounds that she could be biased.

Allie dismissed the application with costs, saying she was not persuaded on a conspectus of all incidents during the course of the hearing.

For further information

Simon Dippenaar & Associates, Inc. is a Cape Town law firm of specialist eviction lawyers, now operating in Johannesburg and Durban, helping both landlords and tenants with the eviction process. Contact one of our eviction attorneys on 086 099 5146 or simon@sdlaw.co.za if you need advice on the eviction process or if you are facing unlawful eviction.

Further reading: