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Eviction news Archives | Eviction Lawyers South Africa

Nov 18
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Eviction looms for victims of traditional leader’s land scam

By | Eviction news, Evictions

Reprinted from GroundUp, by Warren Mabona – 2024-11-14

  • Families who were illegally sold plots on municipal land in Mpumalanga by a traditional leader will soon be forced to vacate the properties.
  • The Middelburg High Court has ruled in favour of the Thembisile Hani Local Municipality, dismissing the traditional leader’s attempt to appeal an eviction order.
  • Judas Mahlangu, leader of the Ndzundza-Mabhoko Traditional Authority, has been selling off stands on municipal-owned land for at least R2,500 each since 2018.

The Middelburg High Court has ruled in favour of the Thembisile Hani Local Municipality in Mpumalanga, ordering a group of people and the traditional leader who illegally sold them plots on municipal land to vacate properties.

The group have been ordered to leave the land by 31 October.

But many of the people still living in Magadangana Village say they have nowhere else to go. They say they spent what little money they had, or even took out loans, to build their homes there.

Judas Mahlangu, leader of the Ndzundza-Mabhoko Traditional Authority, has been selling off stands on the municipal land since 2018 for at least R2,500 each.

The battle between the municipality and Mahlangu has been ongoing for six years.

The area, officially known as the Farm Vlaklaagte, has no running water, electricity or road infrastructure. The people who bought stands from Mahlangu will be forced to leave as soon as the eviction order has been handed over to the sheriff of the court to execute, the municipality confirmed. This is after three failed legal attempts by Mahlangu to claim that he had a right to sell off the municipal land.

The Thembisile Hani municipality first found out in June 2019 that stands were being sold on its land. The land has been earmarked for the development of government housing.

The municipality went to court, and in February 2022 the Middleburg High Court interdicted Mahlangu and another man, Johannes Jiyane, from allocating stands. By then 175 sites had been “allocated”. According to some residents, Jiyane works with Mahlangu at the Ndzundza-Mabhoko Tribal Authority.

The municipality returned to court in January 2024, and Judge Mpopelele Bruce Langa ordered Mahlangu, Jiyane and those living on the land to leave by the end of April.

Mahlangu then filed an application to appeal against this ruling. On 23 August Judge Langa dismissed the appeal with costs. The judge said that leave to appeal should only be granted if the court is of the opinion that the appeal would have reasonable prospects of success or is arguable.

In rejecting the appeal, Judge Langa said that, among other things, Mahlangu had failed to prove his authority to bring the appeal on behalf of all of the people occupying the municipal land. “The fact that he may be the traditional leader in the area, did not give him the authority to act on behalf of the ‘community’ and institute legal proceedings without the resolution or consent by the community for him to do so,” he said.

Langa added that the court had made a factual finding that the municipality was the rightful owner and that there was not sufficient evidence that families had been on the land for more than six months before the initial litigation.

Nowhere to go

There are currently about 200 informal structures and brick homes on the land and a few larger brick and mortar houses are still being built.

Many of the residents GroundUp spoke to last week say they now live in fear daily of their imminent eviction.

Jabulani Ngema told GroundUp that he worries that he will be homeless for Christmas. He said he bought a stand from Mahlangu for R2,500 in 2021 and spent R5,000 on building material and furniture to construct his two-room shack.

“I am worried because I don’t know if the municipality will move us to another land.. I fear that the municipality will demolish my home and damage my building material when evicting us,” said Ngema. “Christmas is coming. I don’t want to be homeless.”

Ngema’s shack is on the outskirts of the site near a dam. He said moving out of the area would be a huge setback for him because he wants to start a vegetable garden and sell the produce to make a living.

Another resident owns a seven-roomed house on the site. He said he had spent more than R120,000 on his house so far. “I live with my wife and three children in this home and they love our house. If the municipality evicts and relocates us to another land, it will still be a big loss for me because I will have to spend more money building another house there.”

GroundUp sent questions to the spokesperson for Thembisile Hani Municipality, Simphiwe Mokako on 7 November 2024. Mokako said the court order had ordered the municipality to find alternative land, and “We have indicated that the municipality will abide by the court order.”

“The matter of the evictions is in the hands of the Sheriff.”

Mahlangu said he would not answer our questions before hanging up on us.

GroundUp also sent questions by email on 11 November to the Ndzundza-Mabhoko Traditional Authority but there was no response by the time of publication.

For further information

Simon Dippenaar & Associates, Inc. is a law firm of specialist eviction lawyers in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban. We help landlords and tenants maintain healthy working relationships. Contact one of our eviction attorneys on 086 099 5146 or simon@sdlaw.co.za if you need help with tenants’ rights or landlords’ responsibilities.

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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.

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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: