Ex-rugby boss told to vacate his home

Nkanunu served eviction notice after rent-free living

FORMER SA rugby boss Silas Nkanunu and his wife, who have stayed rent free in two houses belonging to the Coega Development Corporation for more than a decade, were yesterday evicted.

The Port Elizabeth High Court ruled that the prominent attorney and his wife, Bukelwa Mengezelezi, were unlawful occupiers of the two units in the CDC’s Vulindlela Village housing development and said they should vacate them.

Judge Clive Plasket has given the couple till mid-January to ensure the two units are vacated.

Mengezelezi had claimed in court papers that other members of their family occupy the second unit.

Mengezelezi and Nkanunu first took occupation of the two units when their company Eurest Support Services Coega (ESS Coega) was appointed to manage Vulindlela Village, which had been built to accommodate people employed in the construction of the port and the Industrial Development Zone.

But in 2009 the CDC terminated the contract. ESS Coega accepted the termination in writing. The company retrenched staff in December 2009.

In early 2010, the CDC entered into new lease agreements with all those living in the village.

It agreed Nkanunu and Mengezelizi could remain in the units at a rental of R3 000 a month per unit.

A six-month lease was drawn up but never signed and no rent exchanged hands.

Finally, early this year, the CDC asked the family to vacate the two units, but Mengezelezi refused.

She said in court papers they were entitled to live there for the duration of the contract between ESS Coega and the CDC.

She denied the contract had been terminated in its entirety and claimed the handover process from her company to the CDC had never been completed and there was still a dispute about money owed.

However, Plasket found in favour of the CDC’s contention that the management agreement had been terminated.

He found in any event that the agreement had never given employees or directors of ESS Coega a right to occupy units in the construction village in the first place.

He accepted the CDC’s version that the agreement had ended in 2009 and whatever tacit right they may have had to occupy the units had ended then.

“In any event, the letter sent to them by the CDC’s attorneys on 18 February 2016 put paid to whatever tacit right there may have been to allow them to occupy the units. They were unequivocally given notice to vacate the units by 31 March 2016.”

The CDC had effectively been deprived of their possession and use of the two units for more than a decade and the couple had never paid rent.

It was therefore just and equitable to evict them and all those who occupied the units through them.