Land grab: egg on EFF faces

ORDER GRANTED: AFRIFORUM JOINS LEGAL BATTLE TO REMOVE ILLEGAL STRUCTURES ON FARM

Caretaker says police would not help to stop invasion.

Agroup of EFF supporters who oppose a court ruling preventing them from invading a privately-owned farm in the north of Pretoria, yesterday arrived too late to stop civil rights group AfriForum from joining the legal battle.

AfriForum in December last year helped the caretaker of the farm Bultfontein, which borders Soshanguve, to obtain an urgent court order compelling the removal of illegal structures and squatters on the farm.

Yesterday Pretoria High Court Judge Ferdi Preller granted an order citing AfriForum as an applicant in the application of Bultfontein caretaker Willem Nel.

This was after the alleged landgrabbers fi led notices to oppose AfriForum’s bid, but failed to fi le an opposing affidavit or to appear in court.

The interim interdict compelling the removal of structures and stopping any further invasions of the farm was extended to April 21, when the court will determine if a final order should be granted.

More than 400 structures erected on the farm, but according to Nel not yet occupied, were removed with the help of the Red Ants in December last year.

Nel claimed in court papers the Hammanskraal police refused to help him stop the premeditated land grab and threatened to arrest him and put him in jail for a month if he interfered with the people erecting structures on the farm.

However, one of the respondents, Thabo Tlabela, claimed in an opposing affidavit Nel had taken the law into his own hands by setting his dogs on people and evicting people who were already occupying the shacks.

Tlabela accused Nel of being “racist” and insisted the piece of land in question was part of Soshanguve and not of the farm occupied by Nel.

AfriForum spokesperson Tarien Cooks said in an affidavit many of Nel’s neighbouring farmers were members of AfriForum, which had an interest in the matter because it sought to promote the functioning of the rule of law.

She said there was a worrying trend in that the police often refused to act in cases of illegal land invasions.

It was also “extremely unfortunate that political groupings such as the EFF were behind or involved in these kind of land invasions”. –