Court ends bid to move community
ACOMMUNITY “as old as the hills of Eshowe” will not be evicted from its land to make way for the construction of a shopping centre, after a court ruling roasted the local municipality for failing in its duties.
Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Yvonne Mbatha said the occupiers described their treatment as “reminiscent of forced removals of black people from their land without compensation and without due regard to their rights”.
The occupiers accused the Umlalazi Municipality and the developers of the proposed R165 million shopping centre of “acting in an undignified and unlawful way in pursuit of a commercial agenda” – a sentiment supported by the judge, who said “their unlawful actions stand out like a sore thumb and cannot be condoned”.
Bongani Molefe and his neighbours on the land in the King Dinuzulu suburb of the Umlalazi Municipality first approached the high court in February this year and obtained an interim order stopping the municipality, Silver Back Properties, which “bought the land” from the municipality, and project managers HBC Investments, from forcing them off.
The matter recently came before Judge Mbatha for a decision on whether or not the interdict should be finalised.
Molefe and the Ingonyama Trust claimed the land had been occupied since 1890 by a tribe under the chieftainship of Inkosi Zungu. It was trust land administered in terms of Zulu law custom, practice and culture.
The validity of the sale of the land by the municipality to Silver Back Properties in 2001 was disputed because, they claimed, the land still belonged to the trust.
When the application for the interim order was made, the two private companies had already started clearing the land to build the shopping centre, destroying fruit trees and vegetation.
Molefe, in the court papers, said illegal squatters had been moved without a court order. The municipality had then served them with notices addressed to “the occupiers”, signed by the municipal manager, saying the site was to be totally cleared. They were given until February 10 this year to move “or the bulldozers will come and demolish their homes”.
Opportunistic
The municipality, in opposing the application, contended that the trust did not own the land and the occupants were being “opportunistic”.
It claimed the previous occupants were relocated and given one-roomed RDP houses.
The judge said, however, that aerial photographs showed this was not the case and there were “various old homesteads on the land” in which people had lived for many years.
She said there was no evidence any alleged award of the RDP houses in 1996 to any of the present occupiers’ ancestors “was a compensation for their rights to the land”, and “more so it could not be accepted as adequate compensation”.
She said it was clear the trust needed to obtain a declaratory court order defining the rights of the parties to the land. But in the meantime, the occupants had rights and “no one should ever be evicted without a legal process”.
“The municipality has a role to play in giving priority to the basic needs of a community, a role which is in line with the constitution, a role which it should not have abandoned in favour of a commercial venture,” Judge Mbatha said, confirming the interdict and ordering that the trust make the necessary order within 60 days.