A GLIMMER OF HOPE FOR PRIVATE DEVELOPER

The Land Tribunal has given private developer, Kago Ntebela, a glimmer of hope despite a ruling that he unlawfully occupied the 11-hectare field on which he set up developments outside Modipane. While the Land tribunal found Ntebela’s actions unlawful on many grounds, it was eventually lenient on him, granting him three months to regularise the process of land transfer, as there was no doubt, in the Tribunal’s view that the land belonged to the siblings’ deceased mother. Ntebela had approached the Land Tribunal to restore the plot to him, after losing the land to the Kgatleng Land Board for unlawful possession, but Ntebela pleaded that he had spent over P9 million putting up over 10 houses and developing plots in the estate he founded after acquiring a ploughing field measuring 11 hectares from the children of a deceased person. However, complications arose when the Kgatleng Land Board found during Ntebela’s submission of subdivisions and certificates from Survey’s Department and the Kgatleng District Council that the land in question had never been previously owned or allocated to anyone, at least according to their records, whereas Ntebela claimed the land belonged to siblings of a certain deceased holder, who also does not appear in the Land Board’s records as the holder of the rights to the land.