Ex-ambassador in wall legal dispute
Family contend Melanie Verwoerd agreed to pay 50%
A BITTER dispute over a boundary wall in upmarket Vredehoek has pitted the City of Cape Town against an immigrant family from Australia with former ambassador to Ireland, Melanie Verwoerd, in the middle.
The dispute, which is the subject of litigation, could see owners Yazeed and Janine Evans evicted from their home in High Cape, Vredehoek.
The Evans family moved to Cape Town from Australia in 2014 and built their dream home in Vredehoek, taking possession in late 2015.
According the City’s regulations regarding occupational certificates, “Once all building work has been properly carried out and an owner or project manager submits a written request to the City, Building Development Management may issue an occupancy certificate within 14 days of receiving the request, but only if all the work has been completed according to the approved plan, with all conditions of approval met.
“For safety reasons, the new building may only be formally occupied once the certificate has been issued. The City may also revoke an occupancy certificate when a building falls into disrepair and is deemed unsafe.”
The City now wants to evict the Evans family because of a boundary wall that has never been built. The Evans family claim that Verwoerd had originally agreed to pay for 50% of the wall’s costs but later reneged on this.
They claim to have experienced “blatant discriminatory behaviour from the City of Cape Town” and say it is this that “has resulted in the City lodging an eviction application to the High Court”. A letter from the Evans family’s lawyer, Bridget Ellender of Dunsters Attorneys and Conveyancers, to Verwoerd’s lawyer, George van Niekerk of ENSafrica, claims Verwoerd has in her possession approved plans from the City for a wall to divide the two erfs going back to 1996, but the wall was not built.
Ellender writes: “We viewed the plans for your client’s property, which were approved in 1996.
“It is clear from the plans that your client’s erf was cut in order to level the ground to facilitate the building of her house,” she writes, adding: “We suspect that our client’s plans in respect of a retaining wall, submitted but not approved, could be due to the fact that the City was under the mistaken impression that a wall was already in place as per the plans approved for erf 2566.”
In a statement the City said: “We can confirm that this matter is the subject of ongoing litigation in the Western Cape High Court. The City has launched the court proceedings pursuant to its obligation to enforce the provisions of the National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act no 103 of 1977. The City will not comment any further until the court proceedings have been concluded.”