Residents drag Ekurhuleni to court

MORE than 100 residents of Winnie Mandela informal settlement in Tembisa, Johannesburg, have taken the Ekurhuleni Municipality to court in a bid to hold it in contempt of the high-court ruling which ordered they all be given houses.

The residents are represented by the Socio-economic Rights Institute of SA (SERI), and are demanding that the metro be forced to comply with the North Gauteng Court order that they be given written reports on the progress of the construction of their homes, which must be completed by June 30 this year.

Many of the applicants have been living in shacks since 1994, and despite having all successfully applied for a housing subsidy, the municipality has failed to allocate to them the houses which were built using their approved subsidies.

In 2017, the High Court ordered the municipality to build houses for each of the 133 residents by December 31 last year, and give them title deeds by the end of this year, but the municipality appealed the ruling, citing that it would not be able to meet the time frames.

In May last year, the Supreme Court of Appeal extended the deadline for the building of houses to June 2019, and the issuing of the title deeds to June 2020.

In court papers filed last week, SERI’s Nomzamo Zondo accused the municipality of keeping the residents in the dark about whether it was on schedule in constructing the homes.