Taking refuge in a wooden box in paradise lost
● Author Lynne Lexow thought a move to sleepy Calitzdorp in the Klein Karoo would be good for her writing career. She didn’t plan on becoming the story.
Lexow is a leading character in a property dispute as twisted as Karoo koeksisters and strange enough to be fiction. Instead of quiet days in her writing studio, Lexow is composing legal letters in a wooden hut on land she thought she bought two years ago.
Meanwhile, landowner Pieter Rossouw, 71, has charged Lexow with harassment and claims to have been pelted with stones while sitting on his stoep. He insists he is the victim in a stand-off that has shocked the town at the foot of the Swartberg.
Rossouw is also at loggerheads with another neighbour, Adelle Vorster, who lives with her husband in a renovated chicken coop while they await formal transfer of part of Rossouw’s property they “bought” four years ago.
Lexow and Vorster claim Rossouw sold them portions of his smallholding that was never formally subdivided. The longer the delay in finalising the transfer, the more relations have soured. Insults have now turned to legal action.
Rossouw has even fenced off the driveway to the Vorsters’ house, which he claims goes across his land. The Vorsters claim they are now marooned, and have to park at Lexow’s house and walk to their property.
The spat has spawned a thick dossier of charges, complaints and allegations including theft, defamation and fraud. “People think they can come here from the city and have this peaceful, lovely life — it is not like that,” said Lexow, who has been to court four times in the harassment case.
“When I bought my erf it did not exist,” she told the Sunday Times during a visit to her property, which she shares with her 25year-old daughter and grandchild. “I am now living in a hokkie with two other people and two dogs. I had a beautiful house before and now this is what I have to live in.
“When I meet people they say: ‘Oh, are you the writer who lives in a box?’ ” Lexow said. She and Vorster have set a deadline of Friday for Rossouw to give a written undertaking to finalise their property registrations or face a damages claim.
However, Rossouw insists the row is “completely unnecessary”. Although he declined to go into detail, some of his concerns are detailed in an affidavit he submitted to police when charging Lexow.
A friend staying in his house said Rossouw was an innocent party who sold portions of his smallholding in good faith, only to be caught in a title deed mix-up.
One of Rossouw’s supporters, Lynette van Vuuren, said Lexow and Vorster were abusing Rossouw, despite him allowing them to stay on the property rent-free until “technical details” were sorted out. “These people are bullying this old man terribly,” Van Vuuren said.
Opinion on the matter within the town is reportedly divided, some say along religious lines. Rossouw attends the NG Kerk while Vorster’s father is an Apostolic Faith Mission pastor. Vorster said she avoided restaurants frequented by Rossouw. She said she and Lexow were being unfairly criticised as “troublemakers” and called “daai mense”.
Rawson estate agent Pieter van Pletzen, who facilitated the sales, said the technical subdivision details would soon be resolved. He claimed the delay was a bureaucratic mix-up: the Lexow and Vorster properties were incorrectly registered in the name of another buyer who bought a third parcel of Rossouw’s original holding.
“The subdivision is now with the Kannaland municipality — they must approve it. It is just a question of a few months,” he said, adding that hostilities could have been avoided, “if they just act like grown-ups”.
Vorster and Lexow believe the mix-up could have been avoided had Van Pletzen done his job properly and checked the erf details. Vorster said at one stage she had complained to the Rawson head office, only to be told they would pray for her.
Said Vorster: “We don’t need more prayers because my dad is already doing that for us.”