Landlord slammed for hounding black tenant

Shell oil exec flees her Hout Bay home

● Oil company executive Busisiwe Mashiyi fell in love with Hout Bay when her employer moved from Johannesburg to Cape Town in 2012.

But the head of Shell’s global business processing centre left the upmarket suburb in haste only eight months later because of her racist landlord, who “chased her like prey”, according to an acting judge.

Mashiyi complained to the Equality Court, sitting in the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court, that Keith Watkins discriminated against her from the day he realised she was black.

Within three months of moving into Watkins’s house, in a secure complex, Mashiyi began receiving e-mails from her landlord telling her to find “something more manageable”.

Mashiyi said she felt inferior when Watkins showed her how to operate the kitchen tap, and instructed her not to shower with the bathroom window closed or “put her weight” on a free-standing bathtub.

She said Watkins told her in an e-mail that he had been told the house smelt like fish and invaded her privacy by inspecting the house whenever he pleased, and in her absence. One day, when he had been asked to attend to a malfunctioning gate, Watkins let himself into the unoccupied house and switched on the geyser. Mashiyi had turned it off to save electricity.

Mashiyi said Watkins insisted that a gardener she had employed needed lessons from him, and he insisted on inserting a clause in the lease that entitled him to cancel the agreement and institute legal action should there be late payment of the rental.

This followed a late payment caused by an overseas trip Mashiyi made to repatriate a relative’s remains.

Watkins demanded that Shell should ensure Mashiyi put a debit order in place and “attend to the garden and pool to his liking”.

She terminated the lease when the situation became untenable and moved to Constantia, about 13km from her daughter’s school in Hout Bay.

In 2015, the Equality Court ordered Watkins to apologise to Mashiyi in writing for unfairly discriminating against her for being a black woman. It also ordered him to pay her R30,000 in damages and foot the legal bill.

Watkins appealed to the high court. He denied discriminating against Mashiyi and said he had been a professional landlord since 1992, managed eight properties, had had “people of colour as tenants” and had never been accused of racism. He said he had only raised practical issues.

The high court dismissed his appeal last month. “Watkins frequented and manifested himself regularly at the property,” said acting judge Daniel Thulare.

“He haunted [Mashiyi’s] residence. He tracked and chased [her] like prey. He hounded her and refused to leave her. Watkins clearly clothed his conduct with borrowed robes, initially as concern for [Mashiyi’s] welfare and later as concern for the upkeep of the property.

“The true colours of his mast throughout were that the property was beyond [Mashiyi’s] lifestyle and management … He had no conscience capable of appreciation for his shameful conduct as he haunted and hounded [Mashiyi] out of his property.”

Thulare also ordered Watkins to pay Mashiyi’s legal costs for the appeal.

Watkins’s lawyer, Brendan Nielsen, told the Sunday Times: “My client is considering his options.”