The City of Tshwane and the Ekurhuleni municipality have approached the Constitutional Court to appeal against a judgment that municipalities may not hold a property owner liable for a previous owner’s historical municipal debts. A Business Day report notes the judgment of the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) gave relief to home and business owners who had been saddled with years of historical municipal debt, and who have been refused municipal services until the debt had been settled.

However, the municipalities said the new owners were aware of the historic debt when they bought the property and had reconciled themselves to the risks involved.

Before the judgment, sellers were not allowed to transfer properties unless they had municipal clearance certificates for the last two years of bills. However, older debts – those that arose before the two-year cut-off – became the liability of the new owner.

Failure to pay entitled a municipality to attach and sell the property to satisfy the debt. But this section of the Local Government: Municipal Systems Act was declared unconstitutional in November when Judge Dawie Fourie said the section unjustifiably limited the new owners’ property rights under the Constitution, notes the report.

In their notices of appeal, the municipalities argue the debt did not attach to the owner but to the property itself, and that the new owners who had gone to court in this instance knew this, and may even have factored this into the purchase price.

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