The recent ruling in Rex and Another v Minster of Defence and Military Veterans and Others has been met with scepticism by the 600 Marievale residents who had previously obtained two interdicts preventing their eviction.

In an analysis of the judgment on the Mail & Guardian Online site, Simphiwe Sidu and Tim Fish Hodgson, of the International Commission of Jurists, argue the unlawfulness of Marievale residents’ occupation of the land did not disqualify them from their constitutional rights.

While the SANDF argued that according to the relevant legislation it was not lawful for civilians to live on a military base, Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) Judge Norman Davis rejected the idea that this entitled the SANDF to perform an eviction without a court order.

'As the Constitutional Court has repeatedly held, it is precisely unlawful occupiers like the Marievale community that the Constitution and the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act seeks to protect.'

The authors add that because the SANDF did not launch an eviction application, the residents did not use the Act. However, if they had, they would have told the court that their eviction would not be ‘just and equitable’, as was required by the Act before the granting of any eviction order. The authors point out that Davis was cautious in the remedy he granted the residents. He ordered that they be returned to their homes on the military base within 30 days unless their homes were no longer fit for habitation, or were now occupied by SANDF members. If either of these were the case, residents had to be supplied with temporary alternative accommodation.

The authors say Davis' opening remarks were meaningful: ‘This is yet another one of those cases where organs of state have allowed a situation to develop to a point where a court of law is called upon to address an issue concerning the social wellbeing and dignity of people.’

Full analysis on the Mail & Guardian Online site

Rex and Another v Minster of Defence and Military Veterans and Others