The Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB), which may be forced to pay back millions it has allegedly unlawfully collected in rent for nearly a decade from people living on land it controls on behalf of Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, needs more time to respond to a legal challenge.

The trust, which administers 2.8m hectares of land on behalf of the Zulu monarch, had until the end of January to respond to an application filed by the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) in the High Court (Pietermaritzburg) in November on behalf of the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution (Casac), the Rural Women's Movement and seven informal land rights holders.

However, TimesLIVE says it has established that the ITB has requested a further extension until 1 March because of the voluminous documentation filed, as well as the disruption caused by the festive period. This was confirmed by LRC lawyer Thabiso Mbhense.

In their application, Casac, the Rural Women's Rights Movement and seven informal land rights holders are challenging the conversion of Permission to Occupy (PTO) or informal land rights to long-term lease agreements by the trust. A number of people hold a PTO or informal land rights on land vested or registered under the Ingonyama Trust, notes the TimesLIVE report. Two years ago, the trust published adverts in various newspapers in KZN inviting holders of PTOs to approach the ITB ‘with a view to upgrading these PTOs into long-term leases in line with the Ingonyama Trust tenure policy’. The envisaged lease agreements would be for 40 years and could cost the occupier between R1 500 and R7 000, depending on the size of the plot of land.

But the applicants argue that the trust acted ‘unlawfully and in violation of the Constitution’ by cancelling PTOs and concluding lease agreements with the holders of PTOs or informal land rights.

This, it was argued, undermined the security of tenure of residents and occupiers of trust-held land in KZN. It also emerged from the application that the ITB and traditional leaders were forcing woman residents on land under its control to sign leases through male proxies. In her affidavit, Rural Women's Movement chair Sizani Ngubane said: ‘I have also heard of cases where the ITB, or the inkosi, insists that the lease must be in the name of whatever man they find on the property, because they assume that a man must always be the household head. This creates great difficulties if the man is just a boyfriend of the woman who owns and has established the property.’

Full TimesLIVE report