Nearly 130 residents of Winnie Mandela informal settlement in Tembisa have taken the Ekurhuleni municipality and the Gauteng Human Settlements Department to court in a bid to hold them in contempt of the High Court order for the building of their homes.

A Cape Times report notes in 2017, the High Court ordered the municipality to build houses for each of the 133 residents by December 2018 and give them title deeds by the end of this year. But the municipality appealed against the ruling, saying it would not be able to meet the time frames.

In May last year, the SCA extended the deadline for the building of houses to June this year and the issuing of the title deeds to June next year. The residents are represented by the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (Seri) and are now demanding that the metro be forced to comply with the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) order that they be given written reports on the progress of the construction of their homes, which must be completed by 30 June.

In court papers filed last week, Seri’s Nomzamo Zondo accused the municipality of keeping the residents in the dark about whether or not it was on schedule in constructing the homes.

Zondo said the dates stipulated by the court order for the submission of progress reports by the municipality had been successively ignored since the SCA ruling, including in August and November. ‘The next report is due on 27 February 2019. There is no reason to believe that this deadline will be met,’ she said.

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