The Msunduzi Municipality has hit back at the Human Rights Commission (HRC) for bringing a ‘flawed’ High Court case against it over the state of the city’s New England landfill site.

The municipality is opposing the matter and municipal manager Madoda Khathide filed an affidavit when the application came before the KZN High Court (Pietermaritzburg) this week.

The Mercury reports the HRC is seeking a declaratory order to confirm that the municipality has broken environmental laws, including the National Environmental Management Act, the Water Act and the Waste Act, and has ignored repeated warning letters and compliance notices over the past 20 years.

In his affidavit, Khathide said the application should be dismissed due to a lack of urgency as the HRC brought the application last November, some two months after it had obtained its information, and did not offer an explanation for the delay.

He said the commission had also failed to investigate the current status of the landfill site and said the interventions undertaken superseded their complaints.

Khathide added that while the municipality conceded that there ‘was a substantial deterioration of the landfill site and that there has been historical non-compliance with its operation’, since he had been appointed in April 2020 there had been improvement at the site.

He said the HRC did not have the right to assume the statutory functions of the head of the KZN Department of Economic Development, Tourism & Environmental Affairs (Edtea) or the Edtea MEC, who are the second and third respondents in the case.

He said the department, in terms of the law, had the ability to regulate compliance and address non-compliance.

‘It is not permissible for the court to be substituted in place of the second and third respondents to fulfil obligations and functions which it is already doing.’

The report notes the HRC has been given time to file its answering affidavit and the matter has been adjourned indefinitely.

Full report in The Mercury (subscription needed)