The Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) has ordered the City of Johannesburg to take steps to prevent Dragon City Wholesale Mall and Anchor Projects from utilising Erf 56 in Crown North township for any commercial or industrial activity, or as a parking lot.

The High Court ordered the city to ensure that the use of the land was for the purpose for which it was zoned, says a News24 report.

The Mayfair Residents' Association and six people who own or occupy properties and premises in the immediate vicinity took the city to court because they were ‘unhappy’ about how the land was being used. Erf 56 is zoned in terms of the City of Johannesburg Land Use Scheme, 2018, as a ‘public open space’.

The area used to be vacant and was described by the applicants as a ‘green belt’.

The applicants felt ‘deprived of the use of a public open space where they could visit and be close to nature by using the space for recreation purposes’.

‘It was a green lung which lay nestled between the residential areas to the North and the industrial and commercial districts to the South,’ read the judgment.

But in 2005, Dragon City slowly started taking over the occupation of the piece of land.

It used it as an overflow parking space for its adjacent retail operations and business.

It also erected structures of a temporary nature, also allowing certain employees to live there.

The applicants argued that the business and the city, in invading the public open space, acted unlawfully in that they contravened the city's Land Use Scheme, 2018, as well as the Johannesburg Town Planning Scheme, 1979, which preceded the 2018 Land Use Scheme.

The court interdicted Dragon City and Anchor Projects from undertaking or continuing the construction of any structure made of metal or any other material.

Full News24 report

Judgment