The nine residents of Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB) land who successfully challenged its residential lease programme are likely to be the first to have the unlawful leases, which were imposed by the entity, restored to permission-to-occupy certificates.

And, observes a Mail & Guardian report, while the ITB chairperson, Jerome Ngwenya, had intended to challenge the High Court ruling setting aside the lease programme and ordering that residents be refunded lease fees, he has been instructed not to do so by Agriculture, Land Reform & Rural Development Minister Thoko Didiza, under whose portfolio the ITB falls.

Didiza is also pushing ahead with the process of appointing a new board for the Ingonyama Trust, which controls nearly 3m hectares of land in KZN, and will meet with the presumptive new Zulu monarch, Misuzulu kaZwelithini, to discuss who will chair the board.

In terms of the legislation that enabled the Ingonyama Trust to be formed in the early 1990s, the Zulu king appoints the board chairperson.

A source close to the matter reportedly told the M&G Didiza had ‘communicated directly with the chairperson (days after the judgment) that there is to be no process to take the matter on appeal.’

The source said Ngwenya had intended to issue a media statement rejecting the judgment and indicating his intention to appeal, but had been prevented from doing so by Didiza’s instruction.

Full Mail & Guardian report