The Lesedi Local Municipality wants lawyer and businessman Bouwe Wiersma out of the Heidelberg Heritage Museum and is going to court to make it happen, reports City Press.

The municipality has approached the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) to force the Heidelberg Beer Festival CC (HBF), run by Wiersma, to stop operating and vacate its facility in Voortrekker Street, Heidelberg.

Wiersma has run the museum since 2016 through a council resolution and claims to have invested more than R10.8m in the facility.

According to the municipality’s acting manager, Thobeka Zondi, HBF entered into an electricity supply agreement with the municipality through Wiersma. However, the company failed to pay for services, leading to a power disconnection.

She said in her founding affidavit that the municipality issued termination notices in January after Wiersma refused to pay electricity bills, adding that multiple court applications by Wiersma to restore electricity failed, with him ordered to pay costs personally.

She said Wiersma also continued subletting the premises to third parties despite the ongoing legal disputes, prompting the eviction application.

To further justify the eviction, the municipality also argues that the facility was dilapidated and a danger to the public and that Wiersma himself had complained about the state of the property.

Regardless of this, Wiersma is opposing the urgent application, arguing that the municipality’s bid for urgent relief was fatally flawed and self-created.

He said the matter should be struck from the urgent roll with punitive costs because an existing occupancy agreement authorised HBF and HOF’s presence on the property, and that the real dispute lies in the municipality’s unilateral tariff change and its failure to resolve a pending electricity billing dispute, not non-payment.

Wiersma charged in his answering affidavit that the municipality was withholding material facts, including its own summons now pending to determine those billing issues, according to City Press.

He said the municipality had agreed to a second electrical connection and to bill HBF at a low commercial tariff due to the transformer’s limited capacity.

The municipality, however, unilaterally reneged on the agreement by not only changing but also starting to levy a higher medium tariff in January 2020 against the property.

The municipality even backdated the levies to the time of the opening of the venue in March 2019. 

HBF duly filed a section 102 (2) dispute, in accordance with the Municipal Systems Act, but the dispute was never adequately addressed by the municipality.

He charged that the current municipal manager had resolved that there were no merits for such a dispute and ordered the electricity to be summarily terminated to the property.

Wiersma pointed out that this led to a series of urgent applications, but the courts found that the relief sought by HBF was not urgent and struck the applications off the urgent roll on that basis rather than on merit.

Full City Press report