It is likely the end of the legal road for five District Six families who have spent years in the courts to stop their eviction from Victorian cottages in Searle Street which survived apartheid-era demolitions, reports GroundUp.

In a judgment handed down in December, Acting Cape Town Magistrate Juan de Pontes granted an order in terms of the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act (PIE), in favour of the owner of the properties, Ettiene du Toit, a private developer.

De Pontes gave the families until 6 March to vacate their homes. He ordered the City of Cape Town to provide temporary emergency housing and the Department of Social Welfare to assist them to find accommodation in a care or living facility.

At this stage it is not known if the residents will apply for leave to appeal his ruling.

De Pontes made the ruling in an ex tempore judgment in November and then provided written reasons in December. The cottages initially belonged to the Holy Cross Sisters, who fought during apartheid against their demolition. The religious order sold the cottages in 2014 to Du Toit, a Mpumulanga-based developer, for R2.45m.

He subsequently served the residents with notices to vacate. The residents approached the Western Cape High Court, seeking to set aside the sale agreement, claiming they had been given ‘lifelong tenure’ by church officials.

The court rejected this argument, finding their evidence to be unreliable, hearsay and inaccurate.

De Pontes considered the affidavits, reports by social workers on the residents’ personal circumstances, and a report by the city which stated that it had no accommodation available near District Six. 

De Pontes acknowledged that the residents had strong ties to District Six and that the cottages provided a ‘rare continuity’ for families who had been able to remain on the land while thousands of others were forcibly removed during apartheid.

However, the law, and not sentiment, had to be considered and the residents’ averments of homelessness were ‘baldly made’.

He said another relevant factor was that the residents had not paid rent, but had engaged in prolonged litigation, frustrating the owner’s rights, according to GroundUp.

He found there could be no doubt that the owner was entitled to an eviction order, as the residents were in unlawful occupation.

He granted the eviction order, and gave the residents a little over three months to vacate.

While the owner had asked for punitive costs, De Pontes took into account that the residents were lay people, guided by their attorneys, who had been acting pro bono.

He ordered costs on a party-to-party scale against the residents.

Full GroundUp report