Legal Articles and Guides

“Unlawful occupiers” of land have strong rights under our Constitution and other laws, and most property owners and landlords understand the need to tread carefully whenever the issue of eviction arises. They are required to comply fully with the provisions of PIE (the “Prevention of Illegal Eviction and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act”) – certainly achievable but never to be taken lightly.

The SCA has upheld an appeal against an order of the Western Cape High Court, over a lease agreement between Capital Propfund 4 and Harbour Arch Investment Holdings.

The SCA has upheld an appeal against a Western Cape High Court decision to evict a Cape Town woman, her 83-year-old mother and their housekeeper.

After a 12-year battle, Clara Phillips (84) and her disabled son have been vindicated by the SCA that ruled against their eviction from a Somerset West property.

The Constitutional Court has come to the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) rescue, says a report in The Herald. It ruled in the institution’s favour in a case involving land UJ leased to a school of theology 25 years ago.

The KZN High Court (Pietermaritzburg) has declared the Ingonyama Trust Board’s (ITB’s) residential lease programme unlawful and has ordered it to pay back millions it has collected from residents since 2012.

More than 100 families face eviction at the Steen Villa social housing complex in Steenberg over their failure to pay rent.

A farmer’s application to evict the adult children of farmworkers employed on his farm Hammansdans outside Wellington in the Western Cape has been dismissed by Judge Zeenat Carelse in the Land Claims Court.

The Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) has ruled the eviction of a group illegally occupying a property in Dunkeld was unlawful, and they should be allowed to move back onto the property, says a News24 report.

Landlords can be sorely tempted to force defaulting tenants to settle their arrears (or to vacate the premises altogether) with a bit of instant “self-help” by cutting electricity or water supplies, or perhaps by changing locks or disabling access codes.

A street in the upmarket Johannesburg suburb of Dunkeld was lined with mattresses and scattered belongings as more than 50 people were evicted from a property that they say they had been occupying for more than 10 years.

Nqobile Nxumalo dug into his faith to get him through a claim for arrear rentals and an application by his landlord for his eviction, telling the Eastern Cape High Court (Gqeberha) that he did not have a legal representative.

The rights of evicted people and legitimate means to repel land invasions dominated the recommencing of an application by the Human Rights Commission (HRC) and the EFF against the City of Cape Town in the Western Cape High Court.

SAPS members allegedly stood by and did not intervene when the Goedehoop Rental Complex – a building owned by non-profit housing agency Communicare – was hijacked in Cape Town this month.

A landlord battling a problem tenant may be tempted to bypass the delays and cost of legal action with some robust “self-help” action, like cutting electricity or water, or blocking access to the premises with a change of locks or access cards. The problem is that our law has always frowned on the concept of “taking the law into your own hands”. A landlord doing so acts unlawfully, allowing the tenant a quick and powerful remedy in the form of a “spoliation order”. We discuss what that entails, what the tenant must prove, and (by referring to a recent High Court decision) whether the landlord can successfully argue that a right to an electricity supply is just a “personal right” and thus not covered by the spoliation remedy.