Legal Articles and Guides

Judgment in the matter between Hangberg residents and the City of Cape Town over the eviction and demolition of a family home in the area is expected today, says a Cape Argus report.

The Legal Resource Centre (LRC) has given the City of Cape Town until today (6 July) to halt all evictions in the metro or it will approach the courts for relief. The LRC has been instructed by the Human Rights Commission, the Housing Assembly and Bulelani Qolani – the man who was removed from his shack naked – to challenge the city's eviction policy, as well as its alleged human rights violations, notes a News24 report.

A full bench of the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) has declared a section of the SA Police Services Act used to allow police raids against residents of so-called ‘hijacked’ buildings constitutionally invalid.

With what is described as a wave of evictions under way due to the extended Covid-19 lockdown, Reyno de Beer, founder of the Liberty Fighters Network (LFN), which last month defeated government in the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) over its lockdown regulations, is quoted by Moneyweb as saying: ‘One of our primary concerns when we brought the case … was the potential for a humanitarian crisis of homelessness as a result of people being evicted due to the lockdown.

Two foreigners who have allegedly ‘hijacked’ a commercial building that was turned into a residential block of flats on Umgeni Road, Durban, are demanding R3m from the owner of the building to move out.

Forty social justice organisations have written to government to reinstate the blanket ban on evictions. According to an EWN report, when lockdown level five regulations were implemented, the Justice Minister stated that all evictions and execution of attachment orders would be suspended.

Pharmaceutical retailer Dis-Chem is facing a potential lawsuit that may force it to pay rent in full or lose its leases, says a Business Day report.

With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, phrases such as vis major, force majeure, and supervening impossibility have become the new ‘legal catchphrases’, says Baker McKenzie Johannesburg’s JJ van der Walt and John Bell.

An interdict granted three years ago ordering a Port Shepstone businessman to remove a prominent billboard, claiming the government ‘hijacked’ his property in a ‘land grab’, has been set aside.

How the banks will deal with the inevitable wave of defaults they will be faced with as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown, is addressed in a detailed report on the Moneyweb site.

Dis-Chem, in a move the Sunday Times says is expected to cause ructions in the already distressed commercial property sector, has embarked on a rental go-slow, according to shopping centre owners – even though it continues to trade as an essential service during the lockdown.

Pirates Club, one of the three oldest sports clubs in the country, is facing an uncertain future over a legal dispute with the City of Johannesburg.

The racist owner of the Sodwana Bay guest house and his partner have been given 20 days to vacate the property after breaching the lease agreement.

Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom has asked Airbnb to ensure its booking system can limit the number of nights landlords make their homes available on the short-term rental platform. According to a Sunday Times report, Hanekom’s spokesperson, Blessing Manale, confirmed Hanekom met company representatives in Pretoria last week and asked them to ‘ensure their IT systems are aligned with the national rules or thresholds, to ensure and enable compliance by hosts’.

The head of Shell's global business processing centre, Busisiwe Mashiyi, was allegedly hounded out of Hout Bay, the upmarket Cape Town suburb, only eight months after moving there in 2012 because of her racist landlord, who ‘chased her like prey’, according to an acting judge. A Sunday Times report says Mashiyi complained to the Equality Court, sitting in the Wynberg Magistrate's Court, that Keith Watkins discriminated against her from the day he realised she was black.