Legal Articles and Guides

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.

The Schubart Park residents who were moved to Parkview Units, among other complexes, a decade ago, may continue living there for now.

The landlord of Parkview Units ‒ one of three housing complexes which have been accommodating former Schubart Park residents ‒ wants to evict the more than 300 people.

A family who bought a R10m mansion in upmarket Hout Bay is struggling to evict a tenant who has been residing on the property before the previous owner sold it, resulting in a court battle to force him out.

A group of mostly women say they were tricked into signing leases by the Ingonyama Trust on their ancestral land and are now seeking a KZN High Court (Pietermaritzburg) order to declare the agreements invalid.

How courts are moving in tandem with the easing of lockdown restrictions in their rulings on evictions is noted by attorney Simon Dippenaar in a Fin24 report. He says in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, evictions were not allowed, but points out a recent case shows fair consideration for all parties.

Judgment in Cape Town’s Bromwell Street matter, where residents have taken the City of Cape Town to court over housing, was reserved yesterday.