Legal Articles and Guides

A farm owner who attempted to evict pensioner Katie Moyeni (73), despite the fact she had stayed and worked at the farm since 1997, has failed in the SCA.

Landlords and tenants alike should understand the regulations applicable to tenant evictions during the National State of Disaster. Many tenants are of course finding it hard to meet their monthly rental commitments, whilst landlords still have to fund their ongoing expenses and will be keen to be rid of problem tenants preventing them from doing so.

Leases often give tenants an option to extend or renew at the end of the current term, and tenants who lose sight of the value and importance of such an option are flirting with disaster.

Cape Town Mayor Dan Plato says the city will appeal a judgment yesterday removing the City of Cape Town's right to protect property from land invasion.

The COVID-19 crisis has changed everything. Our personal lives have been upended and our businesses hit hard. And with many businesses operating out of leased premises, a great many landlords and tenants are asking themselves what happens if the crisis leaves a tenant unable to pay the agreed rental.

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.