Legal Articles and Guides

Developers of Amazon’s office park in Observatory in Cape Town could stand to lose more than R120m if the project is stopped, with more than 5 000 construction jobs lost, creating a situation that would be ‘catastrophic’ to all involved.

The rehabilitation of a golf course at the confluence of Cape Town’s polluted Liesbeek and Black rivers does not require property development, but the state could restore it, argued one of the indigenous groupings that opposes the R4.6bn development, which would include offices for tech firm Amazon.

You are about to buy a property, how exciting! Maybe this is your first property transaction, or maybe you have already been around the block. The estate agent drops a 30-page document on the desk and says, “don’t fear the long contract, it’s all standard; we use this every day”. You scan through the first page and think, what language is this? It looks like English, but what is an “erection of a permanent nature”? Sounds painful.

Nine years after the Vrede dairy project was launched, the controversial project will finally receive 65 beneficiaries today.

‘Land remains central to the imagination of citizenship of today’s ANC. Yet the evidence since 1994 shows hesitation, timidity and indifference to the resolution of land. The disaster with the abortive constitutional amendment has been illustrative of a larger malaise.’

The SCA has dismissed, in large part, an appeal by the City of Cape Town against an interim ruling preventing the eviction of people and demolition of structures without a court order during the National State of Disaster.

In the apartheid era, a huge portion of the population was denied property rights in terms of the Black Land Act, the Group Areas Act and the Black Administration Act.

The ANC’s attempts to push through a Bill to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation yesterday failed after it could not get the backing of other parties.

The Constitutional Court has ruled (five judges to four) against awarding constitutional damages to about 130 residents of an informal settlement.

If you plan to take advantage of the Holiday Season to sell your house, your first prize will of course be finding the best buyer, at the best price, as quickly as possible. As always, there’s a degree of luck involved, but you can to a great extent “make your own luck”. So we’ll discuss the two elements of a “lucky sale” and then share some ideas on how to maximise them. Firstly, there should be a good number of qualified buyers around this year with our low interest rates and December’s track record as a great time for property sales. We’ll move on then to 12 tips on how to prepare, both legally and practically, for your “lucky” sale.

'Unprecedented circumstances’ brought on by the Covid-19 lockdown regulations have seen a legal battle between a commercial tenant and a landlord thrashed out in the Western Cape High Court.

About 1 300 government-owned buildings around the country are illegally occupied and Public Works & Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille has said this means they cannot be optimally used.

The case of four would-be Western Cape farmers, who in 2019 allegedly duped the government into giving them two farms worth R8.6m under the land redistribution scheme, has been postponed to April 2022 for plea and trial.

A farmworker has triumphed at the Constitutional Court over his former employer who evicted him without notice after 21 years of service.

The City of Cape Town must review and amend all by-laws that criminalise homelessness without just cause. This was one of more than 150 recommendations in a report into homelessness commissioned by the city, reveals GroundUp.