Legal Articles and Guides

The Western Cape High Court has ruled for the residents of Bromwell Street, Woodstock, after they challenged the City of Cape Town's provision of emergency and temporary housing.

Josef and Henrietta Erasmus, who failed to pay rental and water charges on a pig farm near Saldanha they leased for more than five years, will be evicted if they don’t vacate the property by 30 November.

The outcome of the case between the City of Cape Town and advocacy group Ndifuna Ukwazi about homeless people in Green Point has been postponed to tomorrow after Acting Judge Tessa le Roux said she needed more time to read the relevant documents and consider arguments.

“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.

While there appears to have been a decrease in land invasions in Cape Town, the provincial government said that millions still had to be spent on security.

It has been lauded as a rare successful land reform project, but now the Land Claims Court (Randburg) has ordered that the books of the Moletele Community Property Association (CPA) be scrutinised by the Auditor-General and the DG of Rural Development and Land Reform.

Business magnate Christo Wiese is suing Markus Jooste, the former CEO of retailer Steinhoff, to have the historic Lanzerac wine estate outside Stellenbosch returned to him.

A Cape Town property owner has been slapped with a hefty fine for building a massive structure without approval, says a Sunday Times report.

The Hammond and Hammond Transactional Law Clinic, which had sued the Bitou Municipality and the Western Cape Department of Human Settlements, has been ordered to pay costs to the department after withdrawal of a case related to the Qolweni housing project.

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.

Cape Town activists have launched an urgent interdict application to halt construction work on the redevelopment of the River Club.

The judge who ordered the removal of farmers who had occupied government farms in the North West since 2019 misapplied himself when he made findings not supported by any evidence presented in court.

We’ve all had them – noisy neighbours whose dogs bark incessantly, whose late-night parties leave everyone sleep-deprived, whose businesses make working from home and relaxing in the garden an impossibility.

A judge has shot down a company’s insistence that a family with a boy (16) in matric should be evicted from its farm now before the end of the school year.

The Prudhoe community, whose land claim has been stalled by ineptitude for 23 years, have still not had their land restored to them – despite the Constitutional Court dismissing the last legal challenge to it more than nine months ago.