Legal Articles and Guides

If you would like to run a business from home or to buy a residential property specifically to convert it into business premises – or indeed on the other side of the coin if you want to object to a new business opening up in your leafy suburb – you should be aware of a recent High Court decision in which a small 8 am – 4.30 pm office was ordered to stop operating in a residential area.

Real estate giant Pam Golding Properties is under investigation for allegedly aiding the family of former Mozambican President Armando Guebuza to launder money through the sale of two Johannesburg properties worth a combined R50m.

The EFF has urged the Constitutional Court to uphold a High Court ruling that a section of the Riotous Assemblies Act is unconstitutional.

Hundreds of dispossessed homeowners have filed an op-out class action suit in the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg), claiming damages from the major banks for foreclosing and then selling their properties for a fraction of their market value.

‘How the administrations of President Cyril Ramaphosa and those who will follow him tackle the question of land remains a deeper and long-term fundamental risk to future investment, says the CEO of Business Leadership SA, Busisiwe Mavuso. She says removing the courts as the final arbiter in the decision-making process – as proposed by the ANC – would be ‘a dangerous move’.

A company accused of looting the Municipal Councillors Pension Fund (MCPF) by selling vacant stands for millions to the pension fund, has now sold a large piece of land – allegedly also vacant – for more than R0.5bn to the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF).

The first phase of the redevelopment of District Six is set to go ahead as claimants and Minister of Rural Development & Land Reform Thoko Didiza have agreed on her plan for the area, says a Cape Argus report.

What happens if your fixed-term lease expires without an extension agreement? Is there any lease in place at all? If so what terms and conditions apply? What rental is payable? We discuss the answers to those questions with reference to the Rental Housing Act and to a recent High Court judgment in which a landlord, in claiming damages from an ex-tenant, relied on a verbal agreement to increase rental after expiry of a written lease.

Western Cape environmental authorities have issued warning notices to five Elands Bay beach property owners for allegedly illegally building houses and other structures within the protected coastal zone in contravention of the National Environmental Management Act.

The ANC’s surprise proposal to amend a Bill to give the executive more power to decide whether the state will pay for land it expropriates is set to prompt more legal challenges, says a Business Day report.

An archaic apartheid law that discriminated against hundreds of thousands of black women by automatically registering their marriages  before 1988 as being out of community of property has been declared unconstitutional by the KZN High Court (Durban).

The government has abandoned its bid to appeal against a ruling that forces it to sell a black Limpopo farmer land it promised him more than two decades ago, but it now wants a price allegedly nine times what the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) ordered it to sell for, says a Business Day report.

The EFF in Tshwane has expressed its support for land-grabbers, who recently made futile attempts to illegally occupy empty plots in Silverlakes and Boschkop.

Chris Biermann’s idea of plugging a gap in the East London housing market quickly escalated to a full-scale legal war which he eventually won, says a Times Select report.

Minister of Defence & Military Veterans, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula – in her official capacity as head of the SANDF – is facing a claim of about R120m from civilian families ousted from the Marievale military base near Nigel, Gauteng.