Legal Articles and Guides

Werksmans has unpacked the recommendations made by the Presidential Expert Advisory Panel on Land Reform & Agriculture in a seminar – led by lawyer Bulelwa Mabasa.

The Western Cape High Court has upheld the eviction of hundreds of farm dwellers from Klein Akker, Kraaifontein. Acting Judge Sievers ruled that the City of Cape Town must ‘make available within 24 hours of this order, temporary emergency shelter in the form of land and emergency housing kits at the emergency housing site known as Kampies, Philippi’.

The Constitutional Court confirmed yesterday that section 1 of the Land Affairs General Amendment Act and section 25A of the Upgrading Act was inconsistent with the Constitution and invalid.

In his last Constitutional Court judgment, Justice Edwin Cameron, who retired yesterday, ruled in favour of labour tenants who have been trying for more than 22 years to lay claim to a portion of SA's most expensive and prestigious school, Hilton College, in the KZN midlands.

Residents of the Winnie Mandela informal settlement in Ekurhuleni are seeking constitutional damages from the local municipality for its failure to build them RDP houses after those allocated to them were illegally occupied by others.

The Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution (Casac) is ready for a tough battle when it takes on the Ingonyama Trust over rent paid by people living on trust land.

The acting Judge President of the Land Claims Court has ordered former Rural Development & Land Reform Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane to personally pay counsel costs relating to the department's failure to draft a plan to redevelop District Six.

The battle over a R50m land claim settlement awarded to a rural community after it was forcibly removed to make way for the Wild Coast Sun hotel created by magnate Sol Kerzner appears to have been settled, according to a report in The Sunday Independent.

Why yet another warning about cyber-scams in the property industry? It’s because the hard fact is that the criminals are winning this war. In fact we are now reportedly the “second most targeted country in the world with regard to cyber-attacks”.

“Buy land” said Mark Twain, “they’re not making it anymore.” With the first green shoots of a property market recovery supposedly now showing through perhaps this is indeed the time to take his advice.

Is your bank entitled to clean out your current account’s credit balance – with neither notice to you nor your permission – to settle a separate debt you owe it?

An East London family has only a week left to a demolish a small Chintsa East shack they have called home for decades and exhume eight graves at a farm – to make way for a multi-million-rand golf estate development.

SA swimming legend and former Olympic champion Cameron van der Burgh is embroiled in legal proceedings against his former girlfriend and her family regarding a financial transaction that went sour, says a Saturday Star report.

Hack attacks, ransom threats and theft of money through fraudulent transactions are all becoming a stark reality for legal professionals and law firms around the world, says a legal risk adviser.

In what the Cape Times report calls a surprise forensic report conclusion, the City of Cape Town has reported no irregularities in an alleged botched auction of prime Foreshore land. The investigation probed the alleged loss of R140m of public money due to an alleged botched auction of prime land on the Foreshore to Growthpoint Properties.