Legal Articles and Guides

An interdict against members of the Bo-Kaap community, blocking them from interfering with Blok developers, has been withdrawn, notes the Cape Argus. The interdict, issued during increasing protests within the community, prohibited anyone from going near the development and cited violent acts committed by civic organisations as part of the reason for the interdict.

The affiliation between a landlord and a tenant can often be difficult. Problems arise which cannot be harmoniously resolved and the necessity for self-regulating party turn out to be essential. It is so easy for misinterpretations and disagreements to ascend amongst landlords and tenants, and although greatest of these issues can be determined with a bit of open communiqué and compromise, from time to time self-governing third-party intercession is required.

Trevor Manuel, former Finance Minister and one of four investment envoys appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa to sell SA to investors, said yesterday that explaining SA’s ongoing land debate had been tougher than expected. ‘Communicating this (issue), I think, is a bigger challenge than what we thought,’ said Manuel, adding that land was a ‘complex’ and ‘unresolved matter’.

Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini told scores of loyal supporters yesterday that they must not allow themselves to be further provoked by the proposed scrapping or amendment of the controversial Ingonyama Trust Act. He was speaking in Ulundi at a land imbizo that he had called, notes a report on the IoL site.

A community on the KZN south coast is taking on the Ingonyama Trust Board over what it says is the illegal sale of its land, according to a Business Day report. Members of the Luthuli clan, who once administered leases in the area through the Umnini Trust, have given the Ingonyama Trust and Inkosi Phathisizwe Luthuli an ultimatum to stop selling their land or they will head to court over the matter.

A chunk of central Cape Town land worth hundreds of millions of rands has been secretly transferred to a bankrupt government entity, jeopardising one of Western Cape Premier Helen Zille’s flagship projects, says a Sunday Times report. Zille said she was in the dark about the transfer of the province’s prime land – between the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront and Cape Town Stadium – to the National Health Laboratory Service.

Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane is seeking leave to appeal the Land Claims Court judgment awarding 26 farms to the Prudhoe community in Peddie on the basis that it offended some farmers’ individual property rights.

Sophia de Villiers, a magistrate, asked the Western Cape High Court to send her neighbour, Anthony Kruger, to prison for ignoring the court’s instruction to remove the garden he planted outside his and his neighbour’s properties in Paarl. But a frustrated Judge Nolwazi Boqwana declined to do so, and scolded De Villiers and Kruger for letting their dispute get out of hand.

Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini has asked all Zulus to increase their donations – from R5 to at least R15 – to create a fund to fight off the government’s move to scrap the Ingonyama Trust and transfer the land to local municipalities. A Business Day report notes the money will be used to mount a legal challenge and to sponsor marches and pickets in the fight against the government.

A sizeable contingent of concerned farmers attended the land expropriation public hearings in Mokopane, Limpopo, yesterday when they warned of job losses, food shortages and an economic crash should the Constitution be changed to allow for expropriation without compensation.

People inhabiting communal land should be given title deeds, not permission to occupy the land, Deputy President David Mabuza told the National Council of Provinces in a question-and-answer session yesterday, according to a News24 report. IFP MP from KZN, Mntomuhle Khawula, asked if Mabuza could allay fears that all those land reform plans have nothing to do with the Ingonyama Trust, which administers the land traditionally owned by the Zulu people.

Ever since the ANC put expropriation without compensation firmly on to the political agenda, it has given assurances that this will be done without harming agriculture or food production. This is consistent with the move of the national democratic revolution into its second phase, says the Institute of Race Relations’ John Kane-Berman.

A hard-hitting judgment has put the brakes on a R400m Soweto housing project aimed at providing homes to thousands of desperate home-seekers. The Star reports allegations of bribery have emerged following the judgment against the City of Johannesburg.

An ownership dispute over a multimillion-rand tourist lodge in Mpumalanga has gone to the SCA after a couple demanded decent accommodation for black staff and for a black manager to be paid as much as a junior, white administrator. A City Press report says Sibusiso and Ntombizodwa Tshabalala’s stake in Bundu Lodge is before the SCA after the former owner unsuccessfully applied to the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) to have the deal cancelled.

Subjecting a decision on municipal planning and building regulations to an appeal to a review board encroached on the exclusive competence of a municipality and was inconsistent with the Constitution, the Constitutional Court has found, notes TimesLIVE.