Legal Articles and Guides

‘Can expropriation without compensation or expropriation against low or nominal compensation be justified simply because the expropriation is aimed at a constitutionally legitimate purpose such as land reform?’ In an analysis on the Centre for Constitutional Rights’ website, the centre’s Phephelaphi Dube says this question must be asked following statements by both President Jacob Zuma, as well as the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, that expropriation without compensation for land reform within the current framework of the property clause is possible.

The Western Cape government may be back in court soon to face the Reclaim My City movement for its decision to sell the Tafelberg site to the Phyllis Jowel Jewish School. A legal representative for the organisation, Mandisa Shandu, confirmed the land-sale decision would be challenged, says a Weekend Argus report.

The rights of the Xhosa nation in the Zuurveld area in the Eastern Cape were extinguished when the nation was conquered and expelled from the area in 1812. A BusinessLIVE report says this is one of the arguments put up by landowners of the Salem commonage near Grahamstown‚ who have taken the fight to keep their land to the Constitutional Court.

Farmers who fix their own damaged dirt roads can – in terms of a specific court order – now send the bill to the government, says a Daily Dispatch report. Yesterday the Eastern Cape High Court (Grahamstown) ordered the Eastern Cape Roads and Public Works Department to immediately begin implementing plans to repair and maintain its extensive and largely dysfunctional rural road network.

Following the latest ruling by the SCA, the way has been paved for former Eastern Cape farmer Ivor Phillips (82) to be awarded almost R15m for land he was forced to sell as part of the apartheid government’s doomed homeland scheme, says a Daily Dispatch report.

Although the SA Riding for the Disabled Association has lost its Constitutional Court battle to remain on Cape Town land it has occupied for 35 years the court ruled yesterday that the association had been unlawfully deprived of compensation for the loss of use of the 8.9 hectares in Constantia, notes a TimesLIVE report. It sent the matter back to the Land Claims Court for compensation to be decided.

A new judgment could be regarded as an important victory for property owners who receive large and delayed utility bills, according to Nicholas Gangiah and Fatima Gattoo, of Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, in an article on the Fin24 site. The Gauteng High Court judgment grants relief to property owners who have received exorbitant utility bills after a number of years. The case relates to the bills for estimated water consumption which was received by Argent over a period of about 5.5 years.

Judgment has been reserved in a matter where three landowners are seeking relief from thousands of illegal occupants in Philippi on the Cape Flats. A Weekend Argus report says close to 60 000 Marikana informal settlement dwellers – represented by the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of SA – are respondents in the matter where landowners Iris Fischer, Manfred Stock and others, as well as Coppermoon Trading, approached the Western Cape High Court to either evict the occupiers from the land or to grant an order directing the state to purchase the occupied land at market value.

All the unlawful occupiers of a block of flats in Berea, Johanneburg, want is for the city to provide them with alternative accommodation – and, having failed in the High Court and SCA, took the matter to the Constitutional Court yesterday. The owner of the building‚ Calvin Maseko‚ has been unable to move in to renovate the building, notes a TimesLIVE report.

The eThekwini municipality’s battle to remove tenants at the Newmarket Stables, to make way for a multimillion rand football academy, may be hit by another hurdle as the equestrian club says if it is evicted, their employees would also be without homes. The Mercury reports this is according to court papers filed in the KZN High Court (Durban) recently by the Newmarket Stables Equestrian Club in the eviction application brought by the municipality to evict the club from its city centre premises.

Almost 50 years after they were forcibly removed from Constantia, a group of land claimants have been handed back their birth-right. A Cape Times report says Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille met the representatives of eight families who were forced off their land in the late 1960s and gave them the news.

The SCA incorrectly interpreted the Medical Schemes Act when it concluded that funds in a personal medical savings account could not be treated as both an asset and trust property of a member, Genesis Medical Scheme’s Advocate Schalk Burger told the Constitutional Court yesterday.

SARS cannot prevent a liquidator from taking possession of property by virtue of the fact that the duty and VAT of the property has not been paid, says Virusha Subban, Claire van Zuylen and Yue Li, of Bowmans, in an analysis on the Polity site. They examine the recent SCA judgment in CSARS v Van der Merwe NO, where it was held that a liquidator is entitled to take the possession of the property in terms of the Insolvency Act, even though the duty and VAT of the property has not been paid to SARS.

The Western Cape High Court has ordered that occupants of a District Six property be given until the end of next month to leave, says a Cape Argus report. Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti had alleged Shahieda Boyes, her husband and her parents had been illegally occupying the house in Reform Street since April 2014.

Judgment has been reserved in a lengthy court matter between the City of Cape Town and the South Road Families Association, whose members could lose their homes if plans to build a MyCiTi bus route through Wynberg go ahead. A Cape Times report says the city has appealed against a court order that halted its plans to build the bus route.