Business Day: Shack dwellers want removal order set aside

http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2014/02/14/shack-dwellers-want-removal-order-set-aside

by Ernest Mabuza

RESIDENTS of a Durban informal settlement on Wednesday asked the Constitutional Court to set aside a high court order for fear it was being misused by the local municipality to unlawfully remove residents.

The order, granted in the Durban High Court in March last year, empowered the eThekwini municipality and police to take all reasonable steps to prevent any person invading, occupying and undertaking the construction of any structures on 37 properties belonging to the municipality.

Granted by Judge Piet Koen, it gave the municipality power to prevent land invasions and ensures that it does not need to approach the court to seek evictions case by case, as required by the constitution.

Residents of Madlala Village, an informal settlement in Lamontville, near Durban, had in May been refused leave by another high court judge, Gregory Kruger, to intervene to resist confirmation of the interim order.

This week, the residents asked the Constitutional Court to set aside the order because they feared it was being misused by the municipality.

Thandi Norman SC, for the municipality, said the order of Judge Koen was to prevent land invasions. She said the residents were not land invaders and the order did not apply to them.

Vinay Gajoo SC, for the minister of police and the KwaZulu-Natal MEC for human settlements, said land occupations were unacceptable.

But Acting Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke said that courts could not tolerate a society where police could evict people without a court order.

Stuart Wilson, for Abahlali Basemjondolo, an association of shack dwellers, said Judge Koen’s order was an eviction order that authorised evictions without court supervision. He asked that it be set aside in entirety.

The court reserved judgment.