Daily News: Shack dwellers claim victory
Submitted by Abahlali_3 on Wed, 2013-09-18 02:35. cato crest | court | Daily News | Noelene Barbeau
http://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/shack-dwellers-claim-victory-1.1577265#.UjkQZtLTx34
Shack dwellers claim victory
September 13 2013 at 11:54am
By NOELENE BARBEAU
Just one day before the city was to have shown why it was not in contempt of a court order preventing the demolition of shacks at a Durban settlement, it tore down more.
Now the eThekwini Municipality, in the latest action against it by the shack dwellers’ movement, Abahlali BaseMjondolo, has been ordered to identify and mark the homes of 30 residents at the Cato Crest informal settlement to ensure they are not demolished again.
Abahlali is claiming the draft order granted by Durban High Court Judge Yvonne Mbatha on Thursday as another legal victory in its protracted fight with the city.
Last week, the movement and the 30 shack dwellers were in court asking that it hold the municipality, its Land Invasion Unit and city manager S’bu Sithole to be in contempt of an earlier order and for the officials to be jailed for 30 days.
They claimed shack dwellers were being evicted, in spite of a September 2 order that prevented the city from demolishing the 30 applicants’ homes and from evicting them.
Abahlali and the residents first went to court on August 22 after some Cato Crest shacks were demolished. An interdict was granted then preventing further demolition.
Last week, the court gave respondents until Thursday to show why it should not be held in contempt but before they could respond, Abahlali’s lawyer handed in a supplementary affidavit saying the city had “wilfully disregarded” the court order by demolishing 28 shacks on Tuesday. It said 15 of the shacks belonged to applicants.
In their answering affidavit filed on Thursday, the respondents said they were merely complying with a high court order secured by the MEC for Human Settlements and Public Works in March to prevent the illegal large-scale invasion of land in Cato Manor.
The municipality denied it was in contempt, saying that an undertaking made last month did not apply to any structures the applicants would have erected following the granting of the order.
It said 25 structures it had torn down last month were on land owned by the departments of Human Settlements and Public Works and the action was to prevent illegal invasion and occupation.
The municipality said its Land Invasion Unit had demolished eight fully built and 10 half-built structures on September 2, and 10 fully built and 13 half-built structures three days later.
It claimed the structures were not occupied and that it would not tear down shacks that were occupied.
The court on Thursday adjourned both the main application and contempt application without assigning a date.
In the meantime, the draft order states the municipality would have to meet the 30 shack dwellers on Tuesday, so that their homes could be marked to prevent demolition.
Those applicants whose homes were destroyed were allowed to rebuild them and those would also be marked.