http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/Politics/0,,2-7-12_2362829,00.html

Mbombela: Still no explanation

[News24, 23 July 2008]

Gcina Ntsaluba and Justin Arenstein

Nelspruit – Mpumalanga’s 2010 World Cup host city is still unable to explain why it is trying to seize community land for its R1bn stadium without paying for it.

Mbombela City’s lawyers told Pretoria High Court Judge Ferdi Preller on Tuesday that they were still not ready to defend the municipality’s actions and asked for another three-week postponement in hearings related to an urgent interdict.

Another High Court judge, Justice Ntendeya Mavundla, branded Mbombela’s efforts to seize the 118 hectares of prime development land from the Matsafeni farmworker community for a nominal R1 payment as a “hoodwinking” scheme that will cheat the community out of its ancestral land in the same way that colonialists did, using “buttons and shiny mirrors”.

Judge Mavundla granted the angry community an interim interdict against Mbombela prohibiting it from transferring or otherwise alienating the land until it had explained itself.

The municipality was supposed to do so on Tuesday, but its lawyers said city officials had not yet managed to get all their evidence together and asked that the matter be postponed to August 18.

They promised that Mbombela would not try to secretly take ownership of the land before then.

Judge Preller accepted the request, warning that he would also decide on August 18 whether the municipality should pay for all the costs of the wasted hearing this week.

Mayor fired

The controversy has rocked Mpumalanga’s provincial government, and has already cost the jobs of Mbombela’s outspoken mayor Justice Nsibande and his municipal manager Jacob Dladla.

The land, on the outskirts of Nelspruit, is the site of Mpumalanga’s flagship R1bn 2010 World Cup stadium and a related entertainment and retail precinct.

Provincial authorities bulldozed two of South Africa’s oldest black schools and started building the sprawling stadium complex on the community land two years ago without actually owning it.

When the Matsafeni community protested, Nsibande and other council officials threatened to forcefully remove the community to a new settlement 21km away in virgin bush – while simultaneously secretly negotiating an ‘illegal’ sales agreement for just R1 with the chairperson of the Matsafeni Trust, Terry Mdluli.

Nsibande and Mdluli both failed to declare that they were already business partners in a tourism company, along with at least one other senior Mbombela manager.

Land Affairs Minister Lulama Xingwana and the National Land Claims Commission warned at the time that the sale was illegal, because it violated clauses built into the title deed to protect the community.

Written permission from Xingwana

Xingwana also pointed out that Mpumalanga had failed to obtain her written permission for the sale as required by law, while human rights lawyers acting for the community pointed out that the trustees had failed to call the required special general meeting to discuss the deal and had also failed to get a 75% vote by the community supporting the sale.

The scandal prompted the Matsafeni to successfully apply to the Pretoria High Court in May for the immediate removal of Mdluli and his fellow trustees.

Mbombela has, however, continued to insist that the R1 sales agreement is valid and is trying to rush through the transfer of ownership.

The council’s lawyers warned the Matsafeni in a terse two-page letter that government is so intent on taking ownership that it will look into reversing the original R63m land claim settlement that restored the land to the community unless the beneficiaries agree to surrender the stadium site to Mbombela.