Justin Pearce
ALEXANDRA’S Far East Bank squatters will soon be back in court, when Johannesburg’s Eastern Metropolitan Substructure tries, where the provincial government failed, to have the squatters evicted.
Last week, after a blaze of publicity condemning the squatters as “land invaders”, Premier Tokyo Sexwale’s government failed in a supreme court application to have the squatters evicted. The Witwatersrand Local Division of the Transvaal Supreme Court ruled that the Gauteng government was not the owner of the land occupied by the squatters, and therefore had no legal right to evict them.
The court declared the Eastern MSS to be the owner of the land, and the forthcoming case is likely to see the squatters’ claims to legitimate occupancy being subjected to court scrutiny. Affidavits submitted by the squatters in last week’s court case suggest that the status of the squatters is far more complicated than the label of “land invaders” would suggest.
The case of John Malatji, first respondent in last week’s action, is typical of the 450-odd families who face eviction. Malatji says he moved to Johannesburg in 1976, and lived in his uncle’s house in Alexandra township until February 1994, when he and his uncle were both forced to flee their home after attacks by the residents of a nearby hostel.
In addition to political violence, other Far East Bank residents cite the loss of their former shacks in floods, or the loss of their jobs as domestic workers and with them their accommodation, as reasons for moving to the contested area. Some 30 families claim to have been in the area since 1992, with others joining them subsequently.
The situation is further complicated by the squatters’ claim that they moved their shacks from the area earmarked for phase one of the East Bank development scheme, at the request of development contractors Dipac. They claim Dipac told them to move to the land they now occupy, which has been pegged out to form phase two of the development scheme. All the squatters maintain that they moved to Far East Bank out of necessity and have nowhere else to go. Their defence is likely to invoke their constitutional rights to dignity and security.
Alan Fuchs, councillor for the Far East Bank region, said the claims of long residency were no more than a “red herring”, and that their occupation of the land was illegal. He said there were plenty of residents of Alexandra township and the adjoining suburbs who would testify that the Far East Bank squatters had moved to the area only recently.
He emphasised that the land which the squatters are occupying had been set aside for development which was intended to benefit those residents of Alexandra whose names have been on housing waiting lists for many years.
Fuchs said the MSS would like to see litigation going ahead within the next few weeks if possible. He expressed concern that Alexandra residents were threatening to take the law into their own hands and evict the squatters, and that the squatters were celebrating victory prematurely.
But, with 180 respondents named in the case, establishing the legitimacy of their claims to the land is going to involve a much lengthier court case than last week’s, where the victory claimed by the squatters rested on little more than a technicality.