A Limpopo smallholding owner was ordered by the Pretoria High Court on Thursday to allow the re-erection of a school that burnt down on his property earlier this month.
The judgement followed smallholding-owner Johan Pienaar’s refusal to allow the units on to his land, where the school was razed in a fire during school holidays on July 2.
Pienaar referred comments about the court case to his lawyer, Peet Grobbelaar, who could not be reached.
Earlier on Thursday, Judge George Webster ordered Pienaar to allow the Limpopo education department to conduct the activities of the Deo Gloria School on his smallholding Spitskop in the Thabazimbi district.
Pienaar was interdicted from hindering the access of pupils or teachers to the property and from preventing the erection of temporary classrooms.
He was given until August 23 to give reasons why the interim order should not be made final.
Costs in the application were reserved pending the final conclusion of the matter.
Pienaar is alleged to have prevented education authorities from erecting mobile classrooms on his property after the school burnt down.
The department said about 280 pupils registered at Deo Gloria have been denied teaching since schools reopened on Tuesday.
This was not the first time Pienaar and the department have locked horns in court.
In November last year, a settlement was reached after the department took Pienaar to court for allegedly cutting off the school’s water supply, using its sport facilities to store his building material, fencing the school so that teachers were prevented from using the toilets, refusing access for pupils’ toilets to be fixed, and threatening to kill the school principal.
He denied the allegations at the time.
In 2003, the department also took Pienaar to court for allegedly interfering with the school’s activities and endangering the lives of pupils and teachers.
The department has said that the school, in existence since 1982, burnt down ”under mysterious circumstances” earlier this month.
It has warned that the government is empowered by law to expropriate a portion of Pienaar’s land for the purposes of running a school if he remains uncooperative.
Pienaar, who has owned the property since 2000, claimed the department had to buy the land the school was on.
Limpopo public works labourers cleared rubble at Deo Gloria on Thursday, but no mobile classrooms had arrived by Thursday evening. — Sapa