The Limpopo education department can rebuild a Thabazimbi farm school that was mysteriously burnt down in July, the Pretoria High Court ruled this week.
This comes after Johan Pienaar, the farmer on whose land the school stood, refused to have it rebuilt or to have temporary classrooms erected on his property.
Pienaar wanted the government to pay him for the land before the school, Deo Gloria Primary, was rebuilt.
More than 200 learners used shipping containers as classrooms while the department and the farmer tussled over turf.
This week’s decision was a confirmation of an interim order granted in July, shortly after the fire.
The department had threatened to expropriate the land, as is allowed by the Schools Act, if talks between the authorities and Pienaar did not bear fruit.
The court action was the latest in running battles between Pienaar and the provincial education authorities.
Last November, the department threatened to take Pienaar to court, alleging that he had cut the water supply to the school and was using the school’s sports facility to store his building material.
This week, school principal Moabi Mosito told the Mail & Guardian that, from about 2001, the school had started experiencing burglaries and acts of vandalism.
Although Mosito refused to speculate about who may have been responsible for the vandalism, the incidents coincided with Pienaar taking ownership of the property on which the school is built.