The housing shortfall in Alexandra, eastern Johannesburg, will be under the spotlight in the Pretoria High Court on March 6 when the Gauteng housing MEC gives evidence.
”I welcome the opportunity to present the department’s side of the story and the type of challenges we are facing in implementing the Alexandra Renewal Project,” MEC Nomvula Mokonyane said in a statement on Thursday.
Mokonyane and Johannesburg city officials are to give evidence after an application, by Ritamo Investments, to evict illegal occupants from privately owned land in Wynberg, near Alexandra.
Ritamo wants to develop a shopping complex there, but they cannot proceed because it is illegally occupied.
Constitutional requirements too prevent the municipality — or anybody — from summarily evicting the 839 people at 53, 3rd Street.
”They have been there for many years,” said housing department spokesperson Mongezi Mnyani.
Mnyani said Ritamo had ”approached the court to grant them an eviction order and compel local authority to find alternative accommodation for the 838 families”.
”But where do we do this in Alex? We have a big problem of housing people in Alex.”
Section 26(3) of the Constitution reads: ”No-one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all relevant circumstances”.
It is also a constitutional requirement that if people are evicted, the municipality has to find alternative accommodation for them.
Judge Eberhardt Bertelsmann has yet to decide on the Ritamo application.
On January 27, he ordered the MEC and city officials appear in person, in the high court, to explain their positions.
Mnyani said the department was hoping to continue discussions with Ritamo Investments, to find an equitable solution.
”They must get their shopping centre and the people must get their accommodation,” he said. – Sapa