Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula was on Wednesday given two weeks to comply with a court order that the shacks of a group of Pretoria squatters be rebuilt — or face arrest.
Pretoria High Court Judge Bill Prinsloo condemned the failure of Nqakula’s department to comply with an urgent court order, granted more than a week ago.
The order gave the police 12 hours to rebuild the shacks from which they had unlawfully evicted the squatters, and interdicted the police from further harassing them and destroying their shacks.
The squatters on August 20 obtained the order after about 50 shacks were set alight and they were forcibly evicted from their camp on the corner of De Ville Bois Mareuil and Garsfontein roads in Moreleta Park.
The police swoop earlier this month came despite an earlier undertaking to stop harassing the squatters and a landmark appeal court ruling, ordering officials to rebuild the structures they demolished in an earlier raid in March last year.
When the police failed to comply with the latest court order and only about a week later filed an application for leave to appeal, which would ordinarily have suspended the order, the squatters — who now had to fend for themselves out in the elements without any shelter — went back to court to enforce the court order.
Although the minister was represented in court, he did not file any affidavit to explain why the court order was not complied with.
The court was told that his officials did not know where he was, or even if he was in the country. It was argued that he was not aware of the court order.
Judge Prinsloo, however, said he found this submission ”outrageous, to say the least”, especially as the same officials stated twice in correspondence that the minister’s department had been informed of the court order and that they had instructions to apply for leave to appeal.
He also shot down submissions that the order could not be complied with because it would have meant officials working after hours — this from police officials who had the time to demolish the shacks at four in the morning.
Prinsloo said the department would have been equipped to execute the order, rather than delaying matters by filing an application for leave to appeal.
The judge described the appeal as ”distressing” in view of the fact that this was a repetition of a previous case that had to go all the way to the Supreme Court of Appeal before the unfortunate settlers could get relief.
In that case, as in the present one, the police also denied any involvement in the eviction, and only at a very late stage admitted their involvement.
The judge declared the minister to be in contempt of the August 20 court order and gave him and his department 12 hours to comply with that order.
He ordered that the minister be committed to jail immediately ”until his contempt of the court order had been purged” and fined him R10 000 for contempt.
However, he suspended the order for two weeks, before which time the minister would have to appear personally before the court to show that he had complied with the order.
If he did not do so, the suspension would be lifted and the police would be authorised to immediately arrest Nqakula. — Sapa