Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula was on Wednesday granted leave by the Pretoria High Court to appeal against a ruling that he rebuild the shacks of a group of squatters or face arrest.
Judge Bill Prinsloo granted Nqakula leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal against his ruling last month, which found Nqakula to be in contempt of an earlier court order about the rebuilding of the shacks, and again giving him 12 hours to rebuild.
Nqakula was also ordered to appear before court personally to show that he had complied with the order, failing which a suspended jail term and R10 000 fine would immediately come into effect.
It was against this ruling that he was granted leave to appeal.
Prinsloo, however, once again ordered Nqakula to rebuild some of the demolished shacks before noon on Friday. This was despite the fact that the execution of such an order would ordinarily have been suspended until the determination of the appeal.
He said the balance of convenience favoured the squatters, who were left destitute when their shacks were destroyed.
The squatters obtained the original order on August 20 after about 50 shacks were set alight and they were forcibly evicted from their camp on the corner of De Villebois Mareuil and Garsfontein roads in Moreleta Park, Pretoria.
Prinsloo said he found allegations by the squatters that a Supreme Court of Appeal order granted at the end of May, in terms of which shacks had to be rebuilt, had still not been complied with ”distressing”, especially as Nqakula’s only retort to the allegation was that it was ”irrelevant”.
The court heard argument by his counsel that section three of the State Liability Act, which is at present being challenged in the Constitutional Court, prohibited Nqakula from being committed to jail for contempt of court.
The squatters, however, insisted that the Act did not place the minister or other government officials above the law.
Prinsloo said it was an important issue, particularly given the apparent endemic propensity and tendency on the part of all government ministers and other officials either to ignore court orders or treat them with a lack of enthusiasm and respect.
”In my view the time has arrived for a higher court to pronounce fully on this subject and to give guidance about under what circumstances, if at all, a government minister or other official can be imprisoned for being in contempt of a court order,” he added. — Sapa