Several hundred people who have occupied homes at Delft on the Cape Flats were on Monday on their way to the Cape High Court in a bid to block their impending eviction, a spokesperson said.
Mzonke Poni, a coordinator of the Anti-Eviction Campaign, said the occupiers had been unable to secure an interdict at the Bellville Magistrate’s Court earlier in the day.
He said the evictions were based on a court order granted to Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu and developer Thubelisha Homes at the Bellville court in October last year. However, there is now no record of the order on the court files.
For this reason, he said, Monday morning’s magistrate had said he was unable to grant an interdict.
Speaking just after 1pm, Poni said he and the hundreds of residents who had demonstrated outside the court were on their way by train to the high court, where they would make another attempt to get an urgent interdict.
”We are going there as I’m talking,” he said.
Poni said the campaign was assisting more than 450 families — backyard dwellers from elsewhere in Delft and Belhar — who moved into incomplete homes last week that are meant to house the overflow from the N2 Gateway project, in which the Joe Slovo township is being replaced by brick housing.
The high court has reserved judgement on a bid by the Joe Slovo residents themselves to block their own looming forced removal to Delft. — Sapa