There were hugs and smiles in the Constitutional Court on Thursday when the court suspended evictions from a Johannesburg building in the throes of an ownership dispute.
About 300 people faced a Christmas without anywhere to live before successfully challenging the eviction, scheduled for December 15.
Mindful of the decorum expected in the court, residents present waited for the judges to leave, and at the last flash of a green robe, burst into applause.
They surrounded their lawyer, Carol Steinberg, hugging and thanking her, saying, ”We are so pleased.”
”Thank you for hanging in there for so long,” she replied.
The families, which include 72 children on child-support grants, had been living in a building in Jeppe Street after qualifying to live there in terms of a government initiative that provided housing for families who brought in less than R3 500 a month.
The government gave institutional subsidies on their behalf to the company that managed the building, Philani maAfrika, for its upkeep, and the residents paid rent to the company, managed by directors who were also residents. They had security of tenure ,and even if their circumstances improved, they could keep living there.
They owned the building collectively but if they opted to leave, they would have to inform the housing department in person, their name would be taken off the list of residents, and the unit would then be allocated to another person who qualified.
However, it is alleged that two people appointed themselves as directors, approached estate agents and managed to sell the building to private investor William Mailula for R3,6-million, taking the residents by surprise.
A housing department official told the South African Press Association (Sapa) that because buildings administered in this way are owned collectively, they may not be sold without the permission of every resident.
The residents argue that the sale was concluded without their knowledge and, though they don’t accuse Mailula himself of fraud, they allege that the sale process was fraudulent.
A fraud case has been opened with police, but in the meantime, the ownership dispute went to the Johannesburg High Court, which decided that Mailula was the legitimate owner, and the court granted him an eviction order to remove the residents.
The residents were given leave to appeal the ownership in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), but in the meantime, did not want to be evicted until that matter is finalised.
At the same time, Mailula is concerned that he won’t make his bond repayments if he can’t fill his building and might lose his investment.
According to their heads of argument, the residents offered to pay Mailula rent and to pay the municipality for water and lights, and also offered to agree to a court order that would evict them if they defaulted before the SCA settled the matter.
This offer wasn’t accepted so they approached the Constitutional Court for help. – Sapa