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/ 19 February 2008
Evictions have begun at the housing development in Delft illegally occupied by backyard dwellers, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction campaign said on Tuesday morning. A Cape High Court judge on Monday refused the more than 1Â 000 squatters leave to appeal against an earlier eviction order.
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/ 18 February 2008
The Cape High Court on Monday dismissed an application for leave to appeal against an eviction order that compelled illegal occupiers of unfinished homes in Delft on the Cape Flats to vacate their houses by 6pm last Sunday. Judge Deon van Zyl ruled late on Monday that the grounds for appeal were altogether without merit.
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/ 18 February 2008
Janine Wiese, mother of slain 11-year-old Annestacia, wants her daughter’s alleged killer to remain in prison for the rest of his life, she told the Cape High Court on Monday. The mother was asked by prosecutor Mornay Julius how she felt about Richard Engelbrecht, who has pleaded guilty to the girl’s rape and murder.
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/ 13 February 2008
Security guard Richard Engelbrecht, who on Wednesday pleaded guilty in the Cape High Court to the rape and murder of Cape Flats schoolgirl Annestacia Wiese, alleges that police threatened him with harm if he did not confess to a magistrate. Although he has pleaded guilty, the judge has not yet pronounced him guilty.
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/ 11 February 2008
The Erasmus commission, appointed to look into the Cape Town city council ”spy” saga, has suspended its hearings following a request on Monday by Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool, who says he is seeking legal advice on the inquiry. Rasool’s request was prompted by objections from Cape Town mayor Helen Zille.
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/ 8 February 2008
The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) on Friday dismissed an application by Dina Rodrigues for leave to appeal against her murder conviction. The SCA also refused an application for an order directing that an appeal against her sentence be heard by the Bloemfontein court.
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/ 6 February 2008
Pandemonium broke out in the Cape High Court on Wednesday after Judge Deon van Zyl granted an order for the eviction of people illegally occupying houses still under construction in Delft on the Cape Flats. The homes are intended for residents at the Joe Slovo informal settlement, who are to be relocated to Delft.
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/ 21 January 2008
An application in the Cape High Court on Monday, concerning sequestration proceedings involving Fidentia’s J Arthur Brown and his wife, Susan, was ”an abuse of the judicial system”, Cape High Court Judge Dennis Davis said. In December last year, Judge Davis ordered the provisional sequestration of Brown and his wife’s joint estate.
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/ 21 January 2008
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown on Monday made his first appearance in the Cape Town Regional Court, where he is to go on trial on two charges of fraud, one of theft and one of contravening the Companies Act. Brown had previously made several appearances in the lower district court.
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/ 15 January 2008
The Cape High Court on Tuesday again postponed the Delft eviction case — the application will now take place on January 29. The court furthermore urged Democratic Alliance city councillor Frank Martin to engage a lawyer to represent him in proceedings.
The Erasmus commission, set up to probe Cape Town’s ”spy” saga, has extended the deadline for submissions to the end of this month. Announcing this on Wednesday, commission secretary Zithulele Twala said the extension had been requested by the City of Cape Town and private investigators George Fivaz and Associates.
The Cape High Court on Thursday postponed Najwa Pietersen’s second bail appeal to January 28, to be heard by a full bench instead of a single judge as initially planned. Pietersen is to go on trial in the Cape High Court for the alleged murder of her famous husband, Taliep.
More than 100 backyard dwellers from Delft and other areas of Cape Town will return to the Cape High Court on Thursday to contest their eviction from a government housing scheme. They occupied the N2 Gateway houses before Christmas and were granted a stay of eviction by the court.
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/ 24 December 2007
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. The occupiers had been unable to secure an interdict at the Bellville Magistrate’s Court earlier in the day.
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/ 13 December 2007
The proposed relocation of residents of Joe Slovo informal settlement is a bid to reverse century-old wrongs, the Cape High Court was told on Thursday. Cape Judge President John Hlophe was hearing an application by provincial authorities for permission to relocate the community, currently living in shacks alongside Cape Town’s N2 highway.
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/ 6 December 2007
The Wynberg Regional Court in Cape Town is to deliver judgement on Monday in the second bail application launched by Najwa Petersen, who goes on trial in the Cape High Court next year for the alleged murder of her famous husband, Taliep. Her senior counsel on Thursday urged the court to ”be bold and release her on bail.
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/ 4 December 2007
The joint estate of former Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown and his wife, Susan, was on Tuesday placed under provisional sequestration by the Cape High Court. This followed an application by the curators of the Fidentia group of companies, who claimed that the Browns owed Fidentia just over R24-million.
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/ 1 December 2007
The Cape High Court late on Friday dismissed an urgent application to stop the City of Cape Town from evicting flea-market traders who do business on Greenmarket Square without a permit. Law-enforcement officers were poised for an early morning swoop on illegal traders on the square on Saturday.
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/ 30 November 2007
The Committee of Traders of Greenmarket Square (CTG) launched an urgent application in the Cape High Court late on Friday to stop the City of Cape Town from taking over control of the square. The CTG’s lawyers said the threatened takeover of control, if not stopped, would effectively halt the informal trading at the flea market.
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/ 30 November 2007
Dina Rodrigues — jailed for life for the murder of six-month-old Jordan Leigh Norton — on Friday filed papers at the Supreme Court of Appeal for leave to appeal her conviction and sentence. The Cape High Court in June this year handed down life sentences to 26-year-old Rodrigues and two accomplices for the contract murder of baby Jordan.
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/ 29 November 2007
The Supreme Court of Appeal agreed on Thursday with a golf-estate homeowner that he is entitled to relief for badly aimed golf balls from the sixth hole at the Milnerton golf course. Nearly 900 golf balls had hit his home between 2003 and 2006. The court upheld an appeal by Alexander Simonis against a Cape High Court judgement.
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/ 29 November 2007
The Cape High Court on Thursday found former Old Mutual actuary Fred van der Vyver not guilty of the murder of his girlfriend, Inge Lotz. The acquittal brought to an end a dramatic trial that had lasted nine months, which Judge Deon van Zyl described as ”long and emotion-packed”.
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/ 23 November 2007
A gay psychology student who in July allegedly shot dead both his parents to spare them the grief of his own suicide, is to go on trial in the Cape High Court next year on two charges of murder. Grant Harris (23) on Friday made his seventh appearance in the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court, before magistrate Hafeeza Mohamed, since his arrest in August for the double murder.
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/ 22 November 2007
Minutes before being shot dead in an argument over a baseball cap, Godfrey Hendricks challenged his two alleged killers to take the cap from him by force. The two men then fetched a firearm from their car parked nearby. Two shots were fired, leaving Hendricks lying dead on the ground, the Cape High Court heard on Thursday.
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/ 21 November 2007
The Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled that the Road Accident Fund treat women in customary marriages claiming support the same as those married under the Marriage Act (civil marriage). The director of the Women’s Legal Centre, Jennifer Williams, said on Wednesday the ruling was a victory for women married in terms of customary law.
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/ 20 November 2007
Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool has blamed ”overeager” members of his own party for a report that President Thabo Mbeki has intervened to defuse a row over Rasool himself. Rasool, a member of the African National Congress (ANC), was accused in an official report last week of knowingly making incorrect statements to the legislature.
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/ 20 November 2007
A police sergeant sitting in a car at the Woodstock police station saw two men in a red BMW opening fire on police Inspector Lourens le Roux, the Cape High Court heard on Tuesday. It is alleged that the two men were being investigated by Le Roux for the earlier murder of Godfrey Hendricks, in an argument over a baseball cap.
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/ 2 November 2007
A court challenge to Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk’s new abalone restrictions has been postponed for a month. Legal teams of the South African Abalone Industry Association and the state gathered at the Cape High Court on Friday morning for what was expected to be an application for an urgent interdict against the restrictions.
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/ 1 November 2007
The release on bail of Najwa Petersen, accused of the murder of her entertainer husband, Taliep, was essential to save her young daughter from long-term emotional damage, Cape Town psychologist Rosa Bredenkamp told the Wynberg Regional Court on Thursday. Petersen has launched a second bail application after her first was rejected.
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/ 1 November 2007
Hammer murder accused Fred van der Vyver has lost a quarter of his weight since his girlfriend Inge Lotz was killed, the Cape High Court heard on Thursday. The revelation was made by the senior advocate in his defence team, Henri Viljoen, in closing argument. Van der Vyver is charged with killing Lotz in her Stellenbosch flat in March 2005.
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/ 31 October 2007
Murder accused Fred van der Vyver’s alibi had been proved beyond reasonable doubt and he should be found not guilty, his advocate told the Cape High Court on Wednesday. Van der Vyver (25) is accused of killing his student girlfriend Inge Lotz with a hammer at her Stellenbosch flat on the afternoon of March 16 2005.
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/ 31 October 2007
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk still faces a court challenge from the abalone industry even though he backed down on Wednesday from a harvesting ban. The ban, prompted by rapidly declining stocks, was to have come into effect on Thursday. It would have halted all commercial harvesting of the threatened shellfish from the wild.