Don't move squatters, judge says (News24)

Pretoria - Moving a group of illegal Moreleta Park squatters to the other side of Pretoria would amount to an illegal eviction, Acting Judge Jody Kollapen told the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria on Friday.

Kollapen refused to allow the Tshwane municipality to temporarily move the group of over 300 squatters to a building in Strueben Street in the West of Pretoria.

He gave the municipality until 21:00 tonight to erect some form of temporary emergency shelter for the group on the same piece of council-owned land, known as the "Cemetery Estate", between the Pretoria East cemetery and the Woodlands Boulevard shopping centre where they lived for the past few years.

The squatters, aided by relief organisation Cross of Hope and Lawyers for Human Rights, on Thursday obtained an urgent interim court order to force the municipality to provide them with emergency shelter, pending an application for the re-erection of their shacks.

This was after the Tshwane Metro Police moved in on Wednesday, dismantled their shacks and burnt what remained of their shacks and possessions.

On Thursday the court ordered the municipality to erect temporary shelters in the form of tents for the shack dwellers, on the same site where they have been evicted.

The squatters said the destruction of their shacks were unlawful because the municipality had not obtained an eviction order for that specific piece of land and had only given them 24 hours notice before putting a torch to their meagre belongings, leaving them and their children out in the cold on a winter's night.

Their counsel, Adriaan Vorster, argued that moving the group across the city had never been discussed when they reached a settlement with the municipality and they would never have agreed to such an arrangement.

Shelters torched

"These are indigent people. They work for very low wages in the construction industry and simply cannot afford to travel from the shelter in the west to their work places in the east. "It will probably result in them losing their jobs.

"There is no evidence that an eviction order was obtained. These people's shelters were simply torched with 24 hours notice," he said. Council for the municipality, Johan Botha, argued that the emergency shelter in the West of Pretoria was the best place to accommodate the group on a temporary basis, as it had all amenities and even security guards.

Judge Kollapen said it was clear that the intention of the agreement between the squatters and the municipality was that emergency relief was to be provided on site. He said it was clear that the people affected were on the site prior to the destruction of their homes and were still on the site.

While the shelter in the west would provide them with more comforts, it was not clear how they would be housed and if the families would be split up, as often happened. Many of them worked in the vicinity and moving them to the shelter would create enormous difficulties. He said if the group was to be eviction, there had to be due process and they were entitled to remain where they were until due process had been followed.

- SAPA