Plastic View residents want to stop auction

The High Court in Pretoria will rule later today if it should stop the Tshwane Municipality from selling off municipal land, including the notorious Plastic View informal settlement in the East of Pretoria, on a public auction.

Plastic View, also known as Woodlane Village, is amongst the over 70 municipal properties destined to be sold in auction on Tuesday morning. Today Lawyers for Human Rights, which represents the Plastic View Community, argued that the community had no prior knowledge of the planned sale, in which they clearly had an interest.

Rudolph Jansen, for LHR, said the community’s tenure on the land had been the subject of three court orders and negotiations with the City about their future was continuing.

The sale of the land in Moreleta Park to a private entity would endanger their security of tenure, he said. Jansen agued that a huge amount of legal resources would be saved if the court stopped the sale at this stage until an agreement had been reached between the Plastic View Community and the City. “It is in the city and the potential buyers’ interest to wait until any legal uncertainty about the legality of the sale has been finally determined. “…One wonders why Tshwane is in such a rush to sell this land when those legal issues have not yet been resolved,” he said.

The community asked the court for an interim interdict to stop the auction of all of the municipal properties pending a review application to set aside the decision to put the properties on auction. They maintain Tshwane has in principle agreed to establish a township and housing development to accommodate those who qualified for state housing, but that no firm agreement has been reached yet about the future of those who did not qualify.

The value of Plastic View has been placed at R300 million, but the City has apparently undertaken to buy back the land at a ten percent commission. Jansen said the clause would cost Tshwane’s taxpayers at least R50 million in commission. Suddenly flooding the market with land would also negatively affect the prices. “There’s a lot to be said that Tshwane should be protected from it’s own folly. It’s a wasteful way of doing business,” he said.

Regarding Plastic View, Jansen argued that the City was simply not ready for the sale and was only looking at the short term gain of getting some cash. Jansen argued that the high capital assets was being sold with complete disregard to mandatory procedures set down by law, which included public participation. Counsel for Tshwane, Myrone Dewrance, argued that mandatory procedures had been substantially complied with. He said it was speculation hat the municipality would evict the Plastic View community, as they would have evicted them long ago if they wanted to. “Nothing has happened to threaten the security of tenure of the community,” he said.

Dewrance argued that the city had financial troubles and that the sale of the land was the only viable option to raise money. Judge Legodi Phatudi will give judgment this afternoon.