Durban - The eThekwini Municipality secured a high court order on Monday against the “warlords” in control of the troubled Glebelands Hostel in uMlazi.
The group leaders, who are now named in a three-page annexure attached to the municipality’s court papers, are interdicted:
- from holding protest marches on the premises without the relevant authorities’ permission;
- allocating and or in any way dealing with the accommodation within the hostel;
- forcibly evicting, harassing, threatening or in any way interfering with the municipality’s legal hostel tenants.
To prevent further bloodshed, with 58 fatalities at the hostel since March last year, the municipality requested its amended urgent application be heard in chambers last month where it was granted an interim order which Durban High Court Judge Themba Sishi made final on Monday.
The municipality had initially brought an urgent application in November, which Judge Dhaya Pillay had struck off the roll because respondents were not properly cited.
According to municipal manager S’bu Sithole’s supplementary affidavit filed last month, the judge was adamant that those in control of or in charge of or associated with the first or second respondents be named.
Initially, the municipality had cited the first respondents as “persons in charge of or in control of or associated with the group responsible for blocks A-Z Glebelands Hostel, uMlazi, KwaZulu-Natal, situated at 4680 South Coast Road, uMlazi, KwaZulu-Natal”.
The second respondent was similarly cited, except blocks 40-57 were referred to. Sithole had said they did not have the names and identities of these respondents.
According to his founding affidavit, Sithole said the hostel, one of 10 the municipality owned and administered and the second largest, had 40 000 legal tenants. He said the first and second respondents were allocating beds to people illegally and receiving money for this.
Sithole described the situation within each hostel as lawless because people could be “allocated accommodation or forcibly removed and, or killed based on the person’s political and or other affiliations”.
In 1996, he said, the municipality assumed control of all hostels and registered all its occupiers on a database, but despite taking over control, Sithole said the block committees continued to exist and “began a systematic process of illegally and forcibly evicting” the municipality’s legal tenants and replacing them with their friends, associates, or anyone who paid them a “protection fee”.
He referred to these leaders and committee members as acting as “warlords who have systematically waged war on their detractors and rivals”.
In his supplementary affidavit, Sithole had requested this matter be heard in chambers, or in camera, on December 3 given the “volatile situation” within the hostel and the “extremely sensitive nature” of the police and provincial government investigations.
Daily News