Cape Town - A woman who was last month evicted by the sheriff of the court from a property owned by social housing giant Communicare has won an interim court order to return to the flat she lived in with her mother and brother at the Sakabula apartments in Ruyterwacht.
The Goodwood Magistrate’s Court issued the order restoring Moerida Morat and her family to their flat on Wednesday.
The order from the court read in part: “The court finds that the applicants succeeded in satisfying the requirements of bare po session.”
Advocate Thando Dondolo, who represented the Morats, said on Wednesday that Communicare lost the matter because it had not followed the letter of the law in its eviction of the family.
However, on Thursday, Moerida, 53, who is one of the activist leaders of the Ruyterwacht tenants at loggerheads with Communicare, was threatened with arrest by the complex security guards for allegedly trespassing in the complex.
She contacted Dondolo, who accompanied her to the Elsies River police station.
At the police station Dondolo said: “There was a clear court order which said Moerida and her children could move back.
“We have just seen the detectives who told us that the case is very weak and built on hearsay because one security guard called a colleague of his who then came to the police station to lay a charge.”
Dondolo said this was a case of Communicare wanting to disregard the law with regard to the court order.Reached for comment, Communicare chief operating officer Makhosi Kubheka said the company was not aware of any threat of arrest.
“Moerida Morat was not a Communicare tenant and did not have a lease agreement with our company.
“The court order eviction applied to her daughter who was a Communicare tenant and all occupying the apartment unit in question due to their rental arrears.”
She said Communicare was reviewing the recent court order and would follow legal due diligence.
On January 21, Communicare issued a statement confirming that the sheriff of the court implemented an eviction order against Moerida Morat as instructed by the Western Cape High Court.
Kubheka said at the time that she had illegally occupied a unit at Sakabula for more than three years.
“As sympathetic as we are to the dire shortage of decent housing in the City, Communicare depends on rental income to take care of its property and invest in more housing developments.
“Pursuing legal action is our last resort after all attempts to resolve the rental non-payment amicably are exhausted,” Kubheka said.