CAPE TOWN - The Western Cape High Court on Thursday postponed an application for an eviction order to remove alleged illegal occupants off privately owned land.
The case against community members of Kayamandi in Stellenbosch near Cape Town will resume on December 6.
Residents came in their hundreds to protest against the eviction application from the land they allegedly illegally occupied in recent months.
The Stellenbosch wine farm owner turned to the Western Cape High Court in a bid to obtain the eviction order after a number of structures removed from Watergang were subsequently rebuilt on the land.
Zola Ndalasi, a community leader from Kayamandi, said that the lawyer representing the Kayamandi residents had asked the court to postpone the matter as he was still preparing all the relevant paperwork.
Kayamandi shack dwellers in Stellenbosch protested at the Cape Town High Court on Thursday against an application for their eviction Photo: Noor Slamdien/African News Agency(ANA)
“But the judge said by the 6 of December, the municipality should have a conclusion about this matter. The judge said the municipality must purchase the land and the municipality says it can’t afford to purchase the land. Then the judge asked the municipality why it cannot give some of the lands it owns to the owner of the land in question, as a way of swapping so that this matter is quickly resolved,” explained Ndalasi.
“But now the municipality says it already had plans of building new developments with all the land that is under its control for other people that has been on the list before us.”
He said that, as community leaders, they were planning to have another meeting with the municipality to discuss the matter, in the hope that they would find a solution. He, however, said if no agreement was reached, Kayamandi residents would shut down the entire Stellenbosch area next week.
Hundreds of Khayamandi residents at the Cape Town train station Photo: Ayanda Ndamane African News Agency (ANA)
The Watergang is a piece of land situated on the outskirts of Stellenbosch and belongs to a family trust that includes the Louiesenhof wine estate.