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Legal Aid joins eviction battle - tenants out on the street

TURFED OUT: Khathutshelo Monyai, who claims he was illegally evicted, now lives in a dilapidated building in Turffontein
TURFED OUT: Khathutshelo Monyai, who claims he was illegally evicted, now lives in a dilapidated building in Turffontein

LEGAL Aid South Africa will investigate the alleged hijacking of houses and illegal evictions of tenants in Turffontein, Johannesburg.

In the past two weeks Sowetan has published a series of articles highlighting the plight of the Turffontein residents who have accused foreigners of seeking to evict them illegally from the homes they were renting.

About 60 tenants are affected by the alleged unlawful eviction and 23 of them have already been evicted.

All these tenants claimed they had continued to live peacefully in these dwellings for a number of years after the deaths of their landlords.

Betty Ndaba was the first person to raise the alarm about the rise in unlawful evictions in the area.

She claimed that she was threatened with eviction by a person who had flouted the eviction process when he asked Ndaba to vacate a property without showing her proof that he owned it.

The same person later offered to pay her R10000 in exchange for the keys to the house, Ndaba said.

Ndaba said she had not been paying rent since the death of her former landlord in 2004 because she did not know who to pay to but had continued to pay for municipal services.

In the same area 23 tenants were arrested for trespassing even though they were not served with notices of eviction by the property's new owner.

Other tenants living on a property near Sunshine daycare centre were also ordered to vacate by the end of this month even though the new owner also could not prove to them that he owned the house.

Nelisiwe Masina, a manager of the corporate communications division at the Legal Aid offices, said this matter has been referred to their Johannesburg Justice Centre and its executive, Ncikazi Moahloli, has instructed a civil practitioner to look into it.

Legal Aid has in the past won cases such as that of Pontsho Doreen Motswagae. The applicants in this case had occupied properties for a number of years without being challenged.

The occupants were all black females who did not acquire ownership of the properties because, under apartheid, they were considered to be minors and therefore could not own property.

After the end of apartheid, the Rustenburg municipality tried to evict them, but failed. The Constitutional Court found that the municipality's action was unconstitutional.

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