MBOMBELA – Trouble is brewing in Msholozi between a private land owner and the community management committee. Mr Thinus van Jaarsveld says his predicament is that his property is located on both sides of the newly paved Phumlani bus route which runs into the settlement from the R40 near Rocky Drift.
He is not too concerned that the road was technically built on his property. The problem is that the founder of the illegal settlement, Mr Screamer Max Bila is threatening to occupy his land, Van Jaarsveld says.
The bulk of the property on which he lives with his mother- and sister-in-law is located on the south of the road, a few hundred metres into the settlement. A small 800 square-meter piece of so-called “dead land” is on the other side.
He claims that when the municipality built the road to Phumlani, a formalised settlement, the fences between both pieces of land were taken down, and not put back up. When the road was finished taxis used his property as a stand, and he put the fences back up on the southern side. Last week he discovered earth-moving equipment flattening his plot on the smaller unfenced northern side.
He is accusing Bila of planning to set up plots here to form part of Msholozi. Van Jaarsveld says he can’t do much with the land himself, but he can’t just give it away as that would put the larger part of the property at risk too.
“He won’t buy it and I can’t just give it to him. He has threatened that the fences I have put up will not help me, as they will just occupy my land anyway,” he told Lowvelder over the weekend while re-erecting the fences on the north.
Bila refused to comment on the record.
Mbombela Local Municipality (MLM) has taken steps to have the land transferred to it from current owner, the national department of public works. It intends to fast-track the transfer as well as fence it to prevent further encroachments on the land.
A social survey commissioned on Msholozi by MLM showed some people owned more than 16 stands. The survey indicated that there were 3 376 stands of which 3 094 were residential, 54 for business use, 28 for both residential and business use, 18 for churches, three for crèches and one for a school.
