KDM applies for court order to stop land invaders at Sheffield

In response to the rise in the number of land invasions at Sheffield, KwaDukuza municipality has taken a hard line and early last week applied for a court order to stop the land invaders.

KDM media liaison officer, Sipho Mkhize confirmed to the Courier on Monday that the municipality had made an application to the court to grant an order to remove the illegal settlers that are currently occupying council-owned land in Sheffield.

The land has been earmarked for a mixed-income housing project to develop approximately 800 homes.

However, shack dwellers desperate for land have been marking sites on the vacant municipal property despite facing repeated demolitions in the past. Last year, more than 25 shacks were erected in the same area and KDM had them removed.

This did little to deter the squatters who resumed building of shacks shortly after the demolition.

In February, the municipality obtained another court order to demolish approximately 50 illegal structures that were erected at the site, opposite Sheffield Manors, by individuals who claimed they paid R300 for a plot.

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Mkize said the municipality had given the land invaders two notices to move but they had been ignored.

“We do not enjoy demolishing structures, but what we encountered is arrogance of people telling us that they had bought the land, despite documented evidence that the land belongs to the municipality,” he added.

Mkhize said the illegal land invaders were preventing the municipality from concluding the pre-feasibilty study required to determine the typology of the development to be undertaken.

“Upon deciding to do an EIA on this property, we identified that 11 families had legally occupied this land for quite some time under the compassion of the Umhlali Town Board and had been living in informal structures. The municipality, therefore, decided to relocate these families. I can confirm that homes have been built for these families in Ward 15 and we expect to have them occupy these new structures by no later than the second week of November. Currently, the municipality is finalising the building of ablution facilities at these new homes.”

“Though this is an emotive issue I wish to say that should the court grant our request, we will have to enforce the decision of the court,” Mkhize said

Over the past few months hundreds of new structures have sprung up on the council-owned land despite the municipality’s stance that illegal land occupation will not be tolerated and warning those invading land that they will be prosecuted and locked up.

The land invaders interviewed by the Courier said that should the municipality decide to remove them they would be taking their fight all the way to the Durban High Court as they had engaged with a lawyer who will respond to the municipality’s court interdict to have them removed.

“Where are we to go as we work in the area and our children attend the local schools? They should allow us to build here because we don’t have money to rent anymore.”

ALSO READ: Invaders planned to rent out land in Sheffield

They also drew attention to the shared ablutions they had to use, and the only tap that provides water to more than 80 families. The shack settlement shares a boundary with a multi-billion rand upmarket development currently under construction.

A homeowner in Sheffield Manors, who asked not to be named, said the situation was “sad” as there were people who genuinely needed a house but were falling victim to “landlords” who wanted to build shacks for rent.

Police spokesperson Vinny Pillay said there were different elements to this.

“On the one hand we have people desperate for homes closer to where they work and on the other we have the same people being scammed into buying plots from people who are trying to drive an agenda,” he said.

Last year 17 people were arrested when more than 1 200 people travelled from as far as Eshowe and partitioned sections of land between Etete and Tinley Manor.

Mkhize said the municipality could not allow the situation to get out of hand as people would end up taking private land or municipal land that has been earmarked for other projects.

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