An attempt to halt the auctioning of prime land housing the notorious Plastic View informal settlement east of Pretoria failed in the High Court in Pretoria on Friday.
Judge Sulet Potterill dismissed an urgent application by a group of businessmen, trading as Rahoke, on the grounds that the applicants failed to comply with the court regulations on urgent applications.
Rakohe was in 2012 awarded a tender for a R160 billion development on the land, situated across the road from the upmarket Woodhill Boulevard shopping centre in Moreleta Park. Tshwane later cancelled the tender.
Rakohe obtained a court order in October last year, setting aside the cancellation and forcing the city to restart negotiations with Rakohe, in order to conclude a mutually acceptable development agreement.
The city’s application to have the order set aside is currently pending, resulting in the October court order being suspended.
Potterill said Rakohe had sufficient redress in a claim for damages if the tender was invalidly set aside.
If it still wanted to proceed with the development without the city’s help, it could go and bid on the property on Tuesday this week, she said.
The informal settlement in Moreleta Park is situated on one of more than 80 parcels of land that go under the hammer to raise an estimated R500 million to fund maintenance and infrastructure requirements, as well as basic services provision by the metro.
Protesting residents of Plastic View gathered outside the North Gauteng High Court on Friday and vowed to be back on Monday.
Tshwane mayoral spokesperson Blessing Manale said the Plastic View land was illegally occupied and residents were there in terms of a 2012 court order.
He said Tshwane was in an advanced stage of negotiations with Lawyers for Human Rights, on behalf of residents, to discuss available options when the land is auctioned.
“Our intention is to negotiate a resettlement plan to avoid a legal confrontation with the residents,” he said. “The overall benefits of the land sale will benefit the greater development needs of the people while resolving the current issues.”
Rejecting Friday’s application, Potterill ruled the application by Rakohe Investments was not urgent and that the company had not shown it would suffer irreparable harm if the auction continued.
Litigation about the settlement, also known as Woodlane Village, dates back to 2006 when the police burnt down residents’ shacks. Residents obtained a court order forcing the city to rebuild their shacks and make an alternative plan for them.
The residents, many of them foreigners, won a reprieve when the court ordered the city to establish a township on Woodlane Village and adjacent land by November 2013, or bring an application for the eviction of all of them.
Local ratepayers’ associations thereafter obtained several contempt orders against Tshwane for ignoring court orders.
The appeal court eventually exacted an undertaking from the battling parties that they would attempt to find a “workable solution” and find innovative methods to resolve the competing interests of the different factions.
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