Cape Town - The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) has given the go-ahead for 23 farm residents, former workers on a Paarl farm who have lived there since 1995, to be evicted from the Rein Hill Estate.
The SCA had set aside an order and upheld an appeal received from the Land Claims Court (LCC).
The order required the occupiers to vacate the property on or before August 31, 2023 while Drakenstein Municipality was ordered to ensure suitable emergency housing was provided to the affected residents.
The appeal centred around the question of whether eight families who were living on private property ought to be evicted on account of conduct that brought about an irretrievable breakdown in the relationship between the occupiers and the appellants, the Rein Hill Trust.
Following an unprotected strike by the farmworkers, The Trust asserted that the lease agreements clearly stipulated that the occupiers’ tenure as residents in the Trust’s cottages was subject to the employment relationship continuing to exist.
The employment of the occupiers was terminated because they refused to carry out their work.
Court documents detailed that the employment relationship between the Trust and those occupiers who were in its employ ended on June 24, 2011, on which date they were also ordered to vacate the farm.
None of them left the farm. A further notice to vacate the farm was issued on May 21, 2012 but yielded no results.
The Trust instituted legal proceedings in the Wellington Magistrate’s Court. The application for eviction was premised on the provisions of the Extension of Security of Tenure Act 62 of 1997 (Esta).
“The foundation for the proposed eviction was the unacceptable way the occupiers had allegedly conducted themselves on the farm, which, on the Trust’s version, led to the breakdown of the relationship between the Trust and the occupiers. In the answering affidavit deposed at the LCC, the stance taken by the occupiers was that the Trust had not proven the existence of written employment contracts and lease agreements regulating the occupiers’ habitation of the farm ...
“In a judgment handed down on February 18, 2021, the LCC found it was wrong to paint all the occupiers with the same brush and held that the Trust’s house rules had been broken by unknown people.
“As regards the allegation that the occupiers failed to observe the rules pertaining to reception of visitors and that their visitors were rowdy, the LCC criticised the fact that it had not been specified who, among the occupiers, had invited visitors to the farm. The LCC also concluded that there was no proof that the dogs that were allegedly roaming on the farm and damaging the vineyards belonged to the occupiers,” the judgment read.
The SCA found that, based on the evidence provided by the Trust, the inappropriate conduct complained of was of a serious nature and that the Trust’s assertions had a ring of truth.
The court said that the damage to the Trust’s property could not be allowed to continue unabated simply because individual culprits could not be identified.
The court also confirmed the Trust’s assertion that the occupiers treated the property with contempt, which was irreconcilable with a cordial social relationship and ultimately amounted to hardship experienced by the Trust.
Legal adviser for the Trust, Martin Oosthuizen, said: “While it is a pity that it had to come to this, we are grateful for the judgment and that the court found in our favour.”
Drakenstein municipality’s executive director for planning and development, Jacqui Samson, said they would study the judgment.
Cape Times