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House Squatters
| Date: |
25 September 2005 12:00 |
| Producer: |
Angus Begg
Angus Begg
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
George Patricios (Rosettenville houseowner): 'It's your property and you've got no rights. No matter where you go, you can't get justice. Where is the justice?
Errol Mills: 'I paid for it. It's registered. I paid my duties. I paid my dues. I paid everything and yet I can't occupy what I bought.'
Ruda Landman (Carte Blanche presenter): 'At a time when financial advisers are telling us to invest in property, stories are beginning to emerge of people ... black and white ... occupying and refusing to budge from properties they found empty and simply moved into.'
George: 'Now look, I've got nothing to do with you. All I can tell you is that when I came here I told you, you are illegally in the house. You shouldn't have been in the house.'
The scary news is that the law as it stands is complicated and unwieldy. It costs at least R14 000 just to remove a tenant illegally occupying your property. The law concerned is The Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of, Land Act and, as much as a mouthful it is to pronounce, so is it a headache for an increasing number of homeowners.
Ruda: 'The law says that the circumstances of an illegal occupant have to be taken into account before an eviction order can be granted against him or her. It has to be just and equitable. That sounds simple, but it isn't. You may very well pay good money for a property - maybe even millions in an upmarket suburb, but if someone moves in while that property is standing empty it is going to be very difficult and costly to get them out.'
George Patricios grew up in the Rosettenville house his father bought in 1946. Although he moved into another home with his wife a few decades back, his mother left it to him when she passed away in the late '80s. He then rented it out through an agent. His last tenant moved out in December while George was on holiday.
George: 'I returned and they were looking for a tenant... the agents. And when they did find a tenant they said they couldn't put him in because people had occupied the house. I said, 'Well how did you allow that? What happened?' No they said they can do nothing about it because of the law. And after someone is in the house for 48 hours you cannot evict them.'
George says he went to the Booysens police three or four times and, after being sent from one to the other, was told that the law couldn't help him.
George: 'I said to an inspector, 'If you were on holiday and somebody came into your house... used your TV, used your fridges, used everything and you came and you couldn't get back into your house, what were you going to do?' He said, 'That is the law... 48 hours.' I said: 'Is that a just law? You want to tell me that there is no law that can evict these people? And you must sit in the street while they sit in your house?' He couldn't give me an answer. He says...there was another constable next to him...and both of them looked at me and they said, 'Yes, you're right. That is the law.''
Happy Ngcobo seems to run this squat. According to one of her fellow squatters a mysterious agent had apparently organised their occupation of the house.
Mary (Rosettenville squatter): 'She talked to the agent.'
Ruda: 'To the agent?'
Mary: 'Ja. Then the agent came and okayed this house.'
Ruda: 'Where did you meet the agent?'
Mary: 'In town.'
Happy says this self-appointed agent organised her lights and water account with the municipality. George neither knows nor has met this agent.
Ruda: 'He never gave the house to any agent. So he knows nothing about it.'
Mary: 'George. Is he owning this house?'
Ruda: 'Yes.'
171 Albert Street is not the only squatted house in the area. Local Councillor Dennis Jane has been working with the issue in these suburbs for five years. He says there are at least 130 examples in Rosettenville and Townsview alone.
Dennis Jane (Rosettenville Councillor): 'So I can take you to an estate agent who had a property vacated on a Friday and when he gave keys to a prospective tenant to inspect the property on Sunday it had already been occupied. And when the agent went there the following day, which was a Monday, to check out the validity of what was happening, he was told that three days had passed. The occupants are now legal occupants. And they'd meet him in court.'
Errol Mills paid R3 million for his house in Linksfield, Johannesburg. This is one of the city's most expensive areas, with average property prices close to R5 million. On arriving to take transfer of the house from the estate agent a few months ago Errol found it was occupied. He explained the story to Devi
(Carte Blanche presenter).
Errol Mills (Linksfield house owner): ''Inside this cupboard over there... there were a whole lot of keys and they were nice and clearly marked by the previous owner: 'south room' 'north room' 'west room' 'main bedroom' etc., etc. so the persons who broke in then just took these keys and then obviously sold each room out and gave them keys.'
Ruda: One of the two occupants we found in the house explained just how they came to be at this address.
Abigail (Linksfield squatter): 'I saw the poster... by the street in this quarter. I was looking for the place to stay. So I saw the cheapest place. They say the room is R750. The deposit is R700. Okay.'
That's how Abigail and her fellow-squatters came to be in Errol's house. That's how easy it is to hijack someone's property. Ian Jacobsberg, a Johannesburg conveyancing attorney, says there are serious issues with what has become known as the 'PIE Act'.
Ian Jacobsberg (Conveyancing attorney): 'The problem is that the Provincial Illegal Evictions Act doesn't discriminate between the genuinely homeless people that it was intended to assist and the recalcitrant tenant. The Act creates certain formalities that have to be complied with in order to evict someone. One has to satisfy the court that, in the words of the Act, 'The rights of poor people... women, children and particularly women-headed households' have been taken into account.'
But how did this situation come about? ...a house in good condition on a large stand, essentially trashed by uninvited occupants? Errol says when he first found the house occupied, Abigail was one of a few people staying there. She wasn't sure quite who was in charge.
Errol: 'And they apparently signed up an agreement with a guy called Manana and Martin from Latvia Properties. Which... there is a telephone number on the lease agreement... the telephone number refers to the Jo'burg Mortuary.'
So we have then a number of people referred to as 'agents' making money by letting out other peoples' property. Ian Jacobsberg says in this instance the property owner has the law on his side.
Ian: 'The Act does contain a provision that says that it is a criminal offence for anybody to derive benefit or financial reward from allowing somebody to occupy property without the owner's consent.'
Ruda: 'Have you heard the story of 'An agent let us into the house' before?'
Dennis: 'Definitely. It's common practice.'
But if the homeowner doesn't even know who he's dealing with, how then does he get them out?
Errol: 'There's a fear factor in trying to negotiate a deal with them and get them moved out. I've tried to talk to the police. The police have not responded and they've advised me that it's not [within] their jurisdiction any more'.
But not every case of squatting is the same. Like when you buy a property and the existing tenants refuse both to pay rent and to move.
Ever since she moved into this house in Krugersdorp west of Johannesburg with her parents three years ago, Jacqui Lindique thought that the house next door would be perfect for her young family.
Jacqui: 'It's always been a beautiful home with the wooden floors and pressed ceilings. It's why I bought in ... originally. When we heard that the people currently living there (when we decided to buy) were evicted, we thought this would be an ideal opportunity for us to get another property on our names, live next door to my parents. They are getting older, so it was an ideal situation.'
Jacqui's opportunity to buy her dream house came when the owner passed away and the Slatter family - the tenants - were given notice of eviction for non-payment of rent. However, Patrick Slatter said they weren't going anywhere.
Jacqui: 'He was very blunt and he often said he's not prepared to discuss anything with me. He often spoke to Wikus about it. And then he claimed he had nowhere to go.'
When we found the Slatters at their new home down the road in Newlands, we asked Mr. Slatter why he had refused to go.
Patrick Slatter (former Krugersdorp squatter): 'It wasn't just a case of refusing to leave. I didn't find a house. That was the biggest thing. I looked everywhere for a house.'
Because the Slatters hadn't been able to find a house, Jacqui had found herself in the bizarre situation of driving them around on house-hunting expeditions.
Jacqui: 'We would [ride] them to estate agents to go and find a house for them to move in. Saturdays were spent house-hunting for them. And then we would find the ideal. And he was picky too. It couldn't be in this area, and it couldn't be in that area. And it had to be close [to] here. So eventually we found him a place, and now he has no money.'
Ruda: ''If you take the example of Jacqui Lindique from Krugersdorp, what were her options?'
Ian: ''She could have gone to court and applied for an eviction order with all the attendant procedural problems and cost implications. And that is about the only remedy available to her.'
Ruda: 'The tenant did argue that he didn't have another house.'
Ian: 'Well if he comes to court with that version, then - until the court has decided which party is telling the truth on that, the tenant remains on the premises and that can be several months before that judgement is finally given.'
The Slatters finally said they would move if Jacqui paid them R3 000. Jacqui, desperate to be rid of them, agreed and moved Patrick's family and their belongings to their new home.
Ruda: 'But I mean, we all have bad times, but because of that you can't simply just move into someone else's property and simply stay there.'
Slatter: 'No, no. That is so. You can't just stay there. That is so.'
Ruda: 'So. You did it.'
Slatter: 'Yes I did it, but because of negligence. I can't say on whose side.'
Ruda: 'In the end she paid the guy R3 000 and actually did the removal. Do you think that was reasonable?'
Ian: 'That is probably a good deal for the landlord. The landlord is somewhere on a hiding to nothing in these situations.'
George: 'I've been emotionally involved so long that it's upset me every time I've come here. I don't even want to come near my house.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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