INLSA
Billboards at uMhlangas Chartwell Centre are at the centre of an legal dispute. Picture: DOCTOR NGCOBO
Tania Broughton
tania.broughton@inl.co.za
DOCUMENT tampering – and who was responsible for it – and bad blood between city officials have become the focus of a court dispute over two massive billboards on a building in uMhlanga.
And, when the matter is argued in the Durban High Court next month, a judge will have to decide whether to call witnesses to testify under oath about why there are two different documents each purporting to be the city’s stamp of approval for the erection of the billboards at Chartwell Centre.
One of the documents was submitted to court by Maribo Outdoor Media, which secured an interim interdict in February against the building’s body corporate, which was attempting to cancel its lease and have the billboards taken down.
Last month, the body corporate applied to have the interdict set aside, crying foul and putting up its own version of the 2007 document it got from the municipality, which states that approval was given for only five years and would have expired in August this year.
Body corporate chairman Sam Hirschowitz accused Maribo’s director, Ashveer Dwarikapersadh, who was once the city’s signage approval officer, of giving “false and misleading statements to the court”.
In his response, Dwarikapersadh denies this. He says Ntombi Maema, the head of the city’s signage department, with whom he had an acrimonious relationship, should testify about the documents.
“I acknowledge that the letters are different… I cannot explain this. The applicant [Maribo] certainly did not tamper with the letters, and if anyone else has tampered with them, Maribo is unaware of this.”
Dwarikapersadh said when he first worked in the signage department, the “skilled and experienced” Benjamin Ramnarin had been his boss.
But Maema, “with no experience whatsoever”, had taken over in 2007.
Dwarikapersadh said a disgruntled Ramnarin had refused to participate in any signage applications, and he had followed suit, “my intention [being] to make it uncomfortable for her”.
“I wanted her to resign so that Ramnarin could resume what I perceived to be his rightful position. I realise now that this might have been youthful naiveté… but I was only 20.”
Animosity
Dwarikapersadh said this had resulted in animosity between him and Maema and divided the department.
He had left at the end of November to become a consultant, and became a director of Maribo last year.
While employed by the municipality, he had prepared the approval letter – with no set time period, for the two billboards in question – which had been signed by the head of planning, S Moonsamy, he said.
Since leaving, all applications he had made on behalf of Maribo had been rejected by the municipality, he added.
This might, in part, be because of the animosity, but from discussions with others in the industry it was clear few applications were being approved “because nobody inside the department knows anything about signage”, he said.
The acrimony, however, had led to the municipality attempting to remove billboards belonging to Maribo, even though they had approval and Maribo had sought and obtained interdicts in this regard.
In his formal response, Hirschowitz says Dwarikapersadh “studiously fails” to deal with how he obtained the document now at the epicentre of the dispute.
“If he is of the view that Maema or any other functionary of the municipality has acted unlawfully or, by virtue of some or other pre-existing animosity, tampered with or altered official documents, he should make that allegation plainly and forthrightly.”
Referring to the fact that the municipality had now instructed the body corporate to remove the billboards because the approval lapsed in August, Hischowitz said Maribo should “take the necessary steps to impeach this notification”.
He said his version of the letter with the five-year time limit was the one Maribo’s then-director and present shareholder Ridwaan Mohamed had given to the body corporate’s managing agent in 2007.
Argument has been set down for December 13 and 14.
