Lungelo Mkamba
At least 160 KwaZulu-Natal pupils face eviction from their school’s hostel, situated on private property, after the owner said the trust tasked with maintaining the building was not abiding by the lease agreement.
Marius Maritz, the owner of the Verulam property on which the Sacred Heart Secondary School, Oakford Primary and Sacred Heart hostel are situated, wants the Durban High Court court to evict the pupils.
Maritz’s attorney, Vinay Gajoo, told the court the Sacred Heart Trust was not maintaining the building and was not entitled to a new lease after the old one expired on December 31, 2010.
“They have been unlawfully occupying (the hostel building) and should vacate,” he said.
The trust’s attorney, Ian Chadwick, agreed the building was in a poor state.
“A tenant is not obliged to do repairs. The trustees spent R1.2 million on repairs,” he said.
A former Sacred Heart principal, Esmé Verfus, testified that in 2005 the hostel was in a “shocking state”. The bathrooms were unusable and repairs would cost “a lot”.
The schools and their land were owned by the Catholic church which had a lease with the KwaZulu-Natal Education Department signed in 2000. The department and trust paid rent for the property to the church at a rate far below the market value. But the church sold the land to Maritz in 2009.
In a letter to the schools, the head of education, Nkosinathi Sishi, said Maritz wanted the department to pay more rent.
Arbitration ruled the department could pay the same as other church-owned schools. Maritz was unhappy with this.
He offered to donate a portion of the property used by Oakford to the education department but the department would have to pay subdivision and transfer costs. In return, he wanted Sacred Heart school and hostel to be closed.
Education MEC Senzo Mchunu declined the offer and decided to expropriate the land last year. This week he said the process was still under way.
