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Flat owners in Durban have put on their boxing gloves and are fighting off a flood of court applications \u2013 apparently brought by the eThekwini municipality \u2013 to have their buildings placed under administration, in some cases for debts of as little as R3 000. <\/p>\n
With the assistance of Durban\u2019s Legal Resources Centre (LRC), activist Desmond D\u2019Sa and the Poor Flat Dwellers Association made an application in the Durban High Court to become amicus curiae<\/em> (friends of the court) in 142 pending applications against bodies corporate. <\/p>\n They want to run one case testing the legality of the applications, which, they allege, are being brought by a third party which bought old body corporate rates debt from the municipality in 2008. <\/p>\n While the applications are said to be brought in the best interests of the owners and aimed at getting so-called \u201cbad buildings\u201d back on sound financial footing, the LRC\u2019s Mahendra Chetty said it seemed the Sectional Title Act was being abused and used to recover debt, some of which might have already prescribed. <\/p>\n While the applications are mainly brought against \u201cpoor buildings\u201d, the Mercury is aware of at least one in- stance in which a well-run building, with a couple of hundred thousand rand in the kitty, was threatened with administration because of an alleged debt which the body corporate is disputing with the city. <\/p>\n Concerns were recently raised by Judge Johan Ploos van Amstel when, in matters before him, he noted that one involved an alleged debt of R11 000 and another only R4 000 \u2013 less than the legal costs of the application. <\/p>\n All the applications were launched by the same firm of attorneys with the recommendation that the same admini-strator be appointed in most cases. <\/p>\n According to Chetty\u2019s affidavit, which came before Judge Yvonne Mbatha yesterday, in one of the cases the body corporate had previously been placed under the control of an administrator, a fact not disclosed in the application. Chetty said he read some of the pending applications, and had several concerns, including the fact that letters were being sent to wrong addresses. <\/p>\n Deficient <\/p>\n He said no evidence was introduced that the body corporate was not functioning or was \u201cdeficient in its management\u201d and would benefit from the imposition of an administrator. In one instance, he said, the debt claimed was R3 262 \u201cdisproportionate to the costs of administration\u201d. <\/p>\n Chetty also questioned the constitutional legality of the alleged sale or cessation of the debt, saying it put property and housing rights in the hands of a third party, not bound by the same obligations on government, particularly to the poor. <\/p>\n In his affidavit, D\u2019Sa said poor people, unable to meet the administrator\u2019s demands for levies, were being turfed out of their homes, and property developers were snapping up their units. <\/p>\n He said in Flamingo Court, the former council flats in Umbilo, a property developer now owned at least 20 units. <\/p>\n \u201cMany occupants of municipal flats have been residing in these homes for more than 20 years. They bought them just after the 1994 elections,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have little means and no access to legal advice.\u201d <\/p>\n The attorney involved with the applications, Jos van Heerden, said he was taking instructions from the municipality. \u201cWe may well agree to the amicus curiae<\/em> application and then argue the matter on its merits,\u201d Van Heerden said. <\/p>\n City Treasurer Krish Kumar, did not respond to questions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Flat owners in Durban have put on their boxing gloves and are fighting off a flood of court applications \u2013 apparently brought by the eThekwini municipality \u2013 to have their buildings placed under administration, in some cases for debts of as little as R3 000. With the assistance of Durban\u2019s Legal Resources Centre (LRC), activist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-10277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}