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SUPPLIED<\/p>\n
Rev Vusi Dube<\/p>\n
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Gugu Mbonambi <\/p>\n
gugu.mbonambi@inl.co.za<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n THE eThekwini municipality has served an eviction notice on Durban\u2019s flamboyant pastor Vusi Dube, whose church has been operating out of tents at Durban\u2019s Albert Park since 2008, and says it could prosecute him for illegal occupation of municipal land. <\/p>\n Dube, however, denied receiving a court order for his church to move. <\/p>\n In August, the city cut off the electricity supply to Dube\u2019s eThekwini Community Church. <\/p>\n The move came after the matter went to the municipal public accounts committee for investigation by DA caucus leader and member of the executive committee Tex Collins, who said no \u201cdefinitive action\u201d had been taken since he had raised the issue of the church with municipal manager Michael Sutcliffe in February this year. <\/p>\n In e-mail correspondence with Sutcliffe, Collins said Dube enjoyed a \u201cdisproportionate degree of political patronage\u201d. <\/p>\n Previously, the parks, leisure and cemeteries department said the process of removing the church had begun because it was situated in a designated park which is not reflected in the city\u2019s town planning scheme as a place of worship. Dube had been advised in 2010 that occupation of the land was illegal. <\/p>\n Yesterday, the municipality\u2019s chief legal adviser, Alisande Bradshaw, told the public accounts committee that Dube had 21 days to indicate if he would oppose the \u201cnotice of removal\u201d. <\/p>\n Because courts would go into recess from December 15, Dube had until the second week of January to decide whether he would file opposing papers. <\/p>\n DA councillor Andr\u00e9 Mitchell asked if Dube would be charged criminally for illegal occupation of the land. <\/p>\n Bradshaw responded that he could be prosecuted given that he was contravening a number of by-laws and that would be looked at while the council waited for Dube\u2019s response to the eviction notice. <\/p>\n The head of the parks, recreation and cemeteries department, Thembinkosi Ngcobo, said he had met Dube twice to discuss the issue of removing his church, and that the department had also met 25 other churches occupying municipal land. <\/p>\n \u201cThe municipality\u2019s public accounts committee was insisting that we take action, and after getting direction from the politicians, we discussed the matter with the city\u2019s legal department. A decision was then taken to proceed with the court order,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n However, Dube denied meeting municipal officials, saying he should not be asked to comment on the matter because he had not received a court order. <\/p>\n \u201cI have received absolutely nothing. In December, we will be at church worshipping and we do not intend to go anywhere else. We maintain our stance that we did not invade municipal land,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SUPPLIED Rev Vusi Dube Gugu Mbonambi gugu.mbonambi@inl.co.za THE eThekwini municipality has served an eviction notice on Durban\u2019s flamboyant pastor Vusi Dube, whose church has been operating out of tents at Durban\u2019s Albert Park since 2008, and says it could prosecute him for illegal occupation of municipal land. Dube, however, denied receiving a court order for […]<\/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":[29,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-5686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban-2","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\/5686","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=5686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}