Cape Town businessman, Shaik Abdulla Parker, plans to defy the state by allowing more than 500 people to squat on 8,5 hectares of farm land. Parker says he is doing so because he feels “sorry” for the people living in such dire circumstances.
The group are allegedly “illegally” squatting on a tract of land along Olieboom Road, Schaapkraal, outside Philippi. They say they will move only when the government provides them with alternative land.
One of the residents of the Jimbos informal settlement, Nyameka Mfino, has been living on the land there for more than 25 years. She says the only time that she will move out of her shack is when the government gives her a new house.
The Jimbos informal settlement has some limited facilities for residents – paid for by Parker – and these include clean water and toilets.
However the MEC for Local Government: Environmental Affairs and Development in the province told the Western Cape High Court that the property is being used as an illegal dump and was a fire hazard.
The court heard that the authorities wanted Parker to employ and pay a full-time security guard to control access to the informal settlement and to limit the number of squatters occupying the land.
After the hearing, Judge Siraj Desai ruled in Parker’s favour saying that it was not reasonable to expect him to pay the costs of a full-time security guard. Desai said that Parker is not even charging people for the use of the land.
According to Desai, Parker was the “sort of gentleman that should never appear before a court” and accused the state of choosing to deal with the dispute in a “very clinical way”.
Judge Desai ruled that the state could not compel a private land owner to employ a security guard to look after land that was being used by the squatters.
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