The men are in a brawl as a consequence of the Dingindoda rental housing area.
Emalahleni Housing Company boss George Xaba has secured a court order for the arrest of businessman Themba Sgudla and his ally Bhuti Mamba for continuing to defame him.
Both Sgudla and Mamba will return to the Tshwane high court sitting in Middelburg on 21 February 2019 to argue before Judge Segopotje Mphahlele why the order should not be made final.
It was secured by Xaba this week after both Sgudla and Mamba violated a 23 October 2018 court order prohibiting them from defaming Xaba and interfering with the lease agreement that the people of Dingindoda have with Xaba.
The high court judgement comes after Sgudla and Mamba convened a community meeting with the Dingindoda tenants on 7 November 2018 and labelled the 23 October court order “irrelevant”, saying they were now proceeding to give the tenants title deeds to own the public homes.
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The Dingindoda issue is a subject of court contention between Xaba and Sgudla.
Sgudla says the area belongs to him through a piece of paper called ‘Land Availability Agreement’ he had with the eMalahleni municipality and this paper allows him to sell the public homes “to members of the public” and then pay some of the money to the municipality for the land on which the homes were built.
But Xaba says the homes were built with government money and the Land Availability Agreement is invalid in that it purports to entitle Sgudla “to profit from the sale of social housing units built with public funds”.
Xaba also says in court papers that the price for which the municipal land is sold is far below the value of the land and in its aspect is a breach of the law governing social housing in South Africa.
Sgudla’s Anchorprops21 Pty Ltd, Demacode, the eMalahleni municipality, human settlement MEC Norah Mahlangu and the Social Housing Regulatory Authority are respondents in the matter being brought by Xaba against the Land Availability Agreement and to be heard on 13 May and 26 August 2019.
On 23 October 2018, both Sgudla and Mamba agreed in court that they would no longer tell the residents that Xaba was “stealing” the Dingindoda money.
SEE ALSO: George Xaba pays himself R1.3 million from Dingindoda rent
But on 7 November 2018 the two returned to Dingindoda for a community meeting and violated the court order.
They told the residents that the relationship between Xaba and the tenants had now been “terminated” by Sgudla’s Anchorprops and were now proceeding with giving the public homes to the tenants for ownership.
The homes were going to be bought on a “instalment sale agreement”, they told the ululating tenants who the following day threw in a big party celebrating the announcement by Sgudla to give them the homes to own.
Again, on 10 November 2018, the two pulled down the uThingo Park signage outside the Dingindoda gate and replaced it with one written ‘Cyril Ramaphosa Family Village’ in a gathering attended by a score of Dingindoda residents who were singing struggle songs.
But a day later Xaba took it down. Days later the residents put the signage up again.
In her judgement, Mphahlele said it was “highly unlikely” that both Sgudla and Mamba didn’t know what they were doing on the 7 November meeting and that their failure to comply with the 23 October court order was “willful”.
“It is declared that the respondents are in contempt of the court order dated 23 October 2018,” the Judge said Tuesday this week.
“The respondents are hereby committed to undergo imprisonment for a period of 30 days. The period of imprisonment imposed on the respondents is suspended for a period of 1 year on condition that the respondents are not found to be in the contempt of the court order of 23 October 2018 within the period of the operation of the suspension,” Mphahlele said.
She had given the two the date of 21 February 2019 to come argue why this should not be made final.
(edited by MLM)
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