Durban - The Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB) has lost its last-ditch Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) bid to set aside the Pietermaritzburg High Court ruling which ordered it to refund people it charged for occupying tribal land under its care.
The SCA ruled that the appeal has no prospect of success even if it is heard.
In June last year, KwaZulu-Natal Deputy Judge President, Isaac Madondo, ruled that the billing of tenants living in tribal land under the care of the trust was unlawful.
Judge Madondo ordered the trust to refund all the people it has collected money from and the amount runs into millions – no time frame was given for the refunds.
JUST IN: The Ingonyama Trust has lost its Supreme Court of Appeal bid to set aside the Pietermaritzburg high court ruling which ordered it to refund people it charged for occupying tribal land under its care. The SCA ruled that the appeal has no prospect of success. @IOL
The matter was taken to the High Court by the Council of the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac) and Rural Women’s Movement which was led by the late Sizani Ngubane and several others.
The applicant parties also frowned at the discriminatory practice by the trust to only grant land to males, thus preventing women from having access to and owning the land on their own.
"With reference to the application lodged in this office on June 30, 2021 this court ordered on August 17, 2022 that the application be dismissed as per attached order… Having considered the Notice of Motion and the other documents filed.
“It is ordered that: condonation as applied for is granted. The applicant for condonation is to pay the costs of the application.
"The application for leave to appeal is dismissed with costs on the grounds that there is no reasonable prospect of success in an appeal and there is no other compelling reason why an appeal should be heard,” read the SCA order which was emailed to parties late on Tuesday.
Casac executive secretary, Lawson Naidoo, confirmed that the order was indeed sent to all parties with interest in the matter.
The Ingonyama Trust Board owns 2.8 million hectares of land in KZN and its sole trustee is the King of the Zulu nation, King Misuzulu KaZwelithini.
Most of the land is in rural areas and some is in prime peri-urban areas like Adams in the south of the coastal city of Durban.
In recent days, the issue of the trust came to the fore when it emerged that there is an ANC document which recommended that the land be taken over by the state.
That recommendation has been met with resistance from the likes of some traditional leaders and the IFP.
The provincial secretary of the ANC in KZN, Bheki Mtolo, has been on a drive to clarify that the land in tribal areas is safe, as they told the party at the national level that the proposal should be set aside.
Mtolo accused those of perpetuating the issue of trying to score cheap political points using a sensitive matter which has been long settled by the governing party.
Current Affairs