Can I remove illegal occupants staying at a house for which I have a letter of authority?

The long answer

Thank you for your email asking if you can remove illegal occupants of the house for which you’ve got a letter of authority while waiting for title deeds.

You probably know that under the present lockdown, no one may be evicted at all.

But under ordinary circumstances, the Constitution says that no one can be evicted without a court order. This is under the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act, 1998, known as PIE.

The PIE Act sets out the steps you need to take to evict illegal occupants from the house:

• First, you need to advise them that you will be seeking a court order to evict them if they do not leave voluntarily.
• You need to apply to the magistrate’s court for an eviction hearing and you will need to give the people in the house written notice of the date of the court hearing.
• The notice must inform them that they have the right to oppose the eviction at the court hearing and that they have the right to be represented by lawyers (Legal Aid)..
• The local municipality must also attend the hearing to inform the court of what emergency accommodation they can provide if an eviction order is granted.
• At the court hearing both you and the illegal occupants will be given a chance to state your case.
• The court must hear all the details of the case before granting an eviction order, and it must answer the question of whether an eviction would be right and fair, taking into consideration the effect of the eviction on the persons involved, especially children and elderly people.
  The Constitution says that everyone has the right to adequate housing and that the government must try to achieve this goal as far as possible within its means, or in other words, as much as it can afford to. That is why the municipality in the area must also be informed of the court hearing and must attend, so that they can indicate whether they can assist with emergency housing if an eviction order is granted.
• If the court does grant an eviction order, the illegal occupants must be given reasonable time to move out, whether or not this is into emergency housing provided by the municipality. They must be served personally with the eviction order by a sheriff of the court. The order must contain the date of the eviction, and only the sheriff of the court can evict them, not the owner or anybody else.

It is illegal for a house owner to lock the illegal occupants out, remove their belongings or turn off the electricity or water to force them to move out.

Wishing you all the best,

Groundup