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THE MARIKANA residents who illegally occupied about 500 completed houses in the R700m Marikana housing projects were given 60 days to vacate those houses. The North West High Court ruled in a favour of Rustenburg local municipality after a court squabble on Monday.

  However this did not deter the illegal occupants as they say they are ready to defy the court ruling.

 The Marikana illegal occupants’ representative, Napoleon Webster said they will never vacate the houses as they belong to them.

“These houses belong to us and no one will force us out. We know that we lost the case, but we have filed for an appeal. We will go to back to court on October 21. The judge did not adhere to our call, so we are adamant that this time we will win. The judgment was biased and we will never budge,” Webster said.

Rustenburg local municipality spokesperson, Thapelo Matebesi said the municipality finds itself in an adverse position. Matebesi said they have to deal with more than 24 informal settlements and a huge backlog of housing provision in its jurisdiction.

“To mitigate this challenge, as per the prescripts of the Housing Act, the municipality has taken all the reasonable and necessary steps within the national and provincial policy framework. We have provided our residents with decent accommodation as done during the process of integrated development planning in the recent years.

“Lawful beneficiaries were identified through extensive consultation with the community. The illegal occupation and pending threats of intensified illegal occupation continue to cause the delay for the completion of the project,” Matebesi.

Human settlements and local government department spokesperson, Be Bole said they will wait for an appeal before taking any drastically measures against the illegal occupants.

“We hope Marikana illegal occupants will respect the court ruling. The court ordered them to vacate the area. Those houses were built for rightful beneficiaries,” Bole said.

The illegal occupants occupied the housing units which were part of 2600 houses implemented by the North West department of Local Government and Human Settlement in conjunction with Lonmin Platinum mine.

The houses were officially handed over in January by North West Premier, Supra Mahumapelo. The units are built on the 50hacter portion of land donated by Lonmin.

The project includes 535 RDP houses, subsidised rental flats and 34 financed linked individual subsidised programme houses.

The North West legislature’s Portfolio Committee on local government and human settlement said workers had an impression that the development were built for them.

Portfolio committee chairperson, Motlalepula Rosho said: “The challenge was that when the land was donated to the government, the workers were not formally informed about the development. They were not informed that they will not just get houses because they work for the mines.”

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