Hon Chairperson, the hon Steyn asked an important question regarding a ruling made by the Gauteng Division of the High Court. He asked if we were aware of this ruling and if we were prepared to make a public statement about it.
Yes, the Ministry is indeed aware of the ruling of the South: Gauteng High Court, wherein the City of Johannesburg was ordered to pay rent to Blue Mountain Properties on behalf of persons who were illegally occupying their commercial property located within the Johannesburg central business district.
At this stage, and bearing in mind what was said earlier by the Deputy Speaker, it will not be appropriate to make a statement on the matter because the City of Johannesburg is in the process of filing an appeal against this judgment. The matter, therefore, remains sub judice. However, we view this matter with serious concern. It does have far-reaching political, policy and budgetary implications.
As the Minister, I, together with the Gauteng province and the City of Johannesburg, will remain seized with this matter. This also includes the Minister of Justice, my colleague, hon Radebe, who brought it to the attention of the Cabinet last week. After consultation, we will go deeper into this matter in my Budget Vote on 21 April 2010. I hope by that time the situation will have gone some way to being resolved.
Let me mention that the danger we are confronted with is a series of court case judgments which are policy-making. There is a judgment on shacks in Ekurhuleni, KwaZulu-Natal, Delft N2, and so forth. We make laws here, not forgetting that courts make laws known as case laws. The problem is that these case laws are beginning to impact on human settlement policy. We are confronted with a situation which, if it's not addressed amicably in co- operation with those who passed the judgments, may end up causing chaos in the country.
To conclude, some of these cases promote illegality - which is called the legalisation of illegality - whereby people can occupy your piece of land and you cannot evict them before you find an alternative piece of land or accommodation for them. In this regard, there are Small Enterprise Development Agency, SEDA, ramifications. Thank you.