Cape Town - Tensions were rising in District Six on Tuesday morning, with the Sheriff of the Court due to evict families occupying seven units of a housing development.
The families said they were prepared to stand firm in defiance of a High Court order ordering them to leave.
The Sheriff had not arrived by the 10am deadline set on monday by Judge Robert Henney in his interim order.
Some in the group of around 60 people claim ancestry from the original Khoisan inhabitants of Table Bay, while others say they are land claimants whose families were evicted from District Six under apartheid.
They have been occupying the units since Saturday.
The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform and the trustees of the District Six Beneficiary and Redevelopment Trust brought an application asking the Western Cape High Court for an eviction order.
The occupants are due to return to court on Thursday when they will be allowed to file opposing papers.
Tania Kleinhans, co-founder of the Institute for Restoration of the Aborigines of South Africa (Irasa) and an occupant of one of the units, said they believed the process of land restitution in the area had been fraught with corruption, and that the trust was an illegal body.
The group said they were representing themselves and had not employed a lawyer to file papers on their behalf on Thursday. Kleinhans said they would instead march to the High Court at 2pm and ask for the order to be rescinded.
Asked about the eviction order, the occupants responded emotionally.
“The battle is on. The court will come up against the tongue, heart and spirit of my ancestors if they try to remove me,” said Arthur Martin, who says his family were evicted from District Six when he was 19.
Most of them referred to injustices and “land theft” perpetrated by settlers against the Khoisan as legitimacy for their claims to the units.
“I’m not an infiltrator in this country. There was no agreement between the settlers and the Khoisan.
“I have lost my language, my dignity, my culture at the hands of those settlers. But today I say that I have a legitimate claim to this land,” said Mac Halloway.
Fagmieya Taliep, who said her family owned a number of homes in the area before being forcibly removed to a small house in Heideveld, took issue with the fact that some of the housing units were being leased to foreign tenants.
In court yesterday, advocate Paul Tredoux, representing the applicants, said the group had to be evicted urgently because the flats were earmarked for District Six land claimants who are due to move in on Saturday.
Tredoux said the group was also causing tension at the property because they had vandalised some of the doors by using a crowbar to gain access.
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