CCT69/06

2007] ZACC 12

2007 (10) BCLR 1027 (CC)

Moseneke DCJ

6 June 2007

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12144/2682

Application for leave to appeal to the Constitutional Court against a decision of the Supreme Court of Appeal: Popela Community and Others v Goedgelegen Tropical Fruits (Pty) Ltd [2006] SCA 124 (RSA). The case was previously heard in the Land Claims Court: Popela Community v Department of Land Affairs and Another LCC 52/00, 3 June 2005, unreported.

Application for leave to appeal against a decision of the Supreme Court of Appeal which upheld the Land Claims Court's finding that the applicants were not dispossessed of their land as a result of past racially discriminatory laws or practices. The application concerned the rights of former labour tenants to restitution of land rights in terms of the Restitution of Land Rights Act. The Court held that the test to be applied was whether the members of the applicant derived their possession from shared rules in 1969. The applicants each had separate relationships with the previous land owners and by 1969 no rights remained vested in the labour tenants as a community. However, the dispossession was a consequence of and was facilitated by repressive State laws and practices which permitted the demise of the labour tenancy system. The Court made a declarator that the individual applicants were dispossessed of a right in land as a result of past racially discriminatory laws and practices and were entitled to restitution under the Act. Majority: Moseneke DCJ (unanimous).