Recently, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in the matter of Stay at South Point Properties (Pty) Ltd v Maulana and Others (UCT intervening as amicus curiae) (1335/2021) [2023] ZASCA 108 (3 July 2023) that The Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act 19 of 1998 (the PIE Act) does not apply in instances where students are evicted from residences at a higher education institution. Before this, students who occupied higher education residences were protected against evictions if the correct procedures as set out in the PIE Act were not followed.
The facts of the case above are as follows: The appellant was the owner and manager of a residence known as New Market Junction (“the residence”). He leased the residence to Cape Peninsula University of Technology (“CPUT”) for the purpose of providing student accommodation. The respondents were all CPUT students who were allocated accommodation by CPUT in the residence until the end of November 2020. The students refused to vacate the residence after CPUT gave them notice at the end of the 2020 academic year to do so and resisted forcible removal by private security guards. The appellant approached the Western Cape Division of the High Court on 15 January 2021 for an eviction order and relied on the rei vindicatio to do so (a remedy available to an owner of property to reclaim possession of his property from someone. The rei vindicatio merely requires the owner to allege and prove his ownership, the fact that the property is occupied by another, and he needs to identify the property in order to succeed with an eviction order. The onus is on the respondent to allege and prove a right to stay in possession). The High Court refused to grant an eviction order, hence the appeal against the High Court’s decision.
The central issue in the appeal was whether the student accommodation provided by CPUT to its students constitutes a home, and if so, the PIE Act would apply. Sec 26(3) of the Constitution of South Africa states that “No one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances.” The PIE Act was promulgated to give effect to this.
Obtaining an eviction order from a Court under the PIE Act is often lengthy, tedious, and expensive. A Court will decide whether an eviction is just and equitable after taking all considerations into account, and where an eviction might result in homelessness, the Municipality is obliged to provide temporary emergency accommodation.
The Supreme Court of Appeal Court (“SCA) considered the following features of the accommodation afforded by CPUT as relevant:
- “The students came from homes in order to study at the university. Unless otherwise demonstrated, student accommodation does not displace or replace the homes from which students come, and hence, logically, the respondents have homes other than the residence. There is then no basis to seek the protection of PIE.
- The provision of student accommodation is for a finite period of time, and it has a limited and defined purpose, that is, to accommodate students for the duration of the academic year and thereby assist them to study at the university. The arrangement is, by its nature, temporary and for a purpose that is transitory. Students who are assisted by CPUT with accommodation are well aware that this valuable benefit is of limited duration.
- .... each and every year, new students come to the university who legitimately look to the university for the very assistance that the respondents enjoyed. Equity requires that those who have had the benefit of accommodation should yield to those who have not.” Relevant to this feature is the fact that Higher Education Institutions regulate access to student accommodation in terms of its institutional rules.
The SCA held that these features of the student accommodation made available to the respondents indicate that this accommodation is not a home. It is a residence of a limited duration for a specific purpose that is time-bound by the academic year, and that is, for important reasons, subject to rotation. PIE did not apply to the respondents’ occupation of the property, and the appellant was thus entitled to evict the respondents in reliance upon the rei vindicatio. The appeal was, therefore, successful.
Whether this judgment is applicable to student accommodation in general and not only to those provided by universities or higher education institutions will have to be clarified by our Courts in the future.
Regards
Eberhard, Cheryl-Anne & Andre, Marzanne & Kume
