Judgment reserved in Tlokweng land allocation case
Mpho Mokwape | Thursday April 3, 2014 12:46
The appeal comes after the Land Tribunal ordered the landboard to offer the applicants an audience and re-consider the allocation, which was conducted through a hotly contested raffle system.
During the heads of argument yesterday at the High Court, the landboard lawyer, Unoda Mack argued that the Land Tribunal had no powers presiding over the matter in the first place.
In the case, the court heard that on or about February 28, 2013 before the Land Tribunal, Thatayaone Matlapeng and 16 others applied for an urgent hearing of their appeal against the allocation and asked for an interdict to prevent the landboard from allocating 285 plots in Tlokweng.
The High Court heard that the landboard opposed the application on the grounds that the matter was not urgent, that the land tribunal had no jurisdiction and that there were insufficient reasons to warrant the granting of the interdict.
Mack said the Land Tribunal continued with the matter despite finding that the matter was not properly before it, that it was not urgent and that there were no reasons to warrant the granting of an interdict.
Mack argued that his subåmission was on the basis that even though the land tribunal had no jurisdiction in the matter and alternatively knowing that the matter was not properly before it, it continued to make consequential orders.
“A fairly crisp point arises in this appeal which is whether a tribunal or court, after making a finding that it has no jurisdiction to hear a matter, or that a matter is improperly before it, can proceed to make consequential orders in the said matter,” he said. He said the land tribunal after making a finding that it lacked jurisdiction still failed to dismiss the application stressing that the said consequential orders be deemed null.
Mack further said that Order 6 (3) of the Tribal Land Order grants the Land Tribunal exclusive jurisdiction only in matters that are properly before it and that it is a given that once a court determines that it lacks jurisdiction to entertain the matter, it cannot go further.
Respondent’s lawyer Tshiamo Rantao said that the appeal was academic because the Land Tribunal had jurisdiction and the matter was properly before it.
He stressed that the appellant seems to have lost the plot as they had merely taken the respondent’s heads of argument and based their appeal on it without scrutinising all the information before them.
Rantao also argued that the appellant’s did not establish the merit submitted by the respondents and that grounds for appeal were non-existent. The lawyer asked Justice Mothobi to dismiss the appeal with costs.