January 8, 2025 | Business, Economics, Practice

January 8, 2025 | Business, Economics, Practice

Property

Trends:

  • Regular readers of property news will recall that especially (the average) South African residential property prices are in decline, when compared to our inflation rate. South Africans are not alone in this position, as may be seen from the following graph showing real house prices in the BRICS grouping:
  • Readers may wish to take a look at the final African Construction Index published for last year (Q3), which shows: a substantial rise in (all) buildings completed and the real value thereof as well as employment by the construction sector, and a modest uptick in building materials produced. Residential property bond applications were also up: file:///C:/Users/Daan/Downloads/Afrimat-Construction-Index-Q3-2024-Final.pdf

Despite the above, and somewhat contradictory, the construction activity in South Africa is still in decline: https://codera.co.za/construction-activity-in-sa/

  • The place to be/buy is still primarily our Mother City and, more generally enclave living for the more affluent (think Pretoria East, Centurion, Langebaan, Gqeberha, St Francis Bay). Interestingly, Loos says that low-income migrants make up the majority of the residential inflow in both the Western Cape and Gauteng, but that the Western Cape probably has a higher proportion of high-income/skilled/wealthy residents than Gauteng. On the other end of the scale, the primary loser province appears to be Limpopo.
  • The construction mafia is still with us but draft regulations to address extortion, and its bedfellows, has been published. Not much but still…

News

  • Property news, relevant to KZN practitioners, is that the final phase of the Pearls of Umhlanga is reaching completion and that the Sibiya development by Tongaat has been taken over by
  • The Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development has published the draft EDRS regulations. In my book, much ado about nothing.
  • Zimbabwe’s disarray continues: it paid compensation to farmers for the expropriation of the farms who were not part of the deal (to pay approximately 1300 erstwhile farmers) but neglected to pay others.
  • The Mother City appeal against a declaration of unconstitutionality of its implementation of the National Housing Program has failed.
  • The CoJ is, by now, infamous for water supply interruptions to other municipalities also. Pali Lehola, our previous Statistician General, says that our municipalities have not reversed their decline.

Legal news

Practice

News

  • Screen scraping, resulting in payments on behalf of a payer, is something few of us are familiar with, but which has now been a regulated by the Reserve Bank: https://www.resbank.co.za/content/dam/sarb/what-we-do/payments-and-settlements/regulation-oversight/Directive%202%20of%202024.pdf
  • Attorneys are familiar with (what is conveniently referred to as “challenges”) information capture dysfunction at Home Affairs, the Department of Justice and others. SITA (the government’s IT agency) dysfunction was publicised mid-December by News24. The Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies was involved in a meeting at which these issues were highlighted and which, with any luck (the term is intentionally used) will deliver results.
  • RAF evergreen in the news: the RAF/Discovery Health saga is not yet over. The RAF wants to recover unlawful payments made to the latter organisation whilst that organisation will, reportedly, appeal the judgement in terms of which RAF does not have to pay medical schemes’ costs in road accident cases.

A very recent report dealt with the Cape Town RAF office’s assets having been attached following on its failure to pay the settlement agreement claims of an illegal foreigner. Broke.

  • Judges:
    • last year was eventful in two judges having been removed from office;
    • the NPA had, late last year, asked for an experienced criminal judge from outside the Free State to preside over the asbestos scam trial of Ace Magashule. The Judge President of that High Court is adamant that a judge from that court should preside. It was said that the insinuation, that Free State High Court Judges might be beholden to politicians, is defamatory!
    • The Eastern Cape Judge President is under investigation on a complaint of sexual harassment. This would probably not have become public had Judge Ngoepe not ruled that the proceedings would be held partially in camera; this led to suggestions that the gentleman concerned was receiving favourable treatment was in the judicial accountability system. So, why are judges treated differently?
  • The following graph is drawn from assessment of the rule of law and legal rights in the countries listed; you will see that we are not quite up there, but, in mitigation, no other African country is listed:

 

  • A remarkable report by The Citizen states that the DoJ and NPA have agreed to resolve the issues resolve their differences regarding access to the state capture commission’s database. Remarkable, because one assumes that the default position for these entities should be working together.
  • Cyber security, regarding payments requested from clients, and which are intercepted and misdirected, was reported on repeatedly last year. A Werksman’s article on the issue is instructive: https://www.werksmans.com/legal-updates-and-opinions/a-tale-of-cybersecurity-blame-who-bears-responsibility/
  • The abysmal pass rates in legal competency exams was reported on within the profession last year; blame for this was laid on the LPC by Judge Desai: https://www.news24.com/news24/SouthAfrica/News/lpc-caused-untold-misery-why-ombud-blames-council-for-4-pass-rate-in-legal-competency-exams-20241223
  • The Information Regulator has been in the limelight for its attempt to block publication of matric results in newspapers. Irrespective of one’s sympathy with the merits of the issue, the wisdom of that institution to bring an urgent case outside the regular court sittings when it had years to deal with this, should be seriously questioned.
  • A Pietermaritzburg-based practice is under investigation for sourcing non-existing legal citations via AI – the company was ordered to pay the costs of two hearings. Don’t.
  • Fit and proper person? The LSSA issued an advisory note on the admission of a practitioner, who neglected to disclose that she was the director of a failed a private company, on her application for admission as attorney, saying that one should make sure the facts before deposing such an application. There is little of interest here save that for a practitioner to go to the SCA for admission is quite a step!
  • Not fit and proper: the LPC has published a list of practitioners suspended or struck from the roll last year – 132 of them. The latest statistics that I could find the indicated that in September 2022 there were over 33,000 practising attorneys in South Africa – a misbehaviour rate of 0.4%.

Hard news

Conveyancing/property

  • An interesting issue on section 2 (1) of the Alienation of Land Act came up this week. The relevant section says that if one signs a deed of sale of land on behalf of a party, one needs written authority to do so. Does a person need written authority when he-
    • Acts, as partner, for a partnership?

https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZATransvLawRpPD/1913/94.pdf

  • The Johannesburg High Court has ruled that a body corporate of a residential complex could disconnect the electricity supply to a member’s unit, until the outstanding electricity charges and interest is paid: https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAGPJHC/2025/2.html
  • Digitalisation: our Minister of Land Reform etc has published draft EDRS regulations for comment.
  • Our Chief Registrar has reversed a prior ruling on the transaction date of transfer duty receipts, when dealing with settlement agreements. Briefly, if a settlement agreement is amended or agreed to post-divorce, that will be the date for the transfer duty receipt. Ask me for a copy of the ruling.
  • An interesting case, ex-STB, the consent necessary to obtain unanimous approval to sell a right to develop was discussed – essentially constructive engagement and transparency is required if such consent is sought by a body corporate: https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZASCA/2024/169.html

Comment

Commentators repeatedly state that economic growth is the primary panacea to South African problems. Looking at the following graph, this is not likely to happen soon given our productivity performance, compared to others:

South Africa’s productivity growth has been poor relative to the other major BRICS economies, both in terms of labour productivity and total factor productivity.

 

Lighten up

On Productivity:

They say time is money. If that’s true, I must be bankrupt by now!

 

 

Written by: Daan Steenkamp
https://www.daansteenkampattorneys.co.za/ 

Still looking for your dream home, or wanting to sell? Feel free to give one of our developers a call today.

Tom Eastwick – The Gates, Hilton and Garlington, Hilton | 072 297 2699 | tom@devdirect.co.za
Janet Channing – Waterford Residential Estate, Howick | 082 570 5834 | janet@devdirect.co.za

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