March 22, 2025 | Business, Economics, Practice

March 22, 2025 | Business, Economics, Practice

Practice

 

News

  • It is said that our national sex offenders list should reach over 40,000 names, but there are doubts whether it will be published. The original date of publication had been the end of February, but confidentiality concerns have caused the Minister to postpone this. Somehow one suspects that publication may never happen.
  • The Ekurhuleni metro has withdrawn a case in which it accused the sheriff of acting in bad faith by attaching key delivery vehicles.
  • RAF:
    • The RAF and SARS are involved in a High Court dispute in which SARS claims R5bn in fuel rebates.
    • The Eastern Circuit High Court has ruled that the RAF is not entitled to reject claims that substantially comply with section 24 of the Road Accident Fund Act, but not with its 2022 Board Notice.
    • The AG has told Scopa that the RAF had accumulated a deficit of R25bn over the past five years. This led to it receiving an adverse audit outcome for the 2023/24 financial year. The rate at which the RAF reduces backlogged claims should be 20% (to achieve stability) but is only some 17%. This slow rate is owing to historic claims not being processed, due to inadequate information required to finalise these.
    • The RAF and a curator ad litem differed on the date from which a capital award shall bear interest; where the parties cannot agree, section 17 (3) (a) provides that interest shall run from the 15th day of the court order.
    • The De Rebus published a note on the RAF CEO, apologising to legal practitioners and dealing with the clogging of courts, widely attributed to the RAF. Read for yourself: https://www.derebus.org.za/raf-chief-executive-officer-apologises-to-black-legal-practitioners-2/
  • You might recall that SARS wished to install CCTV surveillance of cigarette warehouses, in order to stamp out illicit cigarette trade. This led to a legal dispute which has now been decided upon by the Supreme Court of Appeal, which ruled that SARS would not be allowed such surveillance.
  • Treasury introduced a policy shift, allowing government entities to consider Unsolicited Proposals; Yawn: https://lnpbeyondlegal.com/2025/02/27/amazing-paradigm-shift-for-private-involvement-in-ppps/
  • The Statutory Earnings Threshold has increased to R 261,748; employees, earning above this threshold, are not subject to the deeming provisions that apply to atypical employment arrangements in terms of the LRA.
  • A Ugandan High Court judge, the recipient of the University of Pretoria’s Vera Chirwa human rights award in 2019, has been convicted in Britain of forcing a woman to work as a slave.
  • Ithala has been in difficulty for some years. It has now accused (and taken to court) the Prudential Authority, accusing it of engineering its demise! Speaking of internecine squabbles!
  • The unpleasantness, over Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s estate, continues, with the current dispute dealing with assets that had allegedly been removed from that estate.
  • An article, emanating from the University of Limpopo, argues that the exclusion of Wills from ECTA should be revised, in order to provide for electronic wills. Yes!
  • Technically, a power of attorney lapses when the grantor thereof becomes mentally incapable. Yet, because curatorships are expensive and awkward to obtain, many families manage the affairs of incapable persons via a power of attorney, which works simply because no one bothers to check the validity of that power of attorney. Fisa recently published a note on Moneyweb saying that we need enduring powers of attorney to deal with such situations: https://www.moneyweb.co.za/in-depth/fisa/sa-desperately-needs-lasting-power-of-attorney-legislation/
  • The leader of the ABC has lodged a complaint with the JCC against judge E-M Bezuidenhout, following on her judgement removing him as mayor of Greytown. The judge had referred the case to the LPC for investigation into suspected AI-generated case content. The gentleman alleges that the delay in delivering reasons has stymied his right to appeal.
  • We routinely hear of vehicles forfeited to the state, following on arrests where, for instance, perlemoen is transported. An article in IOL reported the loss to the state of an immovable property, used for illegal gold processing. Good!
  • Mediation, in High Court actions, is set to become commonplace: https://www.derebus.org.za/steps-to-make-mediation-more-mainstream-are-underway-2/
  • Our DNA backlog is back to where it was –140,000 cases!

 

Hard news:

 

Conveyancing

  • The Distinction between marital status of Civil Marriages prior to and after 2 December 1988 had been declared unconstitutional by the Concourt, resulting in all such black civil marriages being in community of property. The difficulty with this judgement is that it imposes a regime upon persons, who might have wanted to be married out of community of property: https://perjournal.co.za/article/view/17930
  • The Johannesburg Deeds Office relocation has seriously disrupted transactions through that office.
  • The Chief Registrar of Deeds issued a directive that requires the Master of the High Court to accept a redistribution agreement for registration purposes. This article says that this is nonsense: https://perjournal.co.za/article/view/8994
  • Predictably, the EDRS era, destined to apply from month end, is late in being implemented. This caused all manner of unpleasantness as the Chief Registrar of Deeds issued a raft of circulars of which CRCs 3 & 4/2025 are the latest (ask me for copies). The Pietermaritzburg Conveyancers’ Association had investigated the previous circular and issued the Chief Registrar with an ultimatum to consult regarding the deficiencies thereof, or be taken on in court. At the time of writing, no response has been received from our Registrar. If interested and acting on behalf of similar associations, to give me a call for a copy.
  • The Chief Registrar hosted an EDRS information session on 24 March. I listened in – this was one way traffic in the sense that you couldn’t ask live questions. Questions were loaded but will be dealt with later. In summation:
  • interestingly, the race of the parties is asked for transfer purposes;
  • there are several important issues that need clarification, some are:
    • linking was not dealt with;
    • powers of attorney are uploaded as PDF – who keeps/verifies the original?;
    • pre-payment of fees will be done by credit card – how one deals with this from a trust account needs to be dealt with (I suspect that conveyancers will need to keep a wallet of its own funds for this purpose;
    • the system is geared for a conveyancer to attend to log in and loading transactions himself – how staff will use the system will have to be determined.

What was done is certainly a start, but I suspect that much refinement will have to be done before the EDRS becomes operational.

 

Property

News

  • At the end of 2024 consumer confidence in our property market had reached its highest point in 10 years, as published in the ABSA Homeowner Sentiment Index. Reportedly, some 77% of respondents said that they preferred buying, rather than renting. With any luck, this year will be better for the property industry than last year.
  • This sentiment is echoed by Clur Connect, which expects positive shopping centre performance to continue.
  • Much on bank repossessions of immovable property; the latest is: https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/companies-and-deals/smackdown-for-standard-bank-in-home-repo-case/
  • Land restitution has become old hat; a report on the Lisbon Estate in Mpumalanga stands out, as the land in question was a very large tropical fruit farm (initially valued at R120m) which had been sold by the trustees to a buyer for R7.5m. The sale was struck down by the High Court, and an administrator appointed, to manage the land. The fact is that community property trusts have not been particularly successful in dealing with communal land derived from restitution.
  • Another old hat issue, the construction mafia: our Finance Minister has agreed with stakeholders on an approach to end criminal disruption at sites. Good but one will have to wait to see if the approach, which was not disclosed, will work! I confess to scepticism, hotlines and safe houses are not the answer.
  • There was some confusion regarding the extra payment required by Eskom from those customers having son panels – it appears that this will apply only to residential clients who are directly coupled to the Eskom network. To retrospectively impose such a tariff seems unreasonable as many such users would have had little other option than to provide for themselves.

Legal stuff:

 

Comment

The recent hoo-hah about Afrikaners being given green cards for entry into the USA, piqued my interest, as I am busy with a book on the history of Slavic nations in central Europe. Can one be a nation without having a distinct territory? The Oxford says that a nation is a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory. Some years ago, while boating in Krka National Park, I met a young couple who was curious about my descent. I explained; they asked why we, meaning Afrikaners, had not retained a separate territory for ourselves within South Africa. The background against which this was set, was then very recent war separating Croatia from what was then Yugoslavia; Croatia attaining a virtually ethnically pure Croat population. So, what are we then – Afrikaners, Englishmen, Zulus, Xhosas and so on – as South Africa, as it stands, has such a diversity of languages and cultures that we cannot really call ourselves a nation?

 

Lighten up

 

What do European Nationalists say when they see something disgusting?

“EU”.

 

A man is being given a grand tour of hell. In huge cauldrons different nationalties– Frenchmen, Swedes, Russians, Brits, Italians, Czechs, Scots, etc.- are being boiled in oil, guarded by fork-wielding devils.

The visitor asks the guide: “Why has that cauldron been left unguarded? “Oh,” replied the guide. “Those are Poles. When one of them tries to get out, the others pull him back in!”

 

Zapiro 1999:

 

 

 

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

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