The Pietermaritzburg High Court handed down a final court order on June 23, in favour of iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority (IWPA) and Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife (EKZN), after the IWPA had requested the court to interdict the community of Dukuduku and the surrounding communities from illegally invading the land in the area known as Futululu, near Dukuduku in St Lucia.
Issuing the interdict, Judge Mossop ordered that the respondents cited in the order, and anyone acting through or with them, are interdicted from entering or invading, occupying and/or removing any vegetation and/or erecting any structures on the area known as the Futululu Forest, within the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, unless permitted by the IWPA.
Community members invading the land complained to the media present at the time that they were not able to feed their families or grow crops on flooded land, due to the wetland river mouth being closed.
But many outsiders appear to have joined the rush for land, creating risks of a more widespread and opportunistic invasion similar to the early land occupations in the nineties, which all but wiped out the unique Dukuduku coastal lowland forest nearby.
The IWPA and EKZN sought urgent relief from the courts following the land invasion within the protected Futululu Forest, by a group of people who were beginning to destroy vegetation and unlawfully attempting to sell land to the public.
Authorities said that the land invasion began around March 21 and iSimangaliso – in partnership with Ezemvelo authorities – had tried to peacefully engage with the land invaders, in an attempt to resolve the matter and find an amicable solution.
Unfortunately, the community engagements did not yield the positive results authorities were hoping for, and iSimangaliso was forced to approach the court for urgent relief.
The court initially granted an interim court order preventing the invaders from continuing with illegal activities and land invasion, pending the final hearing on the matter today and the issuing of the final order.
In court, iSimangaliso and Ezemvelo were legally represented by attorneys D'Arcy Hermann Raney and counsel were Andrea Gabriel SC and Sithandiwe Mdletshe, from the Durban Bar.
The final court order was issued unopposed.
In a media release, iSimangaliso management said: “Park is South Africa's first World Heritage site to be inscribed by Unesco in 1999 and that leaders such as the late former President Nelson Mandela was very instrumental in the listing of iSimangaliso as a World Heritage site.”
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