Mom defies court order

A Hout Bay mother insists that she will not move from her home even after being found guilty of contempt of court for violating an eviction order and being given a three-month suspended sentence.

Now Janina Samuels, who pleaded guilty to contempt of court on June 7 for failing to comply with a 2011 Cape High Court order, is appealing against her conviction.

She was found to be in contempt after she and several others illegally built homes on a mountain slope overlooking Hout Bay harbour.

Squatters living on the mountain have been said by a Cape Town city councillor to often be in cahoots with criminal gangs.

As part of her sentence, Samuels was ordered to move out of her home by this weekend.

According to the 2011 "peace and mediation accord", made an order of the Cape High Court, those who built shacks above a firebreak on Sentinel Peak agreed to dismantle them and move down the slope.

The Sentinel is part of the Table Mountain National Park and is owned by SanParks. But some locals in Hangberg insist that the squatters' removal was to make way for a luxury housing development.

In her appeal Samuels said she violated the court order because she and her children had nowhere else to go and would be forced "onto the streets".

Samuels says she was not represented by a lawyer and was not familiar with court procedure.

"I did not avail myself of the services of a lawyer because I believed that I had done nothing wrong as my home was located in an area I believed the court order did not apply to," she said in an affidavit.

Hout Bay Civic Association spokesman Roscoe Jacobs, who has taken up Samuels's case, claims the mediation deal, which followed violent protests in September 2010 between residents and Cape Town metro police, was flawed because the former mediator, Brian Williams, was not independent, the mediation process was exclusive and there was little consultation with the community.

"That is why we are in a situation in which people are being arrested at 3am. People are not aware of the decisions taken on their behalf," said Jacobs.

But the member of Cape Town's mayoral committee responsible for safety and security, JP Smith, said that instead of wading into the community with law enforcement officers, as in 2010, the city was dealing with violations individually.

"There is a violent, highly militarised group up there ... criminals have an interest in those structures remaining and that is why they are seeking every possible method to obfuscate and delay [the evictions]," said Smith.