Labour Wrap: How working people were robbed of R60bn

Terry Bell maintains that SA has the worst record in the world for sales where houses can be bought up for as little as R100 and resold days later for perhaps R25 000.  

Cape Town - Over the past 20 years, thousands of working people, right across the social spectrum, have been made homeless and robbed of perhaps more than R60bn, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap. 

He adds that it was a fact that became particularly pertinent this week with news of still growing unemployment, an ongoing gloomy economic outlook and the first severe cold snap of winter.

This system of enforced homelessness comes about through sales in execution, the sale by auction of homes where owners are more than three months in arrears with bond payments. It is a system Bell describes as “immoral, open to corruption and in desperate need of fixing”.

Belatedly, trade unions, the SA Communist Party and senior officials in the Justice Department seem to have agreed that this “broken system” needs to be fixed, but so far nothing has been done. Quoting research undertaken by Scottish born advocate, Douglas Shaw, Bell maintains that South Africa has the worst record in the world for such sales where houses can be be bought up for as little as R100 and resold days later for perhaps R25 000.

And it is not just two-roomed township houses that are involved. Three bedroom suburban bungalows and beyond are included. Workers at all levels can, through no fault of their own, find themselves out on the street and in debt, says Bell.  

He quotes cases of someone with a R1m bond who has dutifully paid instalments for perhaps ten years before falling into arrears while still owing R500 000. Such a house - perhaps valued at R1.5m could then be sold for perhaps R150 000 to someone who could put it on the market at full value. The homeowner ruined in this way is then pursued for the balance owing on the bond.

However, Bell adds, something is finally happening, with a declaratory order being sought from the Constitutional Court on behalf of more than 290 people whose homes were “grossly undersold” using a system clearly in need of fixing.

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