The University of Mpumalanga has been dragged to the centre of a legal dispute.
The legal protagonists are two construction giants.
And caught up in the R500 million construction project suit are also community leaders and police bosses.
The Mpumalanga High Court recently overturned a ruling that had halted an urgent interdict bid brought by NPE Construction (Pty) Ltd and Trencon Construction (Pty) Ltd.
The two companies oversee major development works at the University of Mpumalanga in Mbombela.
In 2023, they claimed that a group of individuals stormed the construction site, made threats and caused damage.
Court papers detail a tense standoff including that an attorney was attacked, and a vehicle was vandalised, leaving staff feeling unsafe.
The construction firms turned to the Mbombela Magistrate’s Court, seeking an order to bar the group from returning.
But in June 2023, the magistrate dismissed the application claiming it lacked jurisdiction. This is because the project was valued at R500 million, far above its R400 000 threshold.
This week, acting high court judge Kgama Shai and Mpumalanga Deputy Judge President Takalani Ratshibvumo delivered a stinging rebuke of that decision.
“The court a quo reasoned that the limit was determined by the value of the business generated on the premises. To that extent, the court a quo erred,” Shai ruled, with Ratshibvumo in agreement.
The High Court ruled that jurisdiction in interdicts depends on the cost of stopping the unlawful conduct, not the overall value of a project.
“It is that conduct or the cost of the abatement of the unlawful activities to which value had to be attached and not the businesses per se,” Shai noted.
The magistrate had also raised the jurisdiction issue on their own, without it being challenged by the respondents.
While courts can do this, the judges said, the court misused its power.
“In principle, there is no procedural handicap that prevents the court from raising jurisdiction mero motu. However… the facts did not warrant such step,” Shai criticised the magistrate’s court. They called the magistrate’s reasoning flawed. “This was a misdirection.”
The University of Mpumalanga, which owns the site, was listed as the fourteenth respondent.
The Nelspruit police station commander and the Mpumalanga police commissioner were cited for failing to act during the 2023 standoff.
The High Court made it clear that the omission of the R500 million figure from the founding affidavit wasn’t enough to derail the case.
“In light of what has been said above, such disclosure was not relevant or material… I am not going to [be]labour this issue any further,” ruled Shai.
The matter has now been sent back to the same magistrate for a hearing. The first to 11th respondents have been ordered to foot the bill for the appeal.
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